Government’s Net Zero U-Turn Faces Major Legal Challenge

British environmentalist Chris Packham arrives at the High Court, in central London, on May 2, 2023. Jonathan Brady/PA Wire

The UK government faces a High Court legal challenge over its decision to change and roll back on some of its net zero timetable commitments.

Naturalist, BBC TV presenter and campaigner Chris Packham, represented by environment lawyers at the law firm Leigh Day, has applied for a judicial review of the government’s decision to change the net zero timetable to phase out motor vehicles and gas boilers.

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said it rejects Mr. Packham’s claims and will “robustly” defend the challenge.

In September, the prime minister said the sale of new fossil fuel cars will not be phased out in 2030 but in 2035 and that only 80 percent of gas boilers will need to be phased out by that date instead of 100 percent.

At the time, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that “it cannot be right for Westminster to impose such significant costs on working people, especially those who are already struggling to make ends meet and to interfere so much in people’s way of life without a properly informed national debate.”

Governed by Statute

In September, Mr. Packham wrote to the prime minister, the Energy Secretary and the Transport Secretary to challenge the policy U-turn, saying the prime minister does not have the legal right to change “at will the timeline to help the UK meet net zero because the actioning of policies in the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan is governed by statute.”

The Climate Change Act 2008 requires the government to set a legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Mr. Packham, who is well-known for presenting BBC nature programmes, said he believed the prime minister was “acting illegally” in changing the policy.

He added that it contravened the UK’s commitments under the Climate Change Act, which says the government must be clear on how it will meet its carbon budget plans.

He said the decision had been made without any public consultation, and without informing parliament or the Climate Change Committee—the government’s carbon budget advisors.

‘Intrinsically Important’

On Friday, Leigh Day wrote that in “the absence of a satisfactory response to his pre-action protocol letter, Mr. Packham has filed his legal claim at the High Court.”

He said the policies on vehicles and boilers “were abandoned without any public consultation, without informing the Climate Change Committee and without informing Parliament and without providing any reasons for the delays to the policies.”

Mr. Packham argued that the emissions reductions from the vehicle and gas boiler policies were “intrinsically important to the UK’s ability to reach somewhere near its net zero commitments.”

He said, “They should not have been changed without proper process and consultation. I believe that action was unlawful.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We strongly reject these claims and will be robustly defending this challenge.

“We have over-delivered on every carbon budget to date and these changes keep us on track to meet our legal net zero commitments. We routinely publish future emissions projections across all sectors and will continue to do so.

“Recent independent Climate Change Committee analysis shows our more pragmatic approach has no material difference on our progress to cut emissions.

“Households will now have more time to make the transition, saving some families thousands of pounds at a time when the cost of living is high.”

Climate Change Act

Due to the nature of the Climate Change Act, Mr. Sunak will likely face challenges to any u-turns on net zero policy he makes, according to critics

In Sept, former cabinet minister in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Sir John Major, Lord Peter Lilley told The Epoch Times, that Climate Change Act straps the government in fairly tightly it’s got if a court case is brought against it.”

Mr. Lilley was among just five Parliamentarians to vote against the Climate Change Act in the Commons in 2008.

He said Mr. Sunak had opened up the whole issue as it’s now “legitimate to look at it from a cost-benefit point of view.”

“Which is the original reason I voted against the Climate Change Act in the first place was because the cost-benefit document produced by the government showed that potential costs were twice the maximum benefit,” he said

“It was all virtue signalling. It was all ‘we must do this to save the planet. If we don’t do this, we go extinct’ sort of nonsense,” he added.

PA Media contributed to this report.