This budget is just three weeks after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its ‘catastrophic’ report on the impact of climate breakdown, impacts that will affect the life chances of us all.
The budget provides £30 billion for roads, fuel duty remains frozen, £500 million more is poured into the Brexit black hole, and there is no funding for actions to reduce the impact of climate change. Yet the IPCC report gives us just 12 years in which to limit climate breakdown. Stroud District Green Party believes the failure to use the budget to set the UK on a course to a Zero Carbon Economy will prove catastrophic.
Cllr Martin Whiteside (Green Group Leader, Stroud District Council) has responded with sheer fury to Philip Hammond’s last budget before Brexit. He said “this budget totally ignores the threat of climate change as laid out in the IPCC report issued on the 8th Oct and so is failing to protect our families, defend our countryside and secure our future”
He continued “the Government’s direction of travel is actively harming the people we love: their actions make our bleak future even darker, and it does little to help those struggling to manage day to day”.