NIGEL Farage’s claims that scrapping net zero policies would save taxpayers more than £40 billion per year have been questioned by experts.
The Reform UK leader claimed that abandoning climate-friendly government policies would help fund his party’s commitments to ending the two-child benefit cap and bringing back the Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners.
But his promises have been put under scrutiny, with one former Treasury civil servant saying the UK Government was spending “nothing on [the] scale” claimed by Farage.
His figures appeared to come from a 2021 report by the Institute for Government (IfG), which was citing numbers by the Climate Change Committee.
Jill Rutter, who worked in senior positions at the Treasury during a 19-year career before joining the IfG as a senior fellow, questioned Farage’s claims.
In a post on Bluesky, Rutter said the 2021 report had argued that investment, both from the public and private sector, to around £5bn per year by the end of the decade to meet the previous government’s “slightly less ambitious” net zero targets.
She added: “Remember all those rows about Labour saying it would up spending to £28bn a year?
“Scaled back well before the election. So far we have seen bits of govt spend (GB Energy/[carbon capture and storage] and green hydrogen) but nothing on this scale.”
Elsewhere, Alex Sissons, who works on policies to reduce carbon emissions at the research charity Nesta, suggested Farage had inflated the costs of net zero policies.
He said that according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s most recent accounts £1bn had been spent by the department on “taking action on climate change”.
