Labour Party calls for rapid green investment

Keir Starmer is redoubling Labour’s calls for rapid green investment as new figures reveal more than 75,000 green jobs were lost from the UK economy in just five years under the Conservatives.

According to the Labour Party, official figures show a loss of 33,800 direct jobs and a further 41,400 jobs in the supply chain for low carbon and renewable sectors between 2014 and 2019. This includes thousands of jobs lost in solar power, onshore wind, renewable electricity and bioenergy, and a huge fall in the number of jobs in the energy efficiency sector.

On a visit to a wind farm in Scotland alongside Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, Starmer will demand the government delivers on the urgent need for action in what is the decisive decade for addressing climate change ahead of COP26.

Labour has called for £30 billion in planned investment to be brought forward to support up to 400,000 jobs in manufacturing and low-carbon industries. The opposition party has also put forward plans to buy, make and sell more in Britain – proposals which would create more jobs in the UK green supply chain such as wind turbine manufacturing.

Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, said: “Tackling the climate crisis must be at the heart of everything we do. We are at a critical moment. In less than 100 days, COP26 will be over and our chance to keep the planet’s warming below 1.5 degrees will have either been grasped or abandoned.

“The UK must rise to this moment and lead by example. That means rapid action to create good, green jobs across the country. And it means a proper strategy to buy, make and sell more in Britain, to create good, unionised jobs in clean energy and through supply chains.

“We’ve had a decade of broken promises on green jobs and climate action under the Conservatives. And we are going backwards in Scotland, too. For all the rhetoric, both parties have overseen a significant loss of green jobs. Nobody here in the UK can afford for this issue to be yet another example of Boris Johnson bluster. We need real action, now. It is time for a Green New Deal.”