Responding to the Budget, Conservative Environment Network’s Director Sam Hall said:
“This high-tax Budget will scare the entrepreneurs and crowd out the private investment we need to decarbonise. The private sector is willing and able to finance the UK’s clean energy transition. Hiking business taxes to fund GB Energy’s enormous £8.3 billion price tag encapsulates the government’s wasteful, big state approach to net zero.
“This Budget shows the government has the wrong priorities on the environment. There were positive announcements to protect electric car tax breaks, incentivise home insulation, and support rail electrification schemes. But ideological vanity projects were backed over low business taxes, long-term protection of the nature-friendly farming budget, acceleration of new nuclear, and support for rural bus services. The next Conservative leader now has an opportunity to offer a positive, market-led approach to the environment. They should seize this opening with both hands by pledging to sweep away state-imposed barriers to green private enterprise.”
Responding to the announcement on funding for Environmental Land Management schemes, Sam Hall said:
“The one-year reprieve for the nature-friendly farming budget is welcome, but the cuts trailed for subsequent years are concerning. Combined with cuts to agricultural property relief, this will leave many farming businesses facing an uncertain future. We will fail to restore nature and address climate change without supporting and incentivising our farmers, who manage 70% of the land. Labour’s pledge to halt nature’s decline this decade is now at risk.”