From Grunwick to Deliveroo - migrant workers, trade unions & the new economy

A one-day conference on migrant workers, trade unions and the new economy.

Forty years ago Asian women at Grunwick led a strike for basic human dignity at work and for the right to join to a trade union. Today these battles are still being fought, often by migrant workers in precarious employment conditions. The experiences of workers at Byron revealed the extent to which migrant workers can be exploited by 'the new economy' and tossed aside when no longer needed, while those at Deliveroo showed that resistance is both necessary and possible.

This one-day conference will bring together campaigners, trade unionists, activists and thinkers to examine the changing nature of work and the terrains for resistance.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 26TH 10.30AM-5.30PM

Willesden Library Centre
95 High Road
London
NW10 2SF

Willesden Green tube (Jubilee line)

Although a free event, please ensure you book your place HERE as spaces are limited.

Sessions will include: 

• The legacy of Grunwick
• Do we need independent trade unions?
• Building community support
• What does Brexit mean for workers
• Resisting immigration raids
• Building community support
•  

Confirmed participants are:

• Rita Chadha (Refugee and Migrant Forum Essex and London
• Dr Sundari Anitha
• Suresh Grover (The Moniroring Group)
• Anti Raids Network
• Amrit Wilson (writer, activist)
• Durham teaching assistants
• Jack Dromey MP
• Unite Hotel Workers Branch
• United Workers of the World Union (Deliveroo and other campaigns)
• More to be announced

Remain for change: Building European solidarity for a democratic alternative - June 15th

I, like I am sure many readers, have felt manipulated by the EU Referendum debate: manipulated into taking sides into what is basically a dispute within the Conservative Party (and a leadership contest), and within British neoliberalism.  The manipulation of the media by the two main camps has meant that the left alternatives for Remain and for Exit have been scarcely heard. In the process the debate has licensed the expression of openly racist views seldom heard since the 60s and 70s - albeit directed against Eastern Europeans rather than East African Asians or people from the Caribbean.

Economists for Rational Economic Policies sum up the problem in the introduction to their new report due to be discussed at a launch on June 15th.   I think the report makes an important contribution to the debate so have posted it at the end of the article.

The economic arguments over the UK’s EU Referendum have generally followed the Conservative government’s own philosophical lines of deregulation and freedom for globalised finance, in which the only true imperatives are the removal of all barriers to trade and capital flows, and the weakening of social and employment protection. This has been the main thrust of the economic arguments put forward by the Conservative “Remain” campaign, in particular the Treasury’s two reports on the long-term and immediate impacts of Brexit

Since much of the leadership of the “Leave” campaign shares the same economic philosophy, but wishes to deregulate still further (save on the issue of immigration), the choice often resembles that between tweedledum and tweedledee. In consequence, many who believe in a more managed economy which looks after the interests of working people and offers decent social protection, and who instinctively consider themselves to be European and internationalist, have felt excluded from the debate.

And alas, the European Union itself has in recent years adopted disastrous economic policies, in particular in relation to the single currency and Eurozone, which have severely damaged working people across much of the continent. Unemployment in the Eurozone has been above 10% since mid-2009, save for one solitary month. Worse, these policies are legally embedded in the EU’s Treaties, making democratic choice for change extremely difficult.

So the natural supporters of the European Union from a politically progressive perspective find themselves faced with a difficult dilemma, notably in relation to economic policy.

Economists for Rational Economic Policies (EREP) has therefore put together this series of articles which, in different ways and from differing perspectives, unite in arguing that for the UK to vote to leave the EU would be a serious mistake – both in economic and political terms. It would tend strengthen right-wing forces both in the UK and across Europe, and weaken the rights of working people. It risks a fragmentation of Europe along nationalist grounds which could even ultimately threaten the peaceful cooperation we have enjoyed across most of our continent for 70 years.

We need a strong EU for the future on a wide range of issues – not least climate change. But we also need to work in solidarity with all those across Europe who can see that Europe has to change the basis of its economic ideology and strategy if it is to fulfil its Treaty commitment to the peoples of Europe to work for “full employment and social progress.. a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment”.

I have posted the full report below:

The free launch event takes place at the University of Greenwich on June 15th. Follow this LINK for speaker details and to book your free tickets.

Green MEP to join Shadow Chancellor addressing ‘alternatives to austerity’ conference

Molly Scott Cato MEP will join Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell at a conference in Manchester tomorrow exploring how to build an economy to serve people not profit. Molly and John McDonnell will be two of the keynote speakers and will be joined by Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, and writer Frances Coppola.

Molly, who is a member of the European Parliament’s Economics Committee and Green Party speaker on finance, said:

Greens have always advocated co-operative alternatives to austerity and rampant free market capitalism. I’m delighted that Labour now seem genuinely to be engaged in a debate on how we can build an economy that will be more jointly and justly owned. We need to see all progressives unite behind policies such as fair taxation, regulation of banking and Green Quantitative Easing.

We must also ensure that this new economy operates within environmental limits. This means phasing out fossil fuels, opposing expensive and dangerous nuclear and actively supporting the rise of community owned renewables.

Six reasons to vote Green tomorrow - for a real alternative to the neoliberal parties

As decision day approaches here are six short videos that support the case for voting Green tomorrow.

Scott Bartle, Brent North Green Candidate, speaks out at Sudbury Hustings

The packed hustings was held in a beautiful but dimly lit church so please excuse the quality of the picture.

Lucas: 'Weak and discredited' Chancellor condemning UK to a bleak future

The UK is being condemned to a 'bleak future' of yet more austerity and deprived of the huge benefits of the jobs-rich green economy by a 'weak and discredited' Chancellor, said Green MP Caroline Lucas today.

In the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement to the House of Commons earlier today, Chancellor George Osborne set out plans for £11.5bn more cuts to government departments for 2015-16 - as well as committing to further investment in high carbon infrastructure such as roads and shale gas.

RESPONDING TO THE CSR, CAROLINE LUCAS, MP FOR BRIGHTON PAVILION, SAID:

This government's broken austerity policies have fundamentally failed to get the UK's finances in order and improve people's lives, yet George Osborne has today chosen to condemn Britain to more of the same even beyond the next election.

With Ed Miliband now accepting the government's spending cuts for 2015-16 and supporting a cap on welfare spending too, any chance of the main parties challenging the austerity myth has been eradicated.

The failure of mainstream politicians to properly represent the British people and to hold to account the most incompetent Chancellor of modern times represents nothing short of a political crisis.

The way to address the deficit is not by further cuts to public services, including tightening the financial stranglehold on local authorities, or failing to get people into work and arbitrarily capping welfare spending regardless of need.

It is to invest in jobs - borrowing money based on record low interest rates - mount a serious crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance, and bring forward green quantitative easing to deliver investment directly into the infrastructure we urgently need for a more resilient, stable economy."

And yet again the Chancellor has rejected one of the best ways to create jobs in all areas of the UK - a programme to make all homes super energy efficient, funded by the recycling of carbon tax revenue received by the Treasury.

Research shows that such a programme would be far better for job creation than his alternatives and deliver urgently needed reductions in carbon pollution, help end fuel poverty and drive down household energy bills too.

 ON THE GREEN ECONOMY, CAROLINE LUCAS SAID:

Osborne claims that he is unwilling to 'make the children of the future pay for the mistakes of the past', yet by ignoring the warnings on climate change from the international scientific community, economists and environmentalists, he is doing exactly that.

Last night, President Obama outlined the urgent need to act on climate change and the benefits this would bring the American people in terms of manufacturing, jobs and protection from the impacts of climate change.

By committing the government to reckless spending on polluting high carbon infrastructure such as roads, airports and shale gas instead of investing in the jobs-rich green economy through, for example, renewable energy and energy efficiency, George Osborne is denying the British people those same huge benefits - and a more positive vision of the future.

Climate Change: Fears and Failures

Submerged footpath at West Hendon Playing Fields last weekend

Let's face it, the turnout at Saturday's Climate Change march, whether the BBC estimate of 300 or the organiser's 500, was poor. A climate crisis billed as threatening the very future of humankind could only get a handful of humans out on the street.  In the circumstances the media coverage we achieved was generous helped by the spectacle of a the erection of a fracking rig outside the House of Parliament.

Chatting in the crowd we speculated why with Hurricane Sandy, the floods in the UK, harvest failures in the US, more people were not concerned enough to come out. We joked that perhaps we needed the Thames Barrier to fail and Westminster to flood, before MPs took notice.  After all it was only when the stench of the Thames got severe enough to penetrate the Palace of Westminster that action was taken to build a proper sewage system.

However, also on Saturday, Anne Karpf's article in the Guardian LINK  reviewed the recently published Engaging with Climate Change, Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives LINK .

Confessing to being a 'Climate-Change Ignorer' she says despite not being a sceptic she 'tunes out' when she hears apocalyptic warnings about global warming:

The fuse that trips the while circuit is a sense of helplessness. Whatever steps I take to counter global warming, however well-intentioned my brief bursts of zeal, they invariably end up feeling like like too little, too late.  The mismatch between the extremely dangerous state of the earth and my own feeble endeavours seems mockingly large. 

She goes on to describe some of the coping mechanisms described  in the book, including blame-shifting, technoptimism, hedonistic fatalism and dark optimism. It is argued, against the view of my colleague Brian Orr, that apocalyptic warnings are counter productive:

As Ed Miliband has observed, Martin Luther King never inspired millions by saying 'I have a nightmare'.

I would argue that the sense of helplessness is caused by the failure of politicians, governments and the UN, to face the crisis head on. It is as  if, faced with the Nazi menace in the second war, the government had, rather than mobilise troops and the economy and pour money into production and research,  instead asked everyone just to perform the home front task of digging for victory. Of course people would have felt helpless as German troops massed at the channel and bombs fell on our cities. Politicians now are in the equivalent position of those who ignored or down-played the rise of Nazism for fearing of frightening the people.

Here in Brent, in our own small way, following the briefing for councillors and the public, a paper has been produced outlining the extent of the crisis and some ideas for moving forward. A copy is available by clicking the link below:

 

Another dimension is making a link between the current economic crisis and climate change and on Sunday the following resolution from Green Left was passed by an overwhelming majority at the AGM of the Coalition of Resistance:

This conference notes that the current economic crisis is closely linked to a global ecological crisis particularly involving human caused climate change,. Neither crisis, in so far as they can be separated, is soluble under capitalist socio-economic arrangements. Technological fixes and geo-engineering enacted under capitalism can only be short term at best, since ecologically damaging forms of consumption and production are engendered and maintained by capitalism.

We therefore call on the coalition of resistance to recognise this publicly and include combating climate change in its campaigning agendas.

Butt paints gloomy picture for Brent residents

Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt has posted his second blog on the Council website. He cites the current state of the economy as causing 'terrible' problems for Brent residents. Clearly it is the Coalition's austerity policies that are worsening the economic situation but it is also the deliberate attack on the welfare state and targeting of the disabled, women, large families and single parents that hit people in a very personal way. Added to that are the cuts local councils are making as their budgets are slashed by central government. The question that must be asked is, how long can the council continue to implement cuts that they know are damaging an already vulnerable population?

Muhammed Butt's blog posting:

...we face big problems which mean making the changes we believe in isn't easy. As a borough, as a council and as a community, we face some grave long-term challenges.

I think it is important to be open and honest with residents about these challenges, as not everyone realises just how bad a situation we are in. This gives some perspective to some of the difficult decisions we have already made, and others we will have to make in the coming years.

Unemployment and the economy

The current state of the economy is causing terrible problems for many Brent residents who are struggling just to keep above the breadline. Wage levels in Brent are significantly below the London average and are declining, even while they are rising in the rest of London.

For a family with two children to have an acceptable standard of living in London they need an annual joint income of £37,000.The median household income in Brent is £27,500, and in our poorest areas it is as low as £15,000. This means many of our residents often have to choose between food and warmth.

Over the last decade, unemployment in Brent has remained above both the national and London levels, with a particularly sharp rise over the past year. Our residents are really struggling to find work. Long term unemployment can devastate communities and in some areas of the borough child poverty is as high as 50 per cent as a result.

The make-up of our community

As well as our economic problems, we also face a huge demographic crisis due to our disproportionately aging population. By 2030 the number of people over the age of 65 in the UK is set to increase by 50 per cent. On top of this the continued downward trend in the economy means more people are relying on council services. 

This is such a dramatic change that it is predicted that by 2030 it will cost more than 100 per cent of our current budget just to pay for social care to support the elderly. This creates a huge dilemma. We will need to make difficult decisions and radical changes if we want to continue to provide other services that residents rely upon.

Budget pressures

The budget crisis we face as a council is unprecedented. As a result of Government cuts, we have to reduce our spending by 28 per cent by 2015. We have to find £100 million in savings, that means less to spend on helping residents and providing services.

If you can imagine having to cut a third from your weekly household budget, this raises impossible decisions. We will have to make tough choices every day to prioritise the most essential services that protect the most vulnerable people in the borough and to maintain the everyday services that keep Brent up and running.

Hope

All this paints a gloomy picture, but there is hope.

Through relentless focus on our priorities and innovation we can continue to improve resident's lives, even in these impossible circumstances. We are on your side during these tough times.

Over the coming weeks I will be blogging about some of the things we are doing to ensure that we continue to make Brent a fairer place, create more jobs and growth and strengthen our community. 

Greens pull George Osborne apart

From the Green Party website:

There was so much overblown rhetoric to wade through in George Osborne’s Autumn Conference speech that it was almost hard to know where to start. However we have picked out the bits most in need of addressing. Hope you find it useful!

1.“Today in the face of the great economic challenges of our age we here resolve; we will press on and we shall overcome.  We made a promise to the British people that we would repair our badly broken economy. That promise is being fulfilled. The deficit is down by a quarter.”

This morning the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stated clearly that George has not learned his economics lessons. They conclude that it is the economic policies being followed by Osborne that are destroying any chance of returning to growth. The IMF has confirmed that the result of all 173 “austerity” packages enacted across the world to date was recession. There are two possible explanations: the Tories do not understand the basics of economic theory; or they are deliberately using the economic crisis to advance their political cause of slashing state spending in order to justify further tax cuts for their financial backers.

The deficit has not been reduced as per Osborne’s delusional claims. Instead from April-August this year the deficit actually increased 22% to £61.3bn, £12.9bn higher than in the same period last year.

Molly Scott Cato, Green party economics speaker comments:
'Osborne has spent the past few years whipping up austeria for entirely political reasons. He is now using the mood of public anxiety to slash welfare payments, reduce taxes on the wealthy, and cut the size of the state. This was always the intention of the Tory right and they are working to achieve their narrow political aims while the country as a whole suffers.'

2.“That we support those who aspire, so we can help those most in need. That the cost of paying our debts cannot possibly be borne by one section of society alone.”

One section of society should be responsible for paying of our debts and that is the bankers who instigated this financial crisis. Let us be very clear; this is a banking crisis and should never have been presented by the Tory Party as a sovereign debt crisis. Labour took the decision to bail out the banks and turn the banking debt into a national debt, but it was the Tory government under Thatcher and Lawson who led the way in deregulating the financial markets. Those most responsible for creating the financial crisis have escaped paying any price, whilst the most vulnerable members of our society are made to suffer needlessly to allow Osborne to ransack public services to meet his party’s aims.

But since then, the ability of the most vulnerable, including the nation’s lowest-paid workers, to meet their basic needs has got demonstrably harder. So much so that 15 million people are living below the minimum income standard [LW1] – three million more than in 2008. We know jobs that carry decent wages are an essential starting point in climbing out of poverty – yet part-time and short-term work, while useful, do little to address this. 

The dire state of the labour market, and Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s (JRF)projections, suggest that by 2020 things will get a lot worse unless we have a dramatically different set of policy interventions Budget cuts to local councils hit deprived councils hardest.  A JRF report Serving deprived communities in a recession found that that vulnerable people are being hit with the double impact of faster cuts, and lack of protection. The report also found that local authority spending cuts hit deprived lost most spending power.

Jason Kitcat, Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council says:
“We don’t believe the financial crisis can or should be solved by cutting expenditure on those who most need society’s help, which seems to be government strategy. However, councils face bleak choices as we cannot spend more money than the government allocates. Other councils may toe the line, imposing punitive cuts on social care, welfare and benefits, but our strategy in Brighton & Hove is to refuse to do George Osborne’s dirty work for him and instead we prioritise our spending in such areas as caring for adults, children and the homeless, supporting the voluntary sector and mitigating as far as we can the effects of benefit cuts.”

3. “We've never allowed uncontrolled capitalism free-rein. It was these Labour politicians, not Conservatives, who let the banks run rampage because they didn't understand that to work for everyone, markets need rules.”

What about the line that it was Labour that “let the banks run rampage”?  In 2006, Osborne was indignant about Labour’s financial regulations (proved by the banking crisis to be woefully inadequate), describing them as “burdensome, complex and… [making] cross-border market penetration more difficult.”. He claimed that this was “an age that demands a light touch” towards government involvement in the economy.
Not only is Osborne a few marks short of a GCSE with his economics, but his knowledge of history needs some updating as well. It was the Conservative Party’s ‘Big Bang’ of financial deregulation in 1986 that sowed the seeds of the financial collapse.  As professor Karel Williams explains, "deregulation allowed the City to construct long lines of indebtedness, which are completely beyond technical regulation”.  The decision by Thatcher and her chancellor Nigel Lawson to massively cut regulation of the financial industry created an unsustainable culture of short-termism and greed, the merging of high street and merchant banks, and ultimately, a credit crisis that could shackle generations to come with debts of the banks unless Osborne faces his responsibilities and listens to the warnings of his critics such as the IMF.

1.)     http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2940311/Personal-view-We-promise-simpler-taxation-the-right-regulations-and-good-infrastructure.html
2.)    http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm061127/debtext/61127-0005.htm
3.)    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/09/big-bang-1986-city-deregulation-boom-bust

4. “£10 billion of welfare savings by the first full year of the next Parliament.”

Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, says this is unethical and self-defeating especially in the current climate.
"Further cutting the real rate of benefits, when they are already insufficient for a basic decent life is unconscionable. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculated, the minimum weekly income needed in Britain is £193 for a single person, but out of work benefits deliver just £85.

"It is all very well for the Chancellor to talk of the need to find work, but the fact is that in many areas of Britain there are few or no job opportunities, and what's there is often casualised, insecure and low-paid. And he's planning on penalising larger families whose adult members are out of work. That means penalising children - restricting their life chances when we already have some of the most unequal outcomes in education and life chances in the developed world. However the Chancellor does need to think about benefits - the corporate benefits to large companies that are able to pay large numbers of staff less than a living wage, then rely on the government to top up their profits by subsidising their employees with tax credits. Making the minimum wage a living wage would cut the benefit will, by making companies pay their fair share.”

Welfare savings do need to be made but George Osborne’s speech indicated that he had no understanding that his failure to invest in jobs means that more and more people are forced onto welfare each month. The Green Party believes that the immediate priority is the creation of an extra million jobs and training places. A £44bn package of measures would include workforce training, investment in renewables, public transport, insulation, social housing and waste management.  Which could be funded, for example, with a Land Value Tax as per the Private Member’s Bill recently sponsored by Caroline Lucas.

1. http://greenparty.org.uk/policies/jobs-2010/jobs-detail.html
2. http://www.jrf.org.uk/focus-issue/minimum-income-standards

5. “How can we justify the incomes of those out of work rising faster than the incomes of those in work?’

 The question should be: “Mr Osborne, how can you justify an economy in which those who work earn less money every year?”
George Osborne’s pay freezes in the public sector have seen workers’ spending power fall, because as inflation has risen, wages have stood still. Instead of creating a system where working doesn’t pay and using that to punish the most vulnerable the Chancellor should ensure that those who work receive a fair wage.
Incomes Data Service reported in May that the government’s economic policies were also hitting the private sector – which Osborne promised would deliver economic recovery.

It reported that the drop in consumer spending power had led private firms to take ‘fewer risks’ in expenditure – offering below inflation pay increases.

The irony of the fact that this, in turn, led to even lower spending power in the UK economy, and thus a vicious circle of cuts followed by further falling economic activity, leading to more cuts, to which the  the Chancellor  is either ignorant or indifferentThe Green Party believes that the minimum wage should be a Living Wage and thiswill help ensure low paid workers earn enough to provide for themselves and their families and eradicate poverty in Britain for good. The Green Party will fight for a National Minimum Wage of 60% of net national average earnings (currently this would mean a minimum wage of £8.10 per hour).  

6. “We promised the British people we would protect decent public services as we dealt with the deficit, and so we will.”

George Osborne’s claim to protect public services perhaps depends upon how he has defined ‘decent’ – privatising the NHS and education might sound pretty ‘decent’, to some people  wealthy enough to pay for private care and schooling. Here are the facts – under Alistair Darling’s 2009 budget, Labour spent £119bn on healthcare. This would be worth £132bn in today’s money. Osborne, however, spent £130bn on healthcare in his 2012 budget, so he has effectively cut £2bn from the NHS.

Cuts to education are even worse – Darling spent £88bn in 2009, worth £97bn today. Osborne’s 2012 budget spent just £91bn on education, so the Tories have cut £6bn from schools and universities. 

The Green Party believes in investing in public services rather than cutting them, and fights to keep the NHS public, rejecting any form of privatisation in the health service. The Green Party believes that small schools have a greater sense of community and a more positive ethos, which can reduce behavioural problems. The party would create a greater number of smaller schools by breaking up larger institutions into smaller ones. It would provide free school meals for all, and half a day a week of physical activity for every child. Academies would be phased out because we believe it is wrong to allow business and other unaccountable organisations to influence education for their own needs.

1. http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_188581.pdf

7. “We modern Conservatives represent all those who aspire. Whether it's the owner of the corner shop staying open until midnight to support their family, or the teacher prepared to defy her union and stay late to take the after-school club,or the commuter who leaves home before the children are up, and comes back long after they have gone to bed, because they want a better life for them.’

Does Mr Osborne believe that ‘a better life for their children’ will be delivered by a situation in which a parent never sees their children? It would appear so. Why should a commuter have to leave before the children are up and come home after they have gone to bed to provide a better life for them? A report from the United Nation's children's agency UNICEF, found that children growing up in the UK were the unhappiest in the industrialised world, and that parents in more than half the countries surveyed spent more time "just talking" to their children than did those in the UK. The importance of family relationships are vital to child development. Children in Sweden, Spain and the UK, told researchers that their happiness was dependent on spending time with stable families and having plenty of things to do, especially playing outdoors. The research showed, however, that although parents in the UK lose out on time together as a family due in part to long working hours.

The Green Party believes that children deserve a happy childhood and as such seeks to encourage flexible and part-time working. Our proposed living wage rates (above) would help improve part-time as well as full-time pay.

We want to work towards reducing the standard working week to 35 hours, which would allow work to be shared out more fairly and would encourage a good work-life balance for all workers. Every child deserves quality time with their parents and vice versa.

1. http://www.actionforhappiness.org/news
2. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/25/health/working-overtime-doubles-depression/index.html
3. http://oem.bmj.com/content/58/1/68.full
4. http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/work-life-balance/

8. “An enterprise strategy means investing in renewable energy, and opening up the newly discovered shale gas reserves beneath our land. We are today consulting on a generous new tax regime for shale so that Britain is not left behind as gas prices tumble on the other side of the Atlantic.”

Yesterday, Mr Osborne put a marker down to the Tory right and the climate-sceptic wing of his party with his pledge to spark a home-grown shale gas boom, as has happened in the US.

However it is not just The Green Party that is worried by Osborne’s ‘dash for gas’, Redpoint, advisor to the Government’s own independent Climate Change Committee, predicts that a gas-based energy production system would cost the taxpayer £23bn per year more than we pay at present for the same power – without factoring in inflation, so the very foundation of the statement is entirely dubious. The same report, using the Government’s own predictions, along with those of the International Energy Agency, states that “These (groups) envisage rising gas prices in the US and the EU over the next two decades, and a significantly higher gas price in the EU than the US, notwithstanding the potential impact of shale gas.”

UK firms are concerned about George Osborne’s “dash for gas” plans too.
In the last week, more than 60 UK businesses have put their names to two letters, in one of which seven firms threaten to withdraw investment in the UK if green targets are reduced. In the other, business leaders warn such reductions will cause the economy to lose billions of pounds.

Seven firms, including Siemens, Gamesa and Alstom UK, wrote to Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Chancellor George Osborne and PM David Cameron warning they will withdraw investment in the UK if the government relaxes plans to decarbonise the energy industry.

The seven employ 17,500 people and are vital to the development of renewable energy production in the UK.

And more than 50 other companies, including Aviva, Microsoft, Marks & Spencer, and the Co-operative, sent an open letter to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne warning that his energy and environmental plans will lose the UK £110bn in energy investment, as well as £400m in exports in 2014-15 alone.

 Both groups are concerned that Mr Osborne’s insistence that gas, rather than renewable energy, should provide the UK’s power production to 2030 will see it miss decarbonisation targets.”

1. http://www.redpointenergy.co.uk/images/uploads/Decarbonising_the_GB_power_sector_v1.pdf

2. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osborne-offers-tax-breaks-for-shale-gas-8202949.html