Does Rishi Sunak care about climate change?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rishi Sunak and now former government minister Lord Zac Goldsmith have a war of words over why Goldsmith resigned this morning. Sunak says its because of the latest Privileges Committee report. Goldsmith says it's because Sunak and his government are not serious about climate change.
It comes in a week where it's been announced that this June has been the hottest ever, and the head of the Climate Change Committee, Lord Deben, questions how serious the Conservative government are about sticking to net zero policies. Does Rishi Sunak not care about climate change? We speak to Lord Deben himself, Ed Conway, Economics Editor at Sky News, and Lara Spirit of The Times.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.1 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:11.7 | Quickly on Lord Goldsmith, he was asked to apologise for his comments about the privileges committee |
| 0:17.9 | because I felt that those were incompatible with his position and as a |
| 0:21.5 | minister. He's obviously chosen to take a different course. I accept that. I'm proud of the record |
| 0:27.3 | of this government and indeed of Zach in government making sure that we tackle climate change and |
| 0:33.3 | protect our natural environment. I think the UK has played a leadership role globally and we will |
| 0:37.3 | continue to do so as you will see. That was the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, reacting to yet another |
| 0:44.3 | resignation of a Boris Johnson ally from his government. The Foreign Office Minister, Lord, |
| 0:49.6 | Lord, Zach Goldsmith, said he resigned because of the lack of commitment from Sunak and his |
| 0:55.7 | administration to what he described as the most pressing issue of our age, climate change and |
| 1:01.0 | environmentalism. |
| 1:02.1 | Sunac disputes that that was the real reason, and we'll get into a bit of that. |
| 1:05.4 | But today isn't about Westminster gossip and the endless, he said this and he said that, |
| 1:12.4 | it's about that central question that Goldsmith raises. This week alone, we've learned we've had the hottest June |
| 1:17.5 | ever in the UK. Parts of the world, Texas, northern China, beyond have been recording record |
| 1:22.8 | temperatures. And the climate change committee said that Britain has lost its place as a world leader on the issue. |
| 1:30.1 | So, is Goldsmith right? Does Rishi Sunak and his government care about climate change? And if not, why on earth not? |
| 1:38.9 | It's Lewis here. Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:44.5 | The news agents. So you might not believe this, but Welcome to The Newsagents. The Newsagents. |
| 1:46.6 | So you might not believe this, but we were always actually planning to do today's episode about Sunak and climate change and how hard it's going to be to get to net zero. |
| 1:56.2 | And sometimes the news gods just sort of smile on you. |
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