The Conservative party has spent much time mocking Labour
for being out of touch on business issues, particularly Jeremy Corbyn’s support
for rail and possibly energy nationalisation.
But George Osborne seems much more at home tickling the
tummies of huge, state-owned companies in China and France, especially with
regard to nuclear power, than tending his domestic, private-sector firms. While
the chancellor was out wooing on a recent trip to Beijing, he seemed blissfully
unaware that subsidy cuts to the UK’s growing army of small and medium-size
“green” companies have been causing havoc.
Last week, the true scale of his destructive policies became
clear when one of the largest providers of solar panels in Britain, the Mark Group, collapsed into liquidation with the loss of
almost 1,000 jobs. It was not long before a second solar and insulation
provider, Climate Energy, bit the dust and now the Solar Trade Association
predicts that dozens of firms and 27,000 employees are in danger. Mark Group
was happy to make clear where the blame should lie, saying the government’s
“draconian policy proposals… will essentially eliminate the solar PV market in
the UK”. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has denied this, claiming
it’s all down to “commercial decisions”. It has the unenviable task of
implementing the policies on renewable energy, but few are in any doubt that
the orders come from the Treasury, which is on a wider mission to bear down on
all costs.
The latest proposal, to cut solar subsidies by 87%, is just
another in a long line of changes that have hit energy efficiency, onshore
wind, biomass and many other sectors that create jobs and a lower-carbon economy.
These cuts look particularly irresponsible in the run-up to the UN climate
change talks in Paris, but at any time it is odd to see a party that wants to
make Britain greater showing little time for nurturing a new business sector.
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