By Paul Homewood
If only we had more people like David Frost with a little common sense:
With 800,000 car manufacturing jobs in the UK at stake because we don’t make enough batteries for electric vehicles, leading engine manufacturers are demanding to renegotiate trade rules with the EU to let them I added time catching up.
Lord Frost, Britain’s chief negotiator on Brexit from 2019 to 2021, pointed out where the fault lies.
“The fundamental problem is that we are rushing to electrify cars too quickly compared to the technologies we have.
“What it shows is the expectation that we had in the trade agreement when we negotiated that things would change by 2024, and that’s not true.”
Vauxhall’s parent company, Stellantis, told MPs earlier this week that it would not be able to keep its commitment to making electric vehicles in the UK without changes to its Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU.
From next year, under the agreement, 45% of electric vehicle parts must be sourced from the UK or EU to qualify for duty-free trade between the two sides.
If they don’t meet the requirements, cars made in the UK will face a 10% tax if sold in the EU – making them uncompetitive. Electric car batteries are mainly sourced from Asia and can account for up to 50% of a car’s value.
But Lord Frost believes it’s not just car manufacturing that’s under enormous pressure from rushing to net zero – a government commitment to ensure the UK reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 100 per cent compared to net zero. 1990 levels by 2050.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Express, Lord Frost said: “People can see we’re not ready. The [electricity supply] the grid is not ready, the cost is too high; all we are doing is causing unnecessary problems for our own industry.”
Not only that, but the poorest are also the hardest hit by this transition.
“We are constantly being told that net zero by 2050 is not only the right thing to do, but also something that will be good for you and will drive economic growth and people will get better,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s true. We’re replacing a lot of perfectly good ways to generate electricity with gas and nuclear with terrible ways of generating it with wind and solar, so why don’t you expect the costs to go up?
“If we require the installation of shoddy technologies like heat pumps, it affects the poorest. If technology is good, people will install it anyway.
“If it’s bad and expensive technology, the Government has to make people do it.”
Once dubbed “The Greatest Frostman since the Great Frost of 1709” by Boris Johnson, the 58-year-old is considered by many Tories to be the leading voice of common sense and even a leader. potential leadership in the future.
A former diplomat, civil servant and Secretary of State, he will give his annual lecture next week at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
He strongly believes that the Government’s rapid wipe-out will cause significant damage to the UK economy, leaving us all poorer, especially the less well-off.
Lord Frost does not deny that climate change is happening. Nor does he deny the need for green policies to combat global warming.
“But that is not to say that we are in a crisis or a climate emergency, nor is it to say that the only option we have is to reach net zero by 2020. 2050,” he said.
“Those are political choices – they are not scientific choices. And with all political choices, you have to weigh the pros and cons; costs versus benefits. And that’s what we don’t do. You don’t have to refute science to say we need to look at how we’re doing this and whether it makes sense.”
Lord Frost said what’s particularly frustrating about this debate is that many people assume that if you’re skeptical of net zero then you don’t care about protecting the environment. “They’re not the same thing at all,” he insisted.
“We all want a cleaner environment. That has nothing to do with net zero ideology. When this country was just industrialized, the environment was much more polluted than it is now. What helps us to improve the environment is economic growth; more efficient ways to work. As we get richer, we can spend on pollution treatment.”
With China going to dominate the electric car market in Europe and the US supplying us with shale gas, the former minister is angry that we are making other countries richer while making our own. I’m poorer.
“Clearly it makes no sense as a policy,” he said. “As a nation, we [responsible for] about 2% of global emissions. We could shut down the UK economy tomorrow and that would make no difference to the nature of the problem.
“We are helping [China] by outsourcing our own production and making energy more expensive. We are going along with that and making ourselves weaker. It makes no sense in an increasingly dangerous world.”
Energy security should be a primary concern for the UK, especially as we import so much energy from untrustworthy foreign countries.
“More than ever since the Ukraine War, we need an efficient energy system,” says Frost. “Something we can rely on and we have control over. We are going in the other direction. We are installing unreliable technology that must be backed up. The wind doesn’t always blow so you need support to fill the void. Well, why isn’t that more expensive?
“Why not just have redundancy and forget about wind farms? Given our current state of technology, the idea that renewable energy will make us safer seems like a total mistake.”
He emphasizes that things get even more frustrating when we know what the solution is.
“It’s gas, go nuclear – it’s a way to reduce emissions in a way that powers the economy,” added Lord Frost.
“It doesn’t reduce our ability to produce energy, crush the economy and make people live in a different way. I don’t think people will tolerate that.”
Lord Frost is exasperated by the current shale gas exploration ban.
“We have a lot of shale gas in this country that we can extract. A shale gas facility the size of Parliament Square could generate the same amount of electricity as a wind farm 10 times the size of Hyde Park.
“This is not a disruptive technology unless your vision for the future is that we don’t have any industry. All of us politicians have to care about the voters but I think, for the sake of the country, you have to argue.”
It has been suggested that we have removed the shackles of the EU, only to replace them with net zeros.
“Yes, a lot of net zero legislation is inherited through the EU and we now have the power to change it, but we don’t seem to want to do that,” Frost said.
“I think people have been captured by this ideology. They believe the message without thinking seriously about it.”
Full interview
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