Miliband accuses Farage of hypocrisy over green energy funding

Telegraph

3 days ago

Ed Miliband has accused Reform UK hypocrisy as the Energy Secretary claimed Nigel Farage's party was waging an 'ideological' war against his policies.
Mr Miliband said the fact that two Reform mayors had accepted grants for solar panels was proof that Reform's net zero policy 'disintegrates on contact with reality'.
He also accused Richard Tice, of running a 'clown car operation' after the Reform energy spokesman threatened to tear up contracts with wind farm developers last week.
Mr Miliband's comments suggests he is ready to go on the offensive as he comes under increasing pressure from Reform and faces scrutiny from within the Cabinet. Earlier this year the Energy Secretary said he was 'absolutely up for the fight' on net zero.
Mr Farage has made attacking Labour's net zero policies a key part of Reform's electoral strategy, betting that Labour's plans to radically reshape Britain's energy system by the end of the decade are not popular with the public.
At the same time, ministers are said to be increasingly concerned about the Mr Miliband's promise to lower average household bills by £300 a year this parliament.
Sir Keir Starmer took a personal interest in Mr Miliband's deliberations over whether to break up the energy market amid concerns it could push up bills in the South. Plans to move to a so-called zonal pricing system were ultimately abandoned.
Double standards
On Monday, Mr Miliband sought to shift the focus on to Reform's policies as he highlighted the fact that after two of its mayors accepted grants totalling £1.3m for solar panels.
'I'm really pleased that they're taking that funding,' Mr Miliband told the Energy Security and Net Zero Select Committee of MPs.
'But the lesson of this is those mayors, faced with the choice of cutting bills through clean power or keeping their areas locked on expensive insecure fossil fuels, chose the clean power course.
'I think it proves that Reform's energy policy, frankly, disintegrates on contact with reality and on contact with what the British people actually want to see.'
Greater Lincolnshire, where Dame Andrea Jenkyns was elected mayor for Reform in May, has claimed £607,845 for solar panels on leisure centres and fire stations, while Hull and East Yorkshire, overseen by Reform's Luke Campbell, was awarded £700,000 for solar projects on service buildings and car parks.
After receiving the grant, Mr Campbell said he was 'delighted', adding it would help councils in the area 'save on their energy bills over the coming years'.
It comes despite Reform vowing to scrap the target of reaching net zero by 2050 if it won the next election, claiming it would save £225bn.
Mr Farage on Sunday claimed the British people were being defrauded out of billions of pounds under the switch to renewables, adding that subsidising green energy schemes at the taxpayers' expense was having 'literally zero effect' on global emissions.
'Airbrushing history'
Mr Miliband accused Mr Farage of wanting to 'airbrush history' by ignoring the spike in energy prices seen following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
He said: 'He wants people to forget about the fact that it was our exposure to fossil fuels that led to the worst cost of living crisis in generations.
'Family finances wrecked, business finances wrecked and still paying the price, and public finances wrecked as well. There is only one answer to that, which is home-grown clean energy we control.
'The security you get from that home-grown clean energy is what is now essential for our energy security and our national security.
'Anything else, any decision which says let's just remain on these fossil fuels, subject to a global market controlled by petro-states and dictators, frankly surrenders our energy security and indeed our national security.'
Last week Mr Tice wrote to the chief executives of SSE Renewables, Octopus Energy, Centrica, Equinor and others to give 'formal notice' that a Reform government would tear up any deals struck with Mr Miliband.
The letter was widely seen as an attempt to sabotage an upcoming subsidy round meant to encourage wind farm developers to set up in Britain.
Mr Miliband told MPs: 'He wrote a letter saying he was going to rip up the contracts and then went on the PM programme that afternoon to rebut his own letter and to say that he'd been highly misinterpreted and wasn't going to tear up the contracts.
'The broader point here is that this is driven not by concern for the British people or interest in people's energy bills. It is ideology.
'Why would you want to stay on expensive, insecure fossil fuels? We only need to look at the geopolitical situation to see the level of insecurity and exposure that we have.
'Why would you want to stay on those when you can have cheap clean power that we control?'