Climate Change

Luke Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

Let me try this question: how many Members present can say, hand on heart, that they have read the impact assessment for this legislation?

[Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)]

I have read it.

[Claire Coutinho]

The hon. Gentleman says that he has. Could he cite the number of jobs the legislation will create or lose in the overall economy?

[Luke Murphy]

The right hon. Lady’s argument would have a lot more credibility if she had not said, in 2023:

“Nothing will distract us from achieving net zero or driving forward renewables…I want people to feel nothing but unadulterated optimism…We are absolutely committed to our targets.”

The facts about climate change have not changed, yet the right hon. Member has changed her mind. Could that be because of those Members sitting on the Reform Bench?

[Claire Coutinho]

The hon. Gentleman also did not answer my question on jobs. I inherited my party’s position on net zero. I made it clear from the outset that my priority was affordability for Brits in this country, and that net zero should not impoverish consumers. In fact, I made some changes that meant that Labour called me a climate denier and a flat-earther. The hon. Gentleman now comes to this Chamber, not to scrutinise the legislation that will have a massive effect on his constituents, but to criticise me for scrutinising it, asking questions and changing my party’s position.

I am proud to have changed my party’s position, because I care about the consumer, about jobs, and about the price of food and energy. None of the Members on the Government Benches seems to care about those things, because if they did—[Interruption.] I will make some progress, because nobody is answering these questions. If they cared about those things, they would have read the Government’s impact assessment.

[Luke Murphy]

I have read it.

[Claire Coutinho]

Well, the hon. Gentleman could not answer the question on jobs. If he had read it, he would know that the Government’s own impact assessment admits that the modelling does not consider any upside, or downside risks, to the economy arising from the energy transition. It specifically says that it does not consider the impact on jobs. That means that Government Members are voting on legislation without any idea of what it is going to mean for the British worker.

The impact assessment is clear and explicit: the modelling does not analyse energy security. The Government do not know what the legislation will mean for the energy security of our nation. The head of Unite was spot on when she said at the weekend that the Secretary of State

“only seems to be interested in one side of the equation, rushing Britain to net zero with almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security.”

The transition has literally not been properly assessed. What is worse is that Government MPs want to make their political points, but none of them seems to care. Considering how much people are struggling and how much growth is flatlining, are Labour Members really happy to wave through those legal targets without the foggiest idea of what it will do to the economy, the cost of living or energy security?

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Coutinho]

I have taken interventions from so many Labour Members, and none of them could give a figure—[Interruption.] I will happily give way.

[Luke Murphy]

Point 299 of the impact assessment says:

“The transition away from fossil fuels will lead to a net increase in job creation”.

I believe the right hon. Lady said a moment ago that it does not mention at all the impact on jobs. I invite her to correct the record.

[Claire Coutinho]

The analysis that the hon. Gentleman points to refers to TIMES modelling. That is used for the baseline. A few pages away, its says that the TIMES modelling specifically does not look at the impact of jobs on the overall energy transition. It is in there in black and white.

The hon. Gentleman might desperately google it now in the Chamber, but the truth is that no Labour Members read and scrutinised the impact assessment properly because none of them cares. Let’s be honest: they are all here to read their boilerplate speeches, which will all be exactly the same, to virtue signal how much of a good person they are. That is the truth. Most of them come from climate NGOs and green lobby groups—the Minister does too, I am afraid—and they care more about ideology than evidence. How many of them have ever had to turn a profit for a living? How many have had to work out how to pay someone else’s wages? How many have had to consider all the costs that go into manufacturing and selling something in Britain?

The thing is, we could do this so differently. We are 1% of global emissions; 99% are happening elsewhere. Those countries are not persuaded by Britain driving itself into poverty while the Secretary of State preaches at them from his pulpit. In fact, they are asking themselves why they should follow the path that Britain is taking when we are such an obvious example of what not to do. We are a country that is making its energy scarce and expensive, and deindustrialising and impoverishing its own citizens.

What is the solution? First, we must reject decarbonisation by deindustrialisation. Therefore, we must measure the offshoring of emissions and get rid of the unilateral carbon tax and the stringent targets killing off British industry by repealing the Climate Change Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Before entering this place, I worked in the energy efficiency industry. I know the potential that we have when we back our home-grown manufacturers across the United Kingdom, and I know how vital energy is to their success; but the Government’s policies on net zero are holding them back. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) said during Prime Minister’s questions, the current Energy Secretary is

“putting up bills and killing jobs.”

I am proud that under her leadership, the Conservative Party is starting to be honest about net zero.

As the Conservative leader of Broxbourne Council, I never joined in the hysteria of council after council declaring a climate emergency, then sitting back and feeling good about themselves. In Broxbourne we focused on action, not words—planting thousands of trees, installing electric car charging points, and getting developers to put solar panels on new houses. Putting net zero into law by 2050 was exactly the same: there was no serious plan to achieve it then, but now Labour have come up with a plan, and we are starting to see what the true costs to our economy and to ordinary people’s lives will be.

Carbon budget 7 sets a target for reducing our emissions by 87%. According to the Climate Change Committee, to achieve that we must cut meat consumption by a quarter by 2040, and sheep and cattle numbers will have to fall by 38% by 2050. Some of these suggestions are completely unworkable. The Climate Change Committee has also said that people should be pushed away from driving to “alternative modes of travel”. That is simply not feasible in large parts of the United Kingdom, especially rural areas like parts of my constituency.

It is very frustrating to turn up at a local meeting about sustainable transport—about trying to increase the number of buses and trains—and then find that the person who is lecturing everyone about how we should all walk everywhere has driven there in their car. We need to come up with practical solutions that enable us to take the public with us. What do I say to my constituents who tell me, “I have to take two kids to school, and they are at different schools, then I have to go to work and do the shopping, then pick them up and go home”? Such targets are unworkable. It is not feasible to say, “Well, that’s fine—everyone can just walk everywhere.” The targets have to be sensible, and we have to take the British public with us, or we will not go anywhere towards achieving some of the stuff that the Government want us to achieve.

We are talking about an average overall cost of £11,157 per household. That is not a price that we should be willing to pay. We have made fantastic progress already, and we should always be committed to leaving a better environment for the next generation, but we also need to leave them a stronger economy and a stronger country, and that means, above all else, cheaper energy. Britain currently has some of the highest energy costs in the developed world. There is no way in which we can achieve the economic growth that people are crying out for throughout the United Kingdom if that remains the case, which is why we need to get Britain drilling and unlock the 2.9 billion barrels of North sea oil. According to this Government, it is okay to get oil from Russia if it is done through a third country, but we cannot use our own resources in the North sea. Obviously, oil coming from the North sea will produce less carbon dioxide than oil that has had to travel halfway across the world.

The Government need to set out a plan for delivery, and they really need to come up with common-sense approaches to deal with the impacts of climate change. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) said, the fact that we are scrutinising Government policy does not make us climate deniers.

[Luke Murphy]

Does the hon. Member not think that we would give more credence to the scrutiny that the Conservatives are providing if some of their claims could be found in the carbon budget on which we are voting? Could he tell the House where it says that everyone will need to walk and will not be able to use a vehicle?

[Lewis Cocking]

When I was leader of my council, I went to a number of meetings in my constituency and spoke to a number of constituents. Experts on transport come to meetings and say that everyone should walk everywhere, which is completely impractical. Some of the solutions that the Government have put forward are completely unworkable. They should come up with some common-sense solutions, because this is a serious problem that we need to deal with. Saying that most people should walk everywhere is not a serious solution to the problem that we face.

If the Government want us to reduce our carbon emissions even more, they should come up with serious, practical, common-sense solutions that allow us to take the British people with us and protect jobs in this country. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State has said, there is no point putting taxes on business here and cutting carbon here if factories then open in China, where they use coal to produce their electricity rather than what we do in the United Kingdom. That is completely unserious. The Government need to come up with practical solutions to this problem, and I urge the Minister to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)]

As many Members have mentioned, the temperature outside the Chamber has been climbing towards 40°C and a red heat health alert is in force. Fifty years ago, the summer of 1976 left a mark that many people still remember. We are living through that kind of summer again, except that now we know it is not a freak, but a pattern. We are seeing the impact in that schools have closed, transport has been disrupted and hospitals have cancelled appointments. Indeed, we have already seen a critical incident declared at a hospital in Portsmouth.

None of this is a forecast; it has already happened, and it is happening faster than we were told, but I do not believe that we need to trade in despair, because it is not warranted and it is not useful. We still have time to act and we know what to do. That is the whole point of the seventh carbon budget that we are debating, and it is in that spirit that I support it.

This is something Britain is good at. We were the first major economy to write a binding climate framework into law. We have cut our emissions faster than almost any comparable nation. This is not a burden we should carry grudgingly, but a race in which we are leading from the front and, indeed, bringing on other countries to act as well.

A child starting school in my constituency this September will be in their 20s when this budget period ends, and what we decide in this Chamber writes the world that they grow up in. We must leave things better than we found them, and we cannot hand the next generation a wrecked inheritance and a bill, and call it prudence. So to those who say we cannot afford this, I say that the reverse is true.

The Conservative party rightly talks about scrutiny, but scrutiny works both ways. I heard very little about the costs of inaction—flooding, wildfires and heatwaves—or the cost of not capturing the huge economic opportunities. Indeed, the impact assessment, as we have discussed, shows that transitioning away from fossil fuels will lead to a net increase. It mentions not being able to quantify exactly the impact on jobs post 2030, but it very clearly says that that is because of the context: it depends on things such as automation, AI and, crucially, policy.

I agreed with the speech of the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), in 2023, because she rightly argued—I did not agree with everything she said, but she made this central point—that while she agreed with the target for net zero, policy would be crucial to shaping whether it worked for families and business. However, rather than doing the hard work of designing policy to ensure that, the Conservatives have abandoned the target completely.

We still have time, and we have the framework, the evidence and a national habit of leading when it counts. We should not duck this moment just because it has got difficult, and I urge the Government to keep Britain leading from the front.