This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

Labour has softened its pledge to find a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030 after unions pushed for a target of significant progress rather than a firm commitment.

The party’s autumn conference had passed a motion setting 2030 as the target for net zero emissions, but trade unions raised concerns about the risk to jobs and industry.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, insisted on Monday that the party would remain on the “pathway” towards net zero emissions by 2030, in line with the conference motion.

However, sources present at Saturday’s clause V meeting finalising the party’s manifesto said the GMB trade union and some other union representatives had pushed for softer wording, aiming for progress rather than completion.

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One source said the aim in the manifesto would be for a “significant majority” of carbon emissions to be eradicated by 2030.

Labour for a Green New Deal, which brought the motion, said it was happy with Long-Bailey’s pledge of a pathway towards net zero by 2030 and confident that the leadership was supportive of strong action on the climate crisis.

The GMB had pushed back firmly against a firm target of 2030, fearing it could lead to mass job losses.

Tim Roache, GMB’s general secretary, had previously warned: “The proposal to do it by 2030 threatens whole communities, threatens jobs, and frankly GMB members in communities right up and down the UK have heard it all before.

“This will mean within a decade people’s petrol cars being confiscated. This will mean families can only take one flight every five years. Net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is utterly unachievable.”

Environmental campaigners had been alarmed on Monday by Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade, energy and climate change secretary, saying on the BBC that Labour’s target was still net zero “well before 2050”.

But they were mollified by Long-Bailey’s tweets saying: “Ours will be the most radical manifesto ever written, especially on climate.

“We are a constitutional democratic party with its roots in the labour movement. Energy workers are understandably fearful and distrusting about the transition because they have been abandoned through past industrial transitions.

“We will only succeed by working with those workers and communities to develop a credible industrial strategy that ensures they will not be left behind by the transition.

“Our manifesto will set out a pathway towards net zero by 2030. I look forward to setting out these plans in more detail over this campaign.”

A spokesman for Labour for a Green New Deal said it was “great to see Rebecca Long-Bailey restate Labour’s commitment to forging a pathway to net zero 2030”.

He added: “From housing to electricity to transport, Labour has laid out radical plans to decarbonise our economy by 2030 and transform it for the many.”

Labour’s green industrial revolution agenda remains one of the most ambitious climate policy platforms of any mainstream party in Europe.

To get close to net zero by 2030 will require a huge transformation of the economy and energy supply systems – although its advocates say it would also boost the economy by hundreds of billions of pounds a year.

The 2030 pledge is just one of many areas where party conference motions are likely to be softened for the election manifesto. An ambition to “maintain and expand free movement” will translate into a compromise immigration policy, that acknowledges the rules could change if Brexit goes ahead. And the radical conference motion suggesting assets of private schools could be seized is more likely to take the form of saying tax loopholes should be closed for them.

Teacher and campaigner Holly Rigby, who runs the Labour Against Private Schools group which led the motion, said they had met with McDonnell just two weeks ago and asked for their private school reforms to be included in the party’s manifesto.

She said: “We had a really positive meeting in the lead up to clause V. We were really happy with how the meeting went and we felt we were listened to and I feel reassured personally that what happened at conference will be turned into action.

“We have always said that the most important thing is that private schools and inequality is wrong and we want the Labour party to take some action on this, and that it goes further than in 2017.”

The motion passed at conference was to include in the manifesto a commitment to integrate all private schools into the state sector by withdrawing charitable status and all other public subsidies and tax privileges, including business rate exemption.

It also called for the endowments, investments and properties held by private schools to be redistributed democratically and fairly across the country’s educational institutions.

Rigby said no matter what the final wording of the manifesto, the issue was now at the heart of the political consciousness of the party and had cut through to voters across the country.

She said: “The most important thing is we raise the issue in wider society and that this inequality is unjust and we have started that conversation in a way that hasn’t existed before.

“It’s in people’s minds now and it’s up to the Labour party to decide how to move forward and make sure that inequality is challenged.”

