Business leaders who warned against Ed Miliband in 2015 have now turned on Rishi Sunak, criticising the prime minister’s plans to roll back net zero policies.
Some of Britain’s top entrepreneurs have told the Guardian that the plans have caused uncertainty for business, reduced the country’s international standing and punished investors who made early decisions on net zero based on the original timeline.
During the 2015 general election campaign, when 103 business leaders wrote to the Daily Telegraph to criticise plans by Miliband, the then Labour leader, to scrap zero-hours contracts and reverse a cut to corporation tax.
However, some members of the business community are increasingly frustrated with Conservatives policies including Sunak’s plans to delay the 2030 deadline for all new cars to be electricand the phase-out on installation of gas boilers by 2035, drop energy efficiency targets for landlords, and mooted proposals to scrap the Manchester leg of HS2.
Leaders including a dragon from BBC One’s Dragon’s Den, a billionaire insurance mogul and the former chief executive of Boots said the plans to roll back green measures were flawed. All had signed the letter to the Telegraph in 2015.
Richard Baker, a former chair of Whitbread and chief executive of Boots, said of Sunak’s plans: “It’s bad news, not only because the UK had been world leading on net zero, but because of the uncertainty it creates around investment decisions for business.”
Sarah Jane Thomson, a co-founder of the cybersecurity platform ThreatAware and the founder of the consultancy firm Ebiquity, said she was “genuinely taken aback” by the announcement.
She added: “It erodes both consumer and business confidence, and abrupt reversals of policy direction are rarely well-received. All businesses seek stability and predictability from the government, especially when substantial changes are on the horizon that will impact their operations. The 2030 deadline set by Boris Johnson undeniably had a significant influence on the strategies of automotive companies. These firms I’m sure made significant strategy decisions as a result of that announcement.”
Thomson said the optics of Sunak’s decision in terms of Britain’s climate goals were less than encouraging. “The distinction, I think, lies in perception, particularly that of consumers. It prompts us to question whether we are a nation genuinely committed to achieving net zero emissions,” she said.
“We may now be aligning with the European Union’s timeline, but we are now not forging ahead of it. Rishi Sunak’s statement implies that short-term concerns take precedence over long-term goals, which in itself is a questionable policy.”
Nick Jenkins, the founder of the greetings card company Moonpig and a Dragon on Dragon’s Den, said: “I was disappointed that the government chose to push back the deadlines. The shift away from fossil fuels requires long term planning and certainty. It is unhelpful when deadlines are changed.
“Every year, 1m boilers in this country are replaced by homeowners. They all need to look a few years into the future and make a balanced decision on whether or to make the shift to heat pumps. There will be landlords who have recently made significant investments in insulation and heating systems who might feel as though they have been punished for their early enthusiasm.”
He added: “It would have been preferable to have a cross-party consensus on such unpopular but inevitable and important policies and an agreement to remove the temptation to trade a lighter path for short term political gain.”
Jenkins said the rhetoric around costs to families was flawed, as the expense of not acting on the environment would prove far greater.
“Undoubtedly there is an enormous investment to be made to achieve net zero. We need a massive upgrade of the electrical grid and a huge investment in renewable power generation. That bill will be ultimately paid by the public. This cost can be neatly quantified per household.
“The cost of not doing so is undoubtedly much greater, and possibly catastrophic for our grandchildren, but far more difficult to express in pounds. Public outrage at the cost of decarbonising energy is understandable in today’s difficult economic environment but it implies that maintaining the status quo is an option. It is not.”
Some said Sunak’s comments were unhelpful and position him way behind the business community, many members of which view net zero as a growth opportunity rather than a cost.
Julietta Dexter, a co-founder of the communications company ScienceMagic, said: “His speech sent the wrong signals. If there was a very, very real tangible reason to push out the goals, tell us what it is. Responsible business is on a path to net zero regardless of what the government says or does.
“It is unhelpful to be doing these speeches about costs. In the business community, people are no longer seeing their ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance] strategies or decarbonisation as a sideshow – it’s core business.
“It’s a contradictory message to say we are leading the world on this but we are pushing the dates out. I think there is a growing swathe of business people who have a lot of power and they are just getting on with it, and the government is going to have to catch up.”
Peter Cullum, an insurance tycoon, said scrapping the Manchester leg of HS2 would be a flawed decision. “I can understand the likely decision to abandon the Birmingham to Manchester HS2 rail link on purely economic grounds, but it feels like a huge error of judgment in political terms and the Conservatives are likely to pay the price at the next election,” Cullum said.
Separately, a prominent Tory donor recently said the party did not deserve to win the next election, weeks after he donated £5,000 to Labour. Lord Harris of Peckham, the founder of Carpetright, who is also known for his Harris academy schools, said he had lost faith in the Conservatives.
