Boris Johnson is facing warnings that his green agenda “won’t work” if the government imposes significant extra costs on low-income households in the transition to net zero by 2050.
Despite praising the government’s plans, the prime minister was also urged by a senior Tory to “fess up” that many red wall communities will be least able to afford the drastic changes needed to reach the legally binding target.
The remarks came at a fringe event during the Conservative conference and shortly after Mr Johnson said that all electricity in Britain should be produced from clean energy sources, such as wind and solar, by 2035.
The government is hoping to encourage other nations to commit to net zero targets next month at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow – weeks after a major UN report warned that time is running out to save the planet.
Speaking on Monday, Jake Berry, the chair of the Northern Research Group of Conservative MPs, said delivering net zero goes “hand-in-hand with creating a growing north economy”, with huge opportunities in store.
However, he warned: “On the cost of it, I think there’s a bit of a pinch point towards the government. I don’t, if I’m honest, know what the answer to it is.
“Everyone thinks this is a great agenda, and it absolutely is, we’ve got to look at ways of improving our planet and leaving our kids a better planet than we were born on. That all seems great until you go ‘well, you need to change your boiler’, or ‘you need buy a really expensive electric vehicle that you probably can’t afford’.
“I don’t know how the government’s going to deal with that, whether it’ll be through subsidies on vehicles or boilers or whatever, but I do think we’ve got to ’fess up to the fact that it will be many of the red wall communities who are least able to afford these changes that we’re making.”
Bim Afolami, the Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, also told the event hosted by The Spectator: “It’s clear to me this agenda will not work in the coming years if the government imposes significant extra costs on people who cannot afford to pay them – simple as that.”
“We need to specifically look at quite localised taxes that relate to environmentally damaging carbon intensive ways of doing things – for example, we’ve got a landfill tax, we should increase that landfill tax,” he added.
“We could significantly increase it and that extra money going to help local authorities going to invest and improve in local recycling – I just use that as an example. But we are going to need to raise funds in order to make sure that people do not raise out on this transition.
Mr Afolami went on: “We are going to have to make sure individuals are protected from this because that is, I think, the biggest medium-term risk to this whole agenda, is people who can afford it saying to others, ‘look you’ve got to go green’ and people can’t afford it.”
Elsewhere, a poll showed the Conservative party could lose up to 32 so-called red wall seats to Labour if an election were held tomorrow, with the parties neck and neck in the north of England, Midlands and north Wales constituencies.
The Conservatives have dropped to 41 per cent in red wall areas – seven points down on the party’s 2019 result – while Labour are up two points to 40 per cent.
According to the company’s modelling, the result puts dozens of seats back in play for Sir Keir Starmer’s party in traditional Labour-voting territory.
YouGov said four red wall Conservative constituencies would be “firmly back in Labour’s hands”, while another 14 would also be “likely to fall” to Starmer’s party and a further 14 would be too close to call.
