The net zero lobby just gets sillier and sillier. According to energy minister Michael Shanks, Reform’s policy of abandoning net zero targets is an ‘anti-growth ideology’ which would cost nearly a million jobs. Coming in a week when the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported that the number of payrolled employees across the UK fell by 135,000 during Labour’s first year in power – with 25,000 lost in May alone (the month after the higher rates of employers’ national Insurance came into effect) – you might think that government ministers would want to avoid talking about job losses just at the moment, but no matter.

Shanks’ ‘evidence’ for his claim is a report by the CBI and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) claiming that the ‘net zero sector’ provides jobs for 951,000 people in Britain – 273,000 directly and 679,000 in the supply chain. It consists of 22,800 companies, who employees are apparently 38 per cent more productive than UK employees as a whole.

That,........

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