Angela Eagle, border security minister, says prime minister has to answer why he has accepted £76,000 worth of gifts since 2019 electionAnd here are the main points from Ed Miliband’s speech. He started by pointing out that he was in the unusual position for a cabinet minister of doing a job he had done before (he was energy secretary from 2008 to 2010) and he said he wanted to talk about what had changed since then, and what his priorities were now.Miliband argued that the case for fossil fuels has collapsed. He said:My case is this. First, back in 2008, debates were shaped by the energy trilemma – the trade-offs between affordability, security and sustainability. The trilemma helped promote the idea that while fossil fuels might not offer sustainability, they did offer security and affordability. Our mission today is shaped by the reality that, for Britain, this old paradigm has disintegrated. The experience of the last two and a half years has shown us that fossil fuels simply cannot provide us the security, or indeed the affordability, we need – quite the opposite.He said there was now a clean energy imperative. He explained:Second, the trilemma has been replaced by a clean energy imperative: the drive to clean energy is right not just on grounds of climate, which we all knew back then, but also energy security and affordability. As the Climate Change Committee says, “British-based renewable energy is the cheapest and fastest way to reduce vulnerability to volatile global fossil fuel markets.” The lesson for this government is that we must build a new era of greater energy independence on the foundation of clean energy.He said that moving to clean energy was vital not just for climate reasons, but for security reasons, and that this point was not fully understood. He explained:The sustainability case is clear because we know it is the use of fossil fuels that is driving the climate crisis. But the security case too is stark—and I think has been too often underplayed. It has been put well by my Irish counterpart Eamon Ryan, who rightly says: “No one has ever weaponised access to the sun or the wind.” Homegrown clean energy from renewables and nuclear offers us a security that fossil fuels simply cannot provide.He said there has been a dramatic fall in the cost of renewable energy. He said:Since 2015 alone, despite recent global cost pressures, the price of both onshore wind and solar has still fallen by more than a third. The price of offshore wind has halved. And the price of batteries has fallen by more than two thirds. This means, on the basis of the prices in our recent auction, renewables are the cheapest form of power to build and operate. And the price of fixed offshore wind in the auction was around 5 to 7 times lower than the price of electricity, driven by the price of gas, at the peak of the energy crisis.He said that fighting those opposed to green power infrastracture was a matter of economic justice. He explained:Every wind turbine we put up, every solar panel we install, every piece of grid we construct helps protect families from future energy shocks. This is an argument we need to have as a country because the converse is also true. Every wind turbine we block, every solar farm we reject, every piece of grid we fail to build makes us less secure and more exposed. Previous governments have ducked and dithered and delayed these difficult decisions, and it is the poorest in our society who have paid the price. My message today is we will take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists, because the clean energy sprint is the economic justice, energy security and national security fight of our time. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/sep/17/keir-starmer-gifts-labour-conservatives-lib-dems-uk-politics-news-latest-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2024-09-17 10:47:03
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Minister struggles to defend Keir Starmer over his record of accepting freebies – UK politics live
