Climate change quango to spend £8m on latest report
The Government's official climate change adviser is to spend £8.2m on a report assessing the risks of global warming to the UK – roughly five times the cost of the previous study.
The Climate Change Committee said the significant funding uplift was needed because of the growing complexity of the task.
The quango, which advises ministers on how to prepare for global warming, spent £1.8m on its last such report, which ran to 142 pages. The funding uplift this time around means a similar length report would cost more than £50,000 per page.
Andrew Bowie, Conservative shadow energy spokesman, said the scale of spending was 'absurd'.
He said: 'As Kemi Badenoch and I have been warning, the costs of Ed Miliband's net zero by 2050 zealotry is far too high for the British public – and the taxpayer should not be forced to shell out millions of pounds because Labour are too afraid to admit that.'
Richard Tice, Reform's energy spokesman, said: 'It's unbelievable that almost £10m will be wasted on the most expensive net zero report ever.
'It will merely sit on the shelf gathering dust full of self-congratulatory comments whilst ignoring the critical issue which is that net zero is driving up electricity prices and destroying industrial jobs.'
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