Gove says 2030 ‘immovable’ date to ban new petrol cars sales as MPs tell Sunak to halt ‘mixed signals’ on climate policy – UK politics live | Politics

Michael Gove has been accused of showing how “disjointed” the government’s net zero strategy is by Greenpeace UK.

In a statement released after Gove’s media interview round this morning, in which the levelling up secretary appeared to firm up the government’s commitment to at least one green target, while signalling that others might be relaxed (see 10.04am), Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s director of policy, said:

Michael Gove has demonstrated how disjointed the government’s new strategy is. If ministers genuinely want to help lower costs for households, they should be doing everything in their power to switch our homes, energy and transport systems away from expensive, climate-wrecking fossil fuels and run them instead on clean technology and cheap renewables.

Mr Gove is right to reaffirm the government’s commitment to ending the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 – and Sunak should now do the same, whilst making the transition as easy as possible for people with extensive charging infrastructure and the promised mandate on manufacturers. But allowing more oil and gas drilling, delaying the phase out of gas boilers and giving landlords longer to insulate the homes of renters will only keep bills high and continue to fan the flames of climate change.

Rishi Sunak may be emboldened by narrowly clinging onto Uxbridge by less than 500 votes, but as Greece continues to burn, putting climate policies on the chopping block right now will firmly place himself and his premiership on the wrong side of history.

The Labour MP Rosie Duffield has welcomed her party’s new plans for reform of the law allowing transgender people to transition.

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair and shadow minister for women and equalities, set out the new position in an article for the Guardian. As Aubrey Allegretti reports, Labour is still committed to reforming the Gender Recognition Act but, influenced by the Scottish government’s unsuccessful attempt to change the law in Scotland, it is not proposing to allow self-declaration and people wanting a gender recognition certificate will still require a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

This amounts to a weaker reform than Labour was proposing in its 2019 manifesto, which backed self-declaration (or self-ID) for trans people. The Conservatives have also retreated on this agenda. When Theresa May was PM, they were in favour of self-ID, but recently ministers strongly attacked the SNP over their self-ID plans.

Stonewall, the group campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights, has criticised Labour’s policy. In a statement released yesterday it said:

International leading practice has moved to a model based on legal self-determination. That is because it is inhumane and undignified to make trans people obtain a medical diagnosis to obtain legal gender recognition. An ever-growing number of countries have moved to, or are moving to, this model over the last fifteen years. In 2019, the World Health Organization de-classified being trans as a mental health disorder.

If any political party wants to get the UK back on track for LGBTQ+ rights, they need to lean in to international evidence, experience and best practice. Speak to Ireland, speak to Belgium, speak to New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, large parts of Canada, US and Australia. Review the evidence – which finds no known cases of fraudulent or criminal intent. They need to understand how legal gender recognition with a de-medicalised model is working in practice before formulating the detail of their policy.

But this morning Duffield, who as a gender critical feminist believes the extension of trans rights could undermine safeguards for biological woman and who has repeatedly criticised her party for its stance on trans issues, said Labour was now “going in the right direction”. She told the Today programme:

It looks broadly speaking as though they’re going in the right direction, and basically have just agreed with myself and other feminist activists and women’s groups, with what we’ve been saying for the last few years. It’s good to get a bit of clarity.

Duffield said she would like to see more detail of what Labour is proposing. But she said she was very glad the party is no longer committed to allowing people to change gender just through self-declaration. She said:

That is the core thing that feminists on my side of the argument wanted to stop. I’m really glad that that has been announced very clearly.

Rishi Sunak has insisted that the government’s approach to housing, set out most recently in a major speech by Michael Gove yesterday, is not protectionist. Writing in the Times, he says:

Meeting our one million homes target is just a stepping stone. To support more families to form and grow we need to continue with our plan to keep building. But this is not about uncontrolled development of the countryside. It is not just about more homes of any kind, anywhere, no matter what communities think. Homes must be built in the right places, where it makes sense. Communities must have a say …

Our approach is not protectionist, it’s targeted. More homes in the places where people want and need them.

The number of households in temporary accommodation in England is at the highest level since records began 25 years ago, PA Media reports. PA says:

As of 31 March this year, 104,510 households were in temporary accommodation, up 10% from the same point last year, according to homelessness statistics released by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

Compared with the previous quarter, the number of households in temporary accommodation increased by 4%.

This latest figure surpasses a previous high of 101,300 reached in 2004, and is the highest among all the government figures available since 1998.

Here are the main quotes from Michael Gove in his morning interviews on net zero issues.

That is one area where I do think we need to review. It is important that new homes meet net-zero challenges but one of the challenges we have is with our existing housing stock.

There are proposals to decarbonise our existing housing stock which I think are the right direction to go but I think the cost of some of those changes may impose on homeowners, and indeed on landlords, I think at this point in time we do need to be careful about imposing.

Because we are living in a real cost-of-living challenge and what we don’t want to do is to force individuals to pay excessive sums at this stage, we need to take a proportionate approach.

Yes. We’re committed to maintaining our policy of ensuring that by 2030 there are no new petrol and diesel cars being sold.

I’m sure there are some people who would like to change that policy, I understand. But that policy remains.

It’s important that the government does press ahead with appropriate and thoughtful steps in order to safeguard the environment but there are some specific areas where the cost that is being imposed on individuals risks creating a backlash.

We don’t want to get to a situation where the support for improving our environment curdles and turns into resistance.

And he told Sky News:

We saw recently in the Netherlands that an inflexible approach to environmental rules actually led to a backlash and it now has a significant body of people who are unhappy about the steps being taken.

It is still safe for tourists to travel to Rhodes in line with UK government advice, Michael Gove has said. The levelling up secretary added that he was planning to holiday on another Greek island himself next week. Ben Quinn has the story here.

Good morning. Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and talking, among other things, about the government’s approach to net zero policies. He was quite specific on a couple of points, but to say that he cleared things up would be going too far. Over the last few days, in government pronouncements on this topic, there has been more ambiguity than in a modernist poem.

All of this has been quite good for those of us paid to report what the government is saying and explain what it means. But for producers trying to plan on the basis of what government rules will be for cars and boilers etc over the next decade, the uncertainty has been less welcome.

To recap: a significant number of Tory MPs, and rightwing papers, have always opposed net zero measures that will impose costs on consumers and on Friday their hand was strengthened after the Conservatives unexpectedly won the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, almost certainly because of a backlash about the extension of Ulez. That led to media reports on Saturday saying the government was rethinking its support for green measures, and a day later the Sunday Telegraph splashed on an interview with Gove headlined: “Gove: net zero can’t become a crusade.” On Monday, when Rishi Sunak was asked in an interview if he was still committed to stopping the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, he gave a reply best summarised by Politico, which said he sounded “a bit U-turnish on some of his net zero plans”. At the lobby briefing an hour or so later the PM’s spokesperson said the government was, in fact, committed to the petrol/diesel new car ban from 2030. But separate briefing implied this was one of several measures that could be subject to review.

This morning Gove said that 2030 was “immovable” as the date when the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would take effect. But he did say that government proposals for gas boilers to be banned from newly built homes from 2025, with all gas boiler installation phased out from 2035, could be reviewed. I will post more from his interviews shortly.

Did that help? On gas boilers, probably. But on petrol and diesel cars? Gove has form for confidently asserting things on the Today programme that turn out not to be the case – during Brexit he insisted a key vote would definitely go ahead on hours before it was shelved – and so you might think twice before making a car factory investment on the basis of a Gove comment in a radio interview.

Gove was speaking as a group of MPs released an open letter to the prime minister urging him to avoid “mixed signals” on the UK’s commitment to climate action. In their letter, the all-party parliamentary group on climate said:

The Climate Change Committee’s recent 2023 progress report to parliament is unequivocal that mixed signals on the UK’s commitment to serious climate action is undermining this work, damaging our reputation, and risks us permanently surrendering our status as a world leader on climate action.

Now is a crucial moment for you to demonstrate to the world that the UK is not demoting itself to become a passive observer in international action on climate change, that we remain a trusted partner and committed to delivering on our promises.

Fiona Harvey has more on the letter here.

There is not much in the diary for today, but here are two items that may produce news.

9.30am: The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities publishes homelessness statistics.

10am: Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, gives evidence to the infected blood inquiry.

Also, Lee Rowley, the local government minister, is hosting a roundtable meeting in Downing Street on plans announced overnight to speed up planning decisions for large infrastructure projects.

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