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Labour to copy Joe Biden’s multi-billion dollar green plan

Ed Miliband - Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Ed Miliband - Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Labour has pledged to copy Joe Biden’s green plan through a new policy package that will involve huge public spending.

Ed Miliband, the shadow net zero secretary, sought to defend the US president’s controversial Inflation Reduction Act as he prepared to unveil Labour’s British version of the package.

The Act has granted $370 billion in tax credits and subsidies to renewable energy and clean technology, but also sets a minimum corporation tax rate and raises marginal income tax for higher earners and businesses in the long term.

In a speech to the Green Alliance on Wednesday, Mr Miliband will accuse government ministers who have cast doubt over the American agenda of “sore loser syndrome”.

He will say: “As the US and Europe speed off into the distance in the global race for green industry, we are sitting back in the changing rooms moaning about the rules.

“We need to stop moaning about the Inflation Reduction Act and start matching its ambition. Of course we must remain an open economy, welcoming foreign investment and goods. Not everything in the green economy could or should be produced here.

“But we are not neutral about where things are built. Joe Biden wants the future made in America. We want the future made in Britain.”

Commitment to decarbonising by 2030

Mr Miliband will also accuse those who think Britain cannot compete with China or the United States of “defeatism” and say net zero represents “the biggest transformation of the global economy in 300 years”.

Labour has already committed to investing £224 billion in climate measures over eight years if elected, with “multi-billion investment” in green industries a central point of Mr Miliband’s speech.

Labour did not specify whether any cash further to that already announced would be spent on the Green Prosperity Plan, which aims to end the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels by 2030.

The party will also redouble its commitment to decarbonising by 2030 – five years ahead of the Government’s current target – as well as establishing GB Energy, a new publicly-owned energy company, and creating a national wealth fund to invest in partnership with private firms.

Grant Shapps, the Net Zero Secretary, warned that the Labour move could herald a “dangerous” slide into protectionism, while Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, used a keynote speech last month to argue that the US was “onshoring in a way that could actually create problems with the supply chain for everybody else”.