Government Drops Green Targets to Back British Jobs
The government is stripping back the rules on public-sector contracts so that they prioritise creating British jobs and skills over meeting environmental targets, ministers announced. The Deputy Prime Minister, Louise Haigh, in charge while Andy Burnham is on holiday, said public money should support work “in every postcode”. The shift marks an early flexing of the government’s growth agenda.
The change reworks the criteria by which billions of pounds of state contracts are awarded, tilting them towards employment and training rather than the green and social conditions attached in recent years. Ministers cast it as backing British industry and communities; critics on the environmental wing of the party are likely to see a retreat from climate commitments, coming days after warmer words on North Sea oil. That the announcement came from Ms Haigh, standing in for the absent Prime Minister, gave it added prominence. Watch how businesses respond and whether green campaigners push back.