Britain will miss its 2030 climate targets unless it reduces the bureaucracy faced by companies, the former chief executive of Google has warned Sir Keir Starmer.
Eric Schmidt told the Prime Minister that he would benefit from having a “minister of anti-regulation” as he aims to kick-start growth in the British economy while meeting green ambitions.
The UK has committed to a 68pc reduction in emissions by 2030 as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, has also set a goal of decarbonising the electricity grid by the end of the decade under net zero plans.
Mr Schmidt said these goals would not be reached unless Sir Keir fixed the “delay” caused by regulation in the UK, saying bureaucracy was “killing you”.
Speaking in a Q&A with the Prime Minister at the International Investment Summit in London, he said: “Democracies, especially something as old as this one, have so many ways in which people can say no.
“I’d much rather – and I think the business community would much rather – have a single person who can say yes or no… and then they can move on.
“The cost of capital and the delay is killing you, and furthermore you’re not going to achieve your 2030 energy goal, which is laudable, without fixing this.
“You have a tactical leadership problem to achieve this and I think you can pull it off, but you have to figure out a way to get control.”
The Prime Minister replied: “I think this is a really big challenge, it has to be a cross-government priority, not just within the Treasury team.”
Sir Keir said the Government was “setting up some of the structures that will do this” and repeated that the Government’s central question would always be: “Does this promote growth or does it not promote growth?”
The comments came after the boss of Octopus Energy urged the Government to remove regulations to allow greater investment in heat pumps.
Greg Jackson said the need for planning permission to install the equipment was “kind of crazy” given the desire from ministers for homeowners to switch to cleaner energy.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The Government is very keen to support the move to heat pumps for heating our homes and yet there is a whole pile of rules that heat pumps suffer from.
“A lot of homes need planning permission, which is kind of crazy. Four out of 10 people who come to us for a heat pump are dropping out because of those regulatory barriers.
“What we need is regulation which lines up with the Government’s objectives and that will enable us to deploy so much more investment in the UK economy.”
He added there was an “enormous amount of capital globally available to be invested in those countries which create the right environment” for businesses.