conservative. you're also pretty much a lifelong campaigner for the environment. right now, does it feel like those two commitments are incompatible? oh, no. they're just temporarily in abeyance because the government is so fixated on trying to do something to rescue the next election, that they're trying to put a difference between their reaching net zero in a way which doesn't hurt people, and blaming the opposition for wanting to reach net zero in a way which does hurt people. i think it's a pretty barmy way of dealing with it. but in the end, of course, it's also damaging, notjust to the earth, but the fact is, it's very bad for the cost of living, because the sort of things that mr sunak wants to do will hold up reducing energy prices, getting things to people in a cheaper way. but rishi sunak�*s entire logic is that what he is doing by adapting the way in which the uk is committing itself to the net zero target of 2050, what he's doing is protecting the interests of, as he puts it, working families. it is not right, says the pm, that working families should face significant costs as part of this transition to net zero. do you agree with that proposition or not? of course it's right. but what he's doing is the opposite. the fact is that this is the first year for many years that we haven't had more offshore wind. if you have offshore wind, that lowers the cost of electricity, because the truth is renewable energy is cheaper than any other energy. but he's managed to muck that up in a way which, for the first time, for years, and it's something the tories invented. offshore wind is there because of what a conservative government did. so i'm afraid he has been either misled, or has misled himself, and he's doing things which are damaging to people of the poorest kind. yeah. now you have spent years looking at the government's commitment to going green and to meeting its targets, because you chaired that independent committee on climate change. within that, you said — and you made it quite clear that you were very worried that the government's policies were "worryingly" falling short of reaching net zero. so when you look at his latest pledges, particularly what he calls his end to the war on motorists, car drivers, do you think he's making things worse? yes, i do. we are working, as i understand it, i'm no longer the chairman, but they are working on doing the actual figures. but if it were true before he'd done that, that we were worried that he wasn't going to reach net zero, and indeed notjust us, everyone who has done that, that work. chris skidmore, the conservative minister who was asked to look at it independently, came to the same conclusion. well, if that were the case before he'd done that, we find it very difficult to believe when he says we will still reach net zero, when the programme to do it is simply not there. but the messaging is important here, and let's not forget you're a politician of long standing. you know what it takes to win elections, to win people's hearts and minds. what his message seems to be is, yes, i'm still committed to all this green stuff, but what i'm really committed to are the interests of ordinary people, of which, of course, car drivers is a very significant chunk. he says that by delaying the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars, he's helping ordinary folks who still have elderly vehicles, so he wants to help them. he's saying that by ending all of these schemes to reduce car speeds in urban areas, he's actually helping the efficiency of people in their daily lives. and he goes even further. he says that he doesn't want to see pollution charges in urban areas, because he doesn't like that either. you know, these are things which maybe don't make much difference to net zero, 2050, but they make people feel better. they're not being lectured to when it comes to green transition. yeah, but it'sjust not true, you see. no wonder the whole car industry told him he'd got it wrong. there's no change. well, to be fair, they didn't. some manufacturers said this is a mistake because it removes certainty. others said, you know, we can live with this. well, the others that did tended to be the ones who hadn't actually caught up with it. the ones who did do it were the ones who've been doing what they ought to do, because they trusted the government. so let me just say first. when the government fixes a target, it has to be very careful not to change it, because otherwise industry does not accept future targets. secondly, all the things he said about people being able to keep their old cars after 2035, when he put it forward, were all true about 2030. he also promised not to do things which nobody was ever going to do. and that's why you don't believe it. i mean, why should you believe somebody who says we're not going to have a seven bin system? nobody ever was going to have it. we're not going to have taxes on meat. nobody ever suggested it. we're not going to have all kinds of things that nobody suggested, and therefore... well, hang on a second. it is interesting because, you know, various environmental campaigners, indeed a few tory mps who were very keen on green priorities, they've said that these were straw men that rishi sunak invented to knock down to make it seems like, you know, he's defending the interests of the working man and woman. but actually, the conservatives have also cited work done by your climate change committee, saying that if you want evidence that there were talks and plans about draconian new green measures, just look at deben�*s committee, because your climate change committee report 2023 did actually recommend what you called low—cost actions to encourage a 20% shift away from meat by 2030. you were using that... well, that's not taxing. we specifically excluded taxes, and i am angry that anyone should pretend that merely to say that we would be better off eating less meat, but better meat, somehow or other that's extreme, because that's precisely what every health adviser gives. but they wanted to go much further. we had a very simple target. and, you know, people are going to reach that because they're making those decisions themselves. we never suggested the government should tax meat. so to suggest that we ever did so, when it's specifically not there... yeah, but that's exactly what they have done, and it's notjust on the meat issue. sunak also made a point of mentioning that he would ensure that there were never any laws telling you how many people had to be in your car... i've never heard of anybody suggesting this. then tories pointed to your climate change committee and the work you did, recommending "that there "is scope for average car occupancy to increase." but that's not a question of forcing people to do anything. that's — look, if you say, just simply, that many people would and could, if they were able to, give people lifts. honestly, to say i'm going to force them... the real reason is this. rishi sunak is claiming that he's not going to do things that nobody suggested he should do. and it is a lie to suggest that anyone said we should have a law to make people use cars more often, and i object to being lied about. so to use your word, why do you believe that the prime minister of the party you have been in for 60—odd years, why is he lying? it is not he who was lying, it was the conservative party in its — he never said those things about the climate change committee. he has been on the airwaves defending all of this stuff over the last... this is hardtalk but i want to, i wantjust to tell you exactly what happened. he didn't say that. the conservative party said, if you want the evidence, look at what the climate change committee have said. it said that, that is a lie and it shouldn't have said it. and the trouble is this. this is a party which is in desperation to win an election. i think that you shouldn't try to do that by misleading people, and i'm not prepared to have misleading comments made. the truth of the matter is that what mr sunak has said that he wouldn't do, nobody has suggested should be done. some of the things that he's decided to do were being done and would be better to have left there. because what mr sunak will discover is that if he were to win the next election, nobody will believe him when he says, this is what we're doing. injuly, he said, the 2030 date for motor cars turning to evs was immovable, immovable. in september, he moved it. how do you believe people who act like that? but isn't there again, referring to politics, isn't there something important that the conservative party has decided? it has decided that there is mileage in a deeply, my word not theirs, populist approach to this subject of how to make the green transition. listen to the words recently of energy secretary clare coutinho, who makes very explicit this argument that seems to be abroad now, that environmentalists at, you know, the committed end of the scale are waging some sort of war on ordinary working people. "far too many activists", she says, "have turned net zero into religion. "they want to force people to behave "in a certain way or face punitive taxes." now, she warned of the dangers of net zero being seen as something done to people by, and i'm looking at you, a privileged, condescending elite. well, you may look at me, but i'm the last person. after all, i have fought for what is one—nation conservatism — caring for the poorest and the least well—off all my life. and i'm not going to be called an elitist in that sense. i don't come from that sort of background, and i'm certainly not going to be told that by the new minister. the fact of the matter is, you can always make politics about pretending that your enemies are extreme. i remember a tory party campaign which was unacceptable, where they had mr blair looking like the devil. that was the technique to try to make him look extreme. the point about politics should be that we find ways of doing what has to be done to protect the world from absolute disaster in a way which takes everyone with us. anybody who reads the climate change committee's reports will say, we are constantly talking about a just transition, helping the poorest, making sure that those who can bear the weight of this pay for it and those who can't, don't. every single document is of that kind. and the idea that we are extreme... i've spent my whole time making sure that the extremist comments ofjust stop oil and the green party are on one side and those on the other side who pretend that climate change isn't important enough to fight. one more specific point on where the government is going and what it's doing, and that is the decision just the other day to green light, to give authorisation, it admittedly wasn't coming direct from the government, but a body connected to the government, but authorising the production of up to 300 billion barrels of oil, we believe, over the next few years from the rosebank field off the coast of scotland. your view of what that says about this government's commitment to net zero? well, my view is very clear. we believed that the immediate reaction to putin's illegal invasion of the ukraine was that it was acceptable to take out of the north sea the gas which we needed immediately. but we said very clearly that you can't ask the rest of the world not to exploit and explore new oil if you start doing it in a way which will lead you to be producing oil in the 2030s and beyond, oil which will be produced in a world which by then will be awash with oil. except you've just explained the context, the instability in the energy markets created by the war in ukraine, which is the very raison d'etre given by the sunak government for giving the green light to this production of new oil. but you've just... they say it will secure britain its own native source of new oil and gas. it will help the average british working family with their energy bills at a time of severe energy inflation. this, according to the government, is in the interests of the british people. but it isn't. first of all, it won't be any cheaper. the gas and the oil will be the same price as the world price. so it's not going to make it cheaper. it's not in that sense our oiland our... unless they're thinking of nationalising it, it won't be any cheaper. secondly, you misquoted me. you misquoted me. i talked about gas. we're talking here about the extension of the oil fields. yeah, well, its oil and gas, to be fair. no, it is... yeah, but with respect, there is a fundamental difference between the immediate need to deal with mr putin, and this long—term stuff, which actually is also financial nonsense, because by the time we are producing it, we'll be competing with people throughout the world and we could quite easily have bought it anywhere we liked. we've been through a whole raft of policies where you have not held back your, your passion and your, let's face it, anger with the government, from the same party as yourself, is very evident. now, quite recently on this programme we spoke to zac goldsmith, again, a committed environmentalist. he's been in government, he advised borisjohnson, he was a minister in the foreign office under rishi sunak, and he resigned just a short time ago, saying that he no longer believed in the government's commitment to green policies and to the net zero goal, and he was particularly unhappy with the failure of the government to stump up the promised cash to help developing countries with their mitigation and adaptation efforts. i asked zac goldsmith if he could contemplate supporting the labour party, given where his own party was, and he said this to me, he said, if he believed that labour had a real commitment, then he said, "i would be very tempted to throw my "weight behind that party and support "them in any way i could." are you in the same place? i'm a conservative. i've been a conservative since ijoined the tory party at 17. i think the conservative way of looking at the economy and producing the wealth that we need to look after the poorest is the way forward. i am a conservative. i think this government is significantly less conservative than i am. i'm going to go on fighting for the conservative party i joined, which was a conservative party which believed in one nation, which was determined to fight off... we are the first people... but with respect, lord deben... no, i'm going to... with great respect... ..aren�*t there certain principles and values that go beyond party politics? well, yes, exactly. so the party... when you are faced with a choice between a party that you've described going, in...in yourvision, entirely in the wrong direction right now. and if the labour party is saying very different things about its commitment to these green issues, isn't it incumbent upon you, as a man of principle, to make clear that right now, your support is going to have to shift? the party which went for net zero, the party which actually started the climate change committee and the climate change act was the conservative party. that's the past. this is...this is the party which i support. i shall go on fighting for that party because i happen to believe that it's the only party that will deliver. the fact that we have a temporary period in which we have a prime minister that has not understood that, it's not up for me to leave him. it's for me to get this party back to where it ought to be. and i'm going to go on doing it, and i'm not going to be driven out of the tory party because there is a temporary period while it isn't itself. so to sum up, you cannot support the current leadership of your party? the current leadership of my party is doing the wrong thing on the one thing which will change life for my children and my grandchildren. the one thing we haven't talked about is just how devastating climate change is, how dreadful the future will be, how awful it has been withjust i.i% rise in... the 1.1 degree rise in that heat. and we are now aiming at three. if you think about three degrees�* increase, what that means for your children and my children, if i didn't fight for that, my goodness, i wouldn't. . . 0ughtn�*t to be here. isn't the problem that public opinion, notjust in the united kingdom, but evidence suggests in europe, too, is very mixed, when it comes to feelings on climate change? the polls suggest, in the uk, more than two thirds of people, many more than two thirds of people say, yeah, i'm worried or very worried about climate change. but when it comes to whether they are actually prepared to bear costs and see their lives in some ways hurt by action to address climate change, then the polling changes very quickly. most recent one, almost half of people say they would oppose climate change policies if they have any negative impact on their personalfinances. that's a problem, isn't it, for people like you? yeah, but this is true about anything in politics. if we don't understand that, people are always in general in favour of good things, but not if it affects them. so what you've got to do... and that's notjust about money and finance, it's also, to use the old phrase, nimby, it's about people feeling, oh, if it's... ..if i'm going to get an electricity substation for renewables in my village, i don't want it. if i'm going to get turbines spoiling my nice view out of my bedroom window, i don't want it. and you in suffolk sometimes have, if i may say so, have taken positions defending the integrity, the purity of the landscape in your countryside constituency, which in the past have run counter to your strategic vision of what the country needs. well, there are lots of people who say that they want more housing and we need a lot more housing. but it's a perfectly reasonable argument as to where you put the housing. similarly, i'm totally... so just not in your back yard? no, no, idon�*t agree with that. ifought for... i fought in my constituency for sizewell b, i spent a lot of time getting a nuclear power station... that's the nuclear power plant. that was a nuclear power plant. but you now oppose, it seems, the expansion to sizewell c. no, what i'm in favour of is, instead of the old—fashioned sizewell c, in that place, modern... ..i want a nuclear power station there. but i happen to know something about nuclear power. and i happen to believe that small nuclear power stations, and even if you put three or four together, are better modern technology. you...we�*ve got to have a sane and sensible discussion about this. so what i'm... ..all i'm saying is we have to move to net zero by doing things which enable people to come along with us. you don't do that by inventing stories about seven bins and about forcing people to share cars. thing is... that doesn't help any sane, sensible discussion. as i alluded to, it's not just about britain. you know, in germany, there's been a big political clash over this phasing out of petrol and diesel cars. in the netherlands, farmers have won big wins at the polls by arguing against cutting nitrogen pollution. in poland, they're actually suing the eu over some of the green policies which are going to hit the polish economy hard. don't you recognise that this isn't just about the uk? there is something of a green backlash in democracies across the world. well, don't you realisejust how much is happening in the opposite direction at the same time? and don't you realise that this is politics? if you look at things happening the opposite time, we now have america actually on board, doing the things it ought to do. china has just announced a very large expansion in offshore wind and on solar. you see the european union, as a whole, doing more than it's ever done before. so at the same time you're having those changes, and if you emphasise the things that are against it, of course you're only saying that any big change that you have to do is going to have a backlash, and you have to work with people to get it right. just a final, quick thought. you've always fought for the environment from the middle ground, from inside the conservative party. you've always said, and this is a quote from you, "i always like people doing things in a way which doesn't "turn other people off." consensual politics. yeah. as a way to get to a greener world. i would put it to you that right now that hasn't worked. is it time for you to reconsider whether that consensual approach needs to be replaced by something much more confrontational? there is no way forward that isn't consensual, because in the end, in a democracy, you have to bring people with you. what i object to about this government's measures is that it is actually inventing arguments in order to make a difference between it and the opposition. it should be seeking to have agreement with the opposition to do, in a consensual way, what desperately needs to be done, if my children, and my grandchildren, and your grandchildren, and your children are actually going to live in a world which has anything like the sort of wonder of the world in which we live. lord deben, ithank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you. hello, there. it was a rather mixed picture across the uk on thursday, with a very slow—moving weather front giving outbreaks of rain, particularly towards the north and the west, such as here in argyll and bute, but further south, a lot more sunshine around, albeit quite hazy at times. now, as we head through the next few days, there is more rain to come in the forecast. it's mostly for scotland, particularly western areas of scotland, but further south, largely dry, and it will also be turning warmer. now for the rest of the night, still outbreaks of rain across the central swathe of the country. to the north and the south of that front, lots of clear skies, and its very mild start to the day tomorrow across the board, but particularly across scotland, where temperatures dipped a little bit below freezing last night. a lot milder into friday morning, and on friday, you can see from the pressure chart, high pressure builds into the south, so it will be dry here, and our weatherfront pushes ever so slowly northward. so it's a wet start to the day for northwest england, for northern ireland, but it should dry out here a bit later on, the rain pushing into the central belt. it is a sunny start to the day across aberdeenshire, windy for caithness and sutherland, also blustery for the northern isles. lots of sunshine towards the south of the front. it will be quite hazy, at times, again, but temperatures starting to rise on friday, up to 22 or 23 degrees celsius in the south of england, the high teens, potentially, for aberdeenshire. and then on friday night into saturday, that rain still driving into western scotland, very heavy over the western hills, and it will be across the whole of scotland, i think, as we head through into saturday morning. further south, a lot of sunshine throughout the day on sunday. temperatures in northern ireland could get as high as 19 or 20 degrees. we're looking at the low 20s for northern england, also for much of wales, maybe 25 or 26 celsius in the southeast of england and east anglia. and it's more or less the same on sunday. temperatures a little bit lower and our weather front gradually pushes further northwards across scotland, too, where, of course, it's going to be cooler. big contrast in temperatures here. again, we're looking at the low 20s for much of england and wales, a bit more cloud too, across northern ireland. these are the daytime averages for this point in october. so you can see we're above average, across the board, 12 degrees in the north, 16 degrees celsius in the south. so even scotland is mild for this point in october. the unseasonable heat continues across england and wales, as we head into the start of next week. live from london. this is bbc news. an emphatic win for labour in the rutherglen and hamilton west by—election. leader keir starmer describes it as a "seismic result" for scotland. international condemnation after a russian air strike kills at least 51 in northeastern ukraine, including an eight—year—old boy. president biden approves a new stretch of border wall in southern texas and says the us will resume direct flights to venezuela for migrants who enter the country illegally. hello. i'm lukwesa burak. let's start in scotland, and the opposition labour party has won the rutherglen and hamilton west by—election in south lanarkshire in what's been seen as a key test of the party's ability to regain seats there. michael shanks secured 17,845 votes, more than double the number cast for the snp, which came second. the poll was triggered by the removal of the former snp mp margaret ferrier after she broke covid rules in 2020. here's the declaration of the result. michael shanks, scottish labour party, 17,845... michael shanks, scottish labour party.17.845---_

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