Reeves claims sustainable aviation fuel ‘game changer’ in debate about 3rd runway and carbon emissions
Rachel Reeves is now being interviewed by Justin Webb on the Today programme.
Q: When did Keir Starmer, who used to oppose Heathrow expansion, change his mind?
Reeves says MPs last voted on this about six years ago. Since then a lot has changed, she says.
She claims sustainable aviation fuel can reduce emissions by 70%.
Q: So you think sustainable aviation fuel has changed the arguments.
Reeves says she thinks it is a “game changer”. But she says reforms to the way airspace is used also make a difference. If planes spend less time circulating, they use less fuel, she says
Key events
Reeves says she will release her tax return, because she did not know past chancellors had when she ruled it out yesterday
In the Q&A after her speech yesterday, Rachel Reeves was asked by GB News if she would release her tax returns. She said that previous chancellors had not done that, and she was not planning to do it either.
But previous chancellors, like Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, have published their tax returns, and today Reeves told Times Radio she would be publishing hers. She said:
I wasn’t aware that previous chancellors had released their tax return. I’m very happy to release my tax return in accordance with what’s happened in the recent past and I’ll be doing that alongside the prime minister in due course.
Keir Starmer published his tax returns when he was Labour leader, and yesterday his spokeperson said he would continue to do that as PM, as Sunak also did when he was PM.
Asked if she thought Kemi Badenoch should also release her tax return, Reeves said:
That’s the matter for Kemi Badenoch, but the prime minister and I will be releasing ours.
Reeves says survey shows two thirds of firms more confident following growth speech
Rachel Reeves is now being interview on GB News.
She says a survey suggests two thirds of businesses are more confident as a result of what she announced in her speech yesterday.
She seems to be referring to this.
Q: But businesses are cutting jobs, and saying that your policies are to blame.
Reeves says businesses have to make their own decisions about jobs.
The measures in yesterday’s speech will create jobs, she says. She says a third runway at Heathrow would create 100,000 jobs.
Q: Can you rule out emergency tax increases in your spring statement to ensure that you meet your fiscal rules.
Reeves says she has already set out plans to address the £22bn black hole she inherited. She says the Office for Budget Responsibility will give an update on 26 March and she will set out her plans then.
Q: There is speculation you are going to get rid of the seven-year tax rules, which means gifts given seven years before someone dies are not covered by inheritance tax. Are you?
Reeves says she is not planning to do that.
And that’s the end of that interview.
Reeves says she is no longer opposed to the expansion of Leeds Bradford airport
In her Today programme interview Rachel Reeves, a Leeds MP, was asked about her previous opposition to the expansion of the Leeds Bradford airport. Kemi Badenoch raised this at PMQs yesterday, claiming it showed that Labour minister were “hypocrites”.
Reeves replied:
If Leeds Bradford came back with plans to expand, I would support those, because I think that things have changed significantly in the last few years, and the cabinet supports these plans.
We’ve already, as a government, signed off expansion at Stansted and City Airport, because we know that we need the economic growth, and we know that sustainable aviation and economic growth go hand in hand.
Reeves claims cabinet is ‘united’ in backing Heathrow third runway plan
In an interview on LBC Rachel Reeves was asked if Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, was fully behind the plans for Heathrow expansion. She replied:
Yes, we are all united as a cabinet backing these plans.
We know that we have to grow our economy, we can’t keep saying no to big infrastructure projects.
Miliband is seen as the cabinet minister most sceptical about the third runway, and whether it can be built without wrecking the UK’s climate commitments. It has been widely reported that he threatened to resign over this when he was in Gordon Brown’s cabinet as energy secretary, and Brown was committing his government to a third runway. Miliband’s biographers say that is not quite right, and that instead he was just focusing on getting the best possible mitigations.
Madeley goes on to ask about the stories before Christmas alleging Reeves exaggerated her experience as an economist in her CV. He says he is doing that because this is the first time she has been on the programme since then.
He says:
You told [a magazine] that you’d worked at the Bank of England for a decade. In fact, it was, it was only six years, and one of those years was at the London School of Economics doing a Master’s course. So that’s five years and not a decade. And in biographies that you’d actually endorsed it was stated that you worked as an economist at the Bank of England, the British Embassy in Washington, and, latterly, at the Halifax Bank of Scotland. But according to your former colleagues in your actual job, you actually worked in a support department at Scottish bank … and that’s all earned you the nickname of Rachel from accounts. Did you? Did you enhance your CV to make yourself look better qualified to be the chancellor of the exchequer if you won the election?
And Reeves replies:
I’m really proud of the jobs that I did before I became a member of parliament.
I worked at the Bank of England in the international area, working on investment and productivity. I worked as the second economic secretary at the British embassy in Washington. I’ve done an undergraduate degree in PPE and masters from the London School of Economics in economics, and then I worked in the private sector, where I worked for Halifax Bank of Scotland, working in Halifax, in West Yorkshire, and around the country.
Reeves says she is “qualified to do this job”.
But she goes on:
In the end, people are going to judge me, am I growing the economy? Am I improving their living standards? And I’m determined to do just that.
Richard Madeley goes next.
Q: The Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary says you are wrong, and the third runway won’t be built until you are 70. You are 45 now. Why is he wrong?
Reeves says that is not what bosses at Heathrow say.
Rachel Reeves is now being interviewed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Q: Will people see growth this year?
Reeves says interest rates have been cut, and wages are rising above inflation.
Kate Garraway tries again.
Q: What is going to happen right now?
Reeves says she is confident that the third runway can be delivered within a decade. And she repeats her belief about spades in the ground happening before the end of this parliamen.
Q: But people are suffering now.
Reeves says it is right to make long-term plans. And the government has changed the rules so projects do not get held up for years in the courts.
Q: Can you promise anything by December?
Yes, says Reeves. She says houses will be built in this parliament.
We’re signing off decisions on wind farms, on solar farms, a commitment to a new stadium at Old Trafford. We are upgrading the Transpennine route to make journey times easier between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield. Those things are happening right now.
No more bat sheds will be required for big infrastracture projects, Reeves suggests
Q: You talked about bats yesterday, and the HS2 bat tunnel. But there will have to be a bat tunnel for the Oxford-Cambridge rail plan. What are you proposing?
Reeves says decisions need to be made differently. There will be a Nature Restoration Fund. Developers will have to pay into that. But it might fund environmental measures somewhere else.
Q: So the bats might not be protected in one particular area?
Reeves says there are trade-offs. She claims that the current rules go too far.
The balance has gone too far in the direction of always protecting every bat and every newt.
Q: So, if the Oxford-Cambridge rail line goes ahead, it won’t have a tunnel to protect bats.
“Other ways will be found,” Reeves says.
And that is the end of that interview.
According to Politico’s London Playbook, Reeves has three more interviews to go: on Good Morning Britain at 8.30am, Bloomberg at 8.50am and GB News at 8.55am.
Q: When will industrial energy prices come down to the level they are in other countries?
Reeves says she won’t put a date on that.
Q: But without lower prices, companies won’t invest.
Reeves says the government is working to cut prices. She recognises the challenge. Private sector money is coming in, she says.
Reeves says the last government never invested in carbon capture and storage. Labour is getting those projects off the ground, she says.
Q: When will electricity prices for industry come down?
Reeves says Labour inherited these prices.
But the goverment is acting to bring those prices down. It is investing in wind farms.
Q: But why not keep gas going too at the same time.
Reeves says onshore wind is the cheapest form of energy. The last government blocked that.
And she says the UK is “blessed” with offshore wind opportunities, with a shallow coast at the North Sea.
She says the government is approving energy projects. A solar farm in Cambridgeshire had been waiting for approval under the Tories for three years. Ed Miliband approved it quickly, she says.
Q: Why do you think Sadiq Khan is not convinced by the sustainable fuel argument?
Reeves says she has huge respect for Khan. But she disagrees with him on this.
Q: Can he stop this?
No, says Reeves. But there can be judicial reviews.
Q: Are you comfortable about having the London mayor opposed to this?
Reeves says there are always reasons for saying no to projects like this.
But Heathrow is the UK’s only hub airport. But it is losing market share to competitors in Europe, at Schiphol in the Netherlands and Frankfurt in Germany.
Reeves restates her claim that spades could be in the ground at Heathrow by the end of this parliament. (See 7.59am.)
Reeves claims sustainable aviation fuel ‘game changer’ in debate about 3rd runway and carbon emissions
Rachel Reeves is now being interviewed by Justin Webb on the Today programme.
Q: When did Keir Starmer, who used to oppose Heathrow expansion, change his mind?
Reeves says MPs last voted on this about six years ago. Since then a lot has changed, she says.
She claims sustainable aviation fuel can reduce emissions by 70%.
Q: So you think sustainable aviation fuel has changed the arguments.
Reeves says she thinks it is a “game changer”. But she says reforms to the way airspace is used also make a difference. If planes spend less time circulating, they use less fuel, she says
In our leader this morning, the Guardian says Rachel Reeves’ speech yesterday sounded “desperate and shallow”. Here is an excerpt.
There is a balanced debate to be had around the merits of Ms Reeves’s economic argument and what it omits. Supply-side reform may be necessary. But it is not a sufficient condition for growth. Boosting foreign trade is important, but to discuss it without reference to the European single market is disingenuous. If fiscal responsibility is a goal then it should be achieved by ways other than cutting social spending.
But, economics aside, the cumulative effect of those omissions makes the chancellor’s speech sound desperate and shallow. That doesn’t mean the Treasury’s plan is doomed to fail. It might indeed spur growth. But it is presented without a meaningful political argument, without imagination, compassion or moral purpose. Those qualities might not be necessary to boost gross domestic product, but a Labour government is badly diminished without them.
And here is the full article.
Reeves claims sustainable aviation fuel a ‘game changer’ in debate about emissions and third Heathrow runway
Good morning. The Treasury is continuing to give Rachel Reeves’ speech the sort of media treatment usually reserved for a budget; after a week-long advance briefing blitz, the chancellor is now engaged in a day-after full media round. She will be on the Today programme at 8.10am.
Here is our lead story overnight about the speech.
On BBC Breakfast this morning, in response to questions about whether it is realistic to expect a third runway at Heathrow to be built anytime soon, Reeves said she would liktop see “spades in the ground” this parliament.
Asked for a timeline on the plan, Reeves replied:
We want to see spades in the ground in this parliament.
We have asked Heathrow to come forward with plans by this summer, and then we want to grant that development consent order by the end of this parliament, so we can get the diggers in the ground to get this project up and running.
Asked when flights might take off from the third runway, Reeves said:
I think we can get that done in a decade.
Asked if this meant planes would be using the new runway by 2035, Reeves said:
That is what we want to achieve and that is what Heathrow wants to achieve.
(“Spades in the ground” is a metaphor. Or, at least, one hopes so. If they are going to build the third runway with spades, the economy is in even more trouble than we realised.)
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS publishes crime figures for England and Wales.
9.30am: Johnathan Reynolds, the business secretary, takes questions in the Commons
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 11.30am: MPs hold a backbench debate on proportional representation.
Noon: Mourners attend John Prescott’s funeral in Hull.
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