UK cuts climate budgets as Burnham heads to Cop31 and EV targets face review

Britain turns down the green dial

Prime Minister Andy Burnham travelled to Turkey for the Cop31 summit as green issues appear to be losing ground in Britain. Cost of living worries have pushed environmental questions down the agenda for voters and for many politicians. While Burnham is abroad, his deputy, first secretary Louise Haigh, will chair a Downing Street meeting on targets for electric vehicle sales. Burnham would probably have stayed out of that meeting in any case, because his wife, Marie-France van Heel, advises an electric car charging company. Government insiders describe a clear shift away from Ed Miliband's approach, with affordability now placed ahead of rapid progress toward net zero.

Electric car targets under review

Under current rules, 80% of new car sales and 70% of new van sales must be electric by 2030, with petrol and diesel sales phased out completely by 2035. Haigh is reportedly preparing to slash the 2030 target, a move that would ease pressure on the car industry left in the English Midlands and North. Labour hopes to win back voters in those areas from Nigel Farage's Reform UK. The planned electric car change follows only weeks after the government approved the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea, which environmentalists criticised.

Budget cuts and North Sea decisions

Chancellor John Healey trimmed energy department spending by roughly £3 billion (€3.6 billion) in the budget delivered in October 2026, redirecting the money toward defence. As a result, public funding for heat pump, boiler upgrade and home solar panel subsidies is being pulled back. Carbon capture projects also lost £700 million in funding. A decision on the Rosebank oilfield is still pending, even though an effective government ban on new drilling licences currently applies. If the government approves Rosebank, Labour backbenchers who already complain of backsliding on green policy could grow louder. In Scotland, First Minister John Swinney has steered the Scottish National Party away from its earlier support for the North Sea drilling ban.

Energy department spending cut (about)3,000

Carbon capture funding cut700

Energy department spending cut (about)

3000 £ million

Carbon capture funding cut

700 £ million

Data from the article text

The United States skips COP31

Leaders and ministers from 197 nations are set to be represented at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, the summit that began on 11 November. The United States is not among them. For the second year in a row, President Trump has refused to send an American delegation to the UN climate talks. Trump pulled the US out of the 2015 Paris accord and stopped sending delegations to the annual negotiations. Washington has also stopped trying to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, reduced backing for climate science and frozen aid for poorer nations facing climate impacts. Yaw Bediako Osafo, a negotiator from Ghana who is leading African nations in the talks, described the shift.

“Look, whenever the mic was on, and it was the turn of the U.S. to speak, we all listened.”

Democrats dominated the midterm elections in the United States, but the Congress they will control has limited power to enact climate policy while Trump remains in office. Democrats say they plan to rein in an administration that has promoted fossil fuels and attacked the clean energy industry. A Bloomberg column says dozens of leaders, Burnham among them, will emit substantial carbon on the flight to Turkey, while Akshat Rathi of Bloomberg Green says electrification is something everyone at COP31 can agree on.