Welcome to a special edition of a Spectator podcast. The UK government is a target to hit net

zero carbon emissions by 2050, one of the most ambitious targets of any major economy. And so

far, at least, the government does seem to be quite serious about it. But does this mean

effectively getting rid of debilitating heavy industry, or is there a third way? I'm Fraser Nelson,

and I'm joined by Nadim Zahue, the business minister, by Gareth Stace, the head of UK Steel,

and by Magnus Hall, Chief Executive Vattenfall, Swedish Energy Group,

we're just kindly sponsoring this podcast.

Now, Nadim, your business minister, a 2050 net zero target surely is fundamentally anti-business, because this is creating nothing but extra costs on business,

which will mean extra prices for consumers, to hit the target

which hardly anybody else in the G20 is committed to hit.

Fraser, thank you very much. I would say that I would fundamentally disagree. I've been

business and industry minister now since the summer. And I actually think from the evidence that I've seen, both in terms of

historic. So if you look back between 1990 and 2017, the UK reduced emissions by 40%, while still

growing the economy by more than two-thirds. I think some analysts have said it's the best performance

in the G7 on a sort of per person, per capita basis. And I think that actually not only is this

good for the environment, it's actually good business because if we become world leaders,

which we're beginning to be recognized as the business and industry

minister, I was invited to China, to the World Manufacturing Convention as the UK was country of

honour. And actually, many of the meetings I had there were meetings where people asking us about

how we're going to get to the route to net zero by 2050.

Now, this is not about us going for closures of businesses.

It's about actually working with business to hit that tough climate change target.

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