Ministers were ‘crackers’ to suggest deadline for petrol car sale ban might slip after Uxbridge result, says climate expert – UK politics live | Politics

Scotland would adopt a citizenship model similar to that of Ireland if it ever becomes independent, Humza Yousaf, the first minister, has announced. PA News reports:

Yousaf has published the fifth paper in a series laying out the prospectus for Scotland after separation, focusing on immigration and citizenship.

The Scottish government has long advocated increased immigration to cope with an ageing population, with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon publishing plans for a separate Scottish visa in 2020, which was almost immediately rejected by Westminster.

Yousaf said that anyone with a parent born in Scotland will be able to apply for Scottish citizenship if the country leaves the UK.

The paper explains the rights of British nationals to claim dual citizenship, as well as how the process for foreign nationals to apply will be streamlined.

Yousaf said: “I am in no doubt that alongside the climate crisis, the challenges of an ageing population are one of the biggest issues future generations will face in Scotland, unless action is taken today.

“The Scottish government wants to make it easier for people, including those seeking to reconnect with family roots, to gain citizenship and contribute to our economy, society and public services like the NHS.”

No 10 should bring in new fines for ex-ministers who break the rules on lobbying in time for Rishi Sunak’s next reshuffle and tighten restrictions on former civil servants, Eric Pickles, the head of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), has said. Rowena Mason has the story here.

Rishi Sunak has been urged to close the holes in his “Swiss cheese” of a windfall tax on energy companies after Shell and British Gas reported significant profits, with Labour calling the government’s stance “perverse”, Aubrey Allegretti reports.

Good morning. A good way to think about the most important stories of our time is to imagine, if someone were to produce a news bulletin about what happened in the 21st century, what would be in it. Newspapers cover the most important stories of the last 24 hours. Live blogs, like this one, cover the most important stories of the last 24 minutes. But the story of the 21st century is obviously, obviously, the climate crisis, and this does feature in the daily news agenda too.

This morning Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, was on the Today programme and he was withering about the government’s backsliding on green issues (partly a matter of rhetoric, but there have been some policy shifts too) since the Uxbridge byelection result last week, which persuaded some Tories that fighting net zero measures could be an election. winning strategy.

Stark was particularly critical of the government’s failure to categorically reaffirm its commitment to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. This was “crackers”, he said. He was referring to the days of mixed messaging. According to the Daily Mirror, the government produced five positions on this issue within 24 hours. John Stevens, the Mirror’s political editor, summed them up here.

Here are the main points from Stark’s interview.

It’s a worrying situation. As somebody who works on climate issues, climate policies, we’ve seen this week a remarkable softening of the stance and the rhetoric from our political leaders on climate, in a period when frankly, we should be seeing the opposite.

He seemed to be referring mostly to the government, but he may have had Labour in mind too.

• He said that, although Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, said in an interview on the Today programme on Tuesday that the government was fully committed to implementing the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, by then the damage had been done. He said:

I was very reassured by what Michael Gove said when he sat in this chair. But, nonetheless, the damage was done because we had this discussion following Uxbridge result about whether the 2030 goal was the right one for the country.

That’s one of the things I’m very worried about, because we’ve just heard the the environmental case for having a net zero target ….

My own belief is that if you don’t make the economic case for it alongside that, then then we will really struggle in this mission towards net zero.

So it’s crackers, frankly, to invest £500m pounds in bringing Jaguar Land Rover to the UK to invest in a new gigafactory for making the batteries for those cars, and then similarly, almost within almost the same week, start to talk about softening that 2030 goal, removing the market for the vehicles that Jaguar Land Rover want to make.

The progress we’re making in this country against the targets that are set in law is just not fast enough. Let me give you one illustration of that. If you removed from the equation the one sector where we have been doing pretty well in this country, which is the power sector – we are moving towards a more renewable, cleaner electricity system – if you take that out of the equation and look at all the other sectors where of course the challenge now lies, decarbonizing our economy, moving towards a score of net zero, the average in recent years has been about a 1% fall in greenhouse gas emissions.

If we’re going to meet the 2030 goal that the government set in that Cop26 process back in Glasgow, that needs to quadruple over the next six or seven years. Now we are not seeing that kind of progress and the government’s plans.

It looks like a quiet day in politics, and there isn’t much in the diary. But Rishi Sunak is on a visit this morning, and is due to record a pooled interview, so we might get a response from him.

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