𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has sparked fury after critics accused her of playing down concerns about the cost of net zero on working families. The Peckham MP is seen as a close ally of Prime Minister Andy Burnham and broke cover after a recent row where she appeared to refuse to back her own Government’s immigration policies.

Now she has said that she is “really concerned” and “quite sad” about the approach of other political parties toward the staggering cost of going green. Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, accused Ms Fahnbulleh of having an “obsession” with the topic, which she has backed for years. He told the Daily Express: “It is utterly staggering that this Government remains stubbornly clinging to its ideological net zero obsession while hard-pressed British families and businesses pay the price.

“It is time to scrap these reckless net zero fantasies, unleash our own abundant energy resources, such as the Rosebank oilfield, and finally put British households first.

“Under a Reform UK government, I will cut energy bills by £250 per year within the first 100 days of a Reform government, or I will resign.”

Ms Fahnbulleh recently signed off on the Jackdaw field, but refused to clear Rosebank. Her predecessor, Ed Miliband, once said doing so would be an act of “climate vandalism”.

Speaking at an event in Westminster, she said she was “really concerned” about the approach of Reform UK and the Conservatives to net zero, adding: “In fact I’m quite sad about it.”

A furious Reform UK source accused her of “playing down” the cost of net zero on British families.

Before she was elected as an MP, Ms Fahnbulleh worked for the Left-wing New Economics Foundation, where she called for 5% of GDP to be spent on net zero.

Yet she told reporters: “I think it’s a sad place where Reform have got to, but I am even sadder about the Tories because they know better, and they’ve had a long tradition […] of working cross-party on climate action.”

The 47-year-old Burnhamite said it had been “really painful and tragic to watch that consensus burn, at the time when we have seen the impact of climate change this summer”.

She added: “The way that I see it is that we have to be better, and that is my job of not talking about this sort of highly ideological way.”

In 2021, the now-minister again supported eye-watering expenditure on the move to net zero, writing online that the Government needed “to spend £30billion a year”.

Other demands include calling on the UK to contribute to a £100billion climate finance fund for the so-called “Global South”.