Senior Labour MP secretly reveals party’s green plans will cost ‘hundreds of billions’

A senior Labour MP has been caught admitting his party's policy of decarbonising the economy will cost "hundreds of billions" of pounds - significantly more than the party has earmarked for the policy publicly.

Darren Jones, the party’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said in a leaked recording that Labour’s infamous £28 billion pledge to achieve its climate goals was a "tiny" amount compared to what is truly needed.

In a further humiliating admission, Mr Jones said while Labour had publicly downgraded its policy of investing £28 billion in the environment, the move had "made it sound as if we basically junked the whole thing but we definitely haven’t".

The leaked recording is a humiliating blow to Sir Keir Starmer just hours before the final crunch head-to-head debate between him and Rishi Sunak on the BBC this evening.

The recording, published by The Telegraph, sees Mr Jones tell an anonymous individual: "So we’re still absolutely committed to [the environment], it’s still one of the top five priorities."

"And it’s going to be a huge amount of effort to get there because we’ll have to move quite quickly.

"But a lot of the coverage and the news was about that specific 28 [billion pounds], which because journalists saw conflict made it sound as if we had basically junked the whole thing, but we definitely haven’t."

The individual replied that some people say £28 billion isn’t enough, with Mr Jones agreeing: “No it’s tiny… hundreds of billions of pounds we need”.

Mr Jones was speaking at a meeting in March - the month after Keir Starmer dropped his £28 billion-a-year pledge.

Responding to the story, Laura Trott - Mr Jones’ Tory opposite in the Treasury - said: "This is very serious.

“Rather than costing £5 billion a year, the man Keir Starmer would put in charge of the country’s money is saying Labour’s flagship policy would mean spending 'hundreds of billions of pounds' more than Labour are telling people in public.

"This is about trust – tonight Keir Starmer must be straight with people and urgently explain what taxes will Labour put up to pay for it."

Around £500 billion will be needed to achieve net zero by 2050.

Some £200 billion of this is investment in the electricity grid; £115 billion on offshore wind; £70 billion in nuclear energy; and £150 billion in carbon capture and storage.

A Labour spokesman said: "Labour’s mission is to achieve clean energy by 2030 and our plan is fully funded and fully costed.

"The policies in the green prosperity plan represent £23.7 billion of investment over the course of the next parliament.

"A large part of this will be funded by a proper windfall tax on oil and gas giants which continue to earn record profits. The remaining investment will be part-funded through borrowing to invest, within our fiscal rules.

"By providing stability and initial public investment, our plan will crowd in billions in private capital over the longer-term. Our plan will help unlock the economic growth that the clean energy transition can bring, and cut energy bills for good.

"We will capitalise the new Great British Energy with £8.3 billion, over the next parliament, and create thousands of good jobs and build up supply chains in every corner of the UK.”