Anthony Rae 4th January 2025 Six months after the General Election on 4th July 2024 – and we’re already onto our second transport secretary! – we finish this series of articles where the enterprise began: asking the question about whether a Labour government intends to pursue a strategy of urgent and accelerated transport decarbonisation. After pursuing a somewhat circuitous route we do reach a conclusion – which can be read as either optimistic or pessimistic – that defines what action is needed to enforce an answer from the government in 2025.
This article is about Questions and Answers: in what (political) circumstances can they be made to disappear, and whether they matter? That may sound a little philosophical and not immediately related to the ‘analysis of transport decarbonisation policy’, but bear with me. What it will do is set out what this series of five articles download here have added to the analysis of our May 2024 report, and tie together their threads to provide an answer to the Question it originally set.
THE ORIGINS OF THE QUESTION To remind ourselves, the precise wording of the Question we’re interested in is ‘Will Labour fail its transport decarbonisation test?’ That was the title of the report published on 19th May 2024, not at all knowing that Prime Minister Sunak would announce a general election just three days later, on 22nd May. Page 8 of the report defined what it meant by the term decarbonisation ‘test’: ‘How from their first days in government will Labour set and then implement a transport emissions reduction pathway and policy framework which ensures that critical decarbonisation targets that have to be reached by 2030 will actually be achieved?’
But the Question didn’t emerge out of the blue, for example as a tweet following Friends of the Earth’s landmark second judicial review judgement just two weeks beforehand on 3rd May, which found the Conservative government’s entire carbon budget delivery plan to be unlawful see article 4. It would have been a reasonable question to ask then – seeing that transport is by far the largest single emissions sector within that plan – but the fact that the report was able to quickly but smoothly integrate the implications of the judgement into its own analysis is a testament to the fact that the two processes had been on parallel paths for some time, and heading in the same direction.
And it certainly did seem to be an interesting question when, at around 9 o’clock on the morning of 23rd June 2023, I originally conceived it – gazing out of the window of the Bergensbanen train from Oslo as it ascended towards the top of the pass on its 300 mile journey up and over Norway’s Hardanger plateau – and noted it down for further reflection when I returned home. As we’ll see, this article will snake its way through the issues embedded within the Question in the same way that that rail line does through the magnificent Norwegian landscape. If you’re interested, here’s a drone video of the line in winter.
The Question’s origins lay still further back. For the previous three or so years I had been trying to get the major national carbon reduction project in which I was involved interested in more strongly focusing on the underlying causation of the UK’s huge transport decarbonisation problem, but with no success. So that morning I thought ‘OK, I’ll do it myself’. We discussed the possibility of researching and writing such a report in the July 2023 meeting of the ETOs group which was to publish it, and decided to proceed. (The ETOs is a grouping of members from environmental transport organisations in the North of England, of which I am a convener. As the report declared, the ETOs have no party political affiliation but in view of their previous activity around transport decarbonisation they decided they wanted to make a further contribution on the topic.)
However two years before its formulation – June 2021 – the Question would have made little sense. With Boris Johnson’s substantial 2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ majority, and some Covid vaccines magicked into existence, who would’ve thought that there was much prospect of a Labour government emerging at the distant 2024 election? However, one week after 23rd June 2022 his government started to slide into collapse. Then 3 months later came the decisive turning point in the life of our Question when, within days of each other, successor Prime Minister Liz Truss chose to blow up the UK economy (23rd September), and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer announced the ‘fairer, greener future’ theme (25th September) which at that point seemed likely to headline Labour’s path towards the election. In just a few weeks, the voting intention polls had crossed over to a huge Labour lead which would subsequently never falter. It was at that moment that the possibility of our question having any meaning burst into life. ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the question’.
CAN YOU MAKE THE QUESTION DISAPPEAR? AND WHERE CAN YOU FIND THE ANSWER? Now for the philosophical musings, where we can think a little more deeply about ‘questions’ and the ‘answers’ to them. Such as: whether a question is a valid one, how should we know what constitutes an answer, and where should you go to elicit it? Specifically, what should you do if the question is met with silence and an answer refused or infinitely postponed? We shouldn’t skip round such semantic niceties.
Questions can very often concern themselves with secondary detail. So how much does getting an Answer to our Question really matter? Well, as constructive members of civil society, we’ll be the judge of that and we’re entitled to ask it. Our assertion is that the Question is really important because it’s related to the existential issue of the continuous shrinking of the UK carbon budget towards its date with destiny at 2050’s Net Zero. And it needs to be asked because so far it hasn’t had an Answer.
Questions can be expressed either positively or negatively, and at start of the project we debated whether the question in the report’s title should be ‘how can Labour pass its transport decarbonisation test?’ as against ‘will Labour fail its transport decarbonisation test? We settled on the latter because it would be premature and back-to-front to do otherwise. As the report page 9 said it ‘only asks questions and is, quite deliberately, not proposing its own preferred set of answers and ‘solutions’. That is the responsibility of Labour policymakers and … ministers to then undertake as a next stage, because the right mix of interventions can only be assembled, and their impacts weighed, after there is agreement as to what is the scale and complexity of the problem that has to be fixed.’
Consequently the report didn’t just begin with a Question; in its format and content it was itself made up of many more questions, in fact 55 of them. By proclaiming ‘you must first analyse the problem’ it was asserting that questions (and thinking about them) always have to precede what the answers might be. By doing so we would also ensure greater clarity as to where institutionally the many problems are located. Thus reformulated we can see that the issue is not ‘what is the answer?’ but ‘who should provide it?’ It shouldn’t be transport campaigners but instead has to be the responsibility of the ‘problem owner’: the DfT, now under Labour’s direction.
Which then takes our inquiry in an interesting direction: to what extent can we know if Labour is even aware of the existence of the question about transport decarbonisation, as the report defined it? Did it, particularly before the election, have the capacity to identify the scale of the problem, and if necessary reach out to the range of voices that would have only been too happy to help think it through? And why only address the question to Labour? It’s a matter of the different track records. As the report page 9 commented: ‘The evidence for what happened to the transport emissions pathway during the period of Conservative governments from 2010 onwards, and as a result of the policies they pursued, demonstrates conclusively that the Conservatives have certainly failed that Test, as finally confirmed by a series of decisions leading up to, at and after the 2023 party conferences.’
Right at the start of the report’s development we wrote to Labour shadow transport ministers asking if it was possible to have conversations with them around the Question – which would have established that they were already seized of it – but that opportunity wasn’t taken up. Subsequently there’s been nothing but obfuscation: Labour’s climate ‘mission’ briefing of July 2023 promised further details over the next year of how it would tackle transport decarbonisation, but that never arrived.
Which takes us to the next stage in our inquiry about Questions & Answers: How does an organisation – a political party or government department – deal with difficult questions being put to them? PR professionals and political consultants would advise that the way to do that is by adopting a ‘suppression strategy’. If everybody, in a very disciplined manner, agrees to say nothing about the troublesome issue – no statements or speeches made, let alone strategy pronouncements – then mostly people will continue to believe that there is no problem that requires solving. Another way would be not to disclose which DfT minister has been assigned a specific decarbonisation remit, as is currently the case (there was one when the Conservatives produced the Transport Decarbonisation Plan in 2021).
That this stratagem might well have been adopted was beginning to be visible from the middle of 2023 as I noted in August: ‘it can be seen that so far Labour has limited its commitments around climate to increased energy generation, which is not the same as ‘decarbonisation’ that requires rafts of policies systematically reducing emissions sector by sector’. Labour, before and after the election, have adopted an ‘ostrich’ posture: pretending that the actual transport decarbonisation problem simply isn’t there, so there’s nothing to answer about. But, as no one needs to be told, the problem with ‘sticking your head in the sand’ is that in the real world the difficult problems the Question is probing are still there.
MATHEMATICAL PROOF OF THE QUESTION’S EXISTENCE. AND AN INITIAL ANSWER So to be clear: the issue we’re discussing here isn’t about ‘this or that transport decarbonisation analysis’. Rather it’s about whether DfT policy makers and now Labour ministers are prepared to publicly admit that there is a Question about transport’s carbon emissions which, because of their scale and the ever-reducing timescale to 2050, they accept needs to be acted upon by policy change as an absolute priority?
And the criticism can’t be made that the report was a superficial assessment of the subject. It was systematic, examining the decarbonisation issue from every angle download the list of 55 questions, over 85 pages and with the sources identified in over 300 footnotes. Its conclusions were aggregated in a comprehensive executive summary about the location of transport decarbonisation ‘problem: it’s the deeply embedded DfT policy frameworks (for roads and aviation, responsible for 89% of transport emissions) which are driving this, and therefore ‘if policy frameworks have failed, change them!’ page 58
The report’s emphasis on data analysis means that it would be much more difficult to disprove. (Lest it be thought that mathematical exactitude doesn’t matter very much, note that the ZEMO partnership (‘accelerating transport to zero emissions’) communicated to a parliamentary audience on 11th December that transport’s share of the UK emissions is 26%, whilst the Guardian on 31st December said it was 29%. Actually it’s 36% and rising; the difference between these numbers is all-important as articles 2 and 3 duly demonstrate with their expositions through the powerful lens of the numerator/denominator fraction.
The report exhaustively catalogued the issues that Labour should have been pondering and preparing for before entering office. What has been its policy response in the six months since 4th July? The Labour government has made no ‘headline’ pronouncements about transport decarbonisation; article 1 noted that the DfT’s November transport strategy prioritisation did not include it; something emphasised by the taxation and expenditure decisions in the 30th October budget, which set the incentive slopes in completely the wrong direction (by increasing the competitiveness of ICE vehicles); whilst December’s NPPF revision and the Devolution White Paper completely missed the opportunity to transform the interaction between spatial planning and transport policy, or empower regional/local authorities to decarbonise transport, respectively. After barely 6 weeks in office what could be the first of many airport expansions was approved in August.
Finally the 17th December government response to CCC 2024 Progress report – which we’re entitled to take as a final indication after 6 months as to the Labour government’s intention to proceed or not with accelerated and quantifiable decarbonisation – concealed its real response behind headline messaging that nonetheless should be taken at face value: ‘As the current largest emitting sector, decarbonising transport is central to the delivery of the UK’s cross-economy climate targets, whilst directly supporting the Prime Minister’s mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower and accelerate our journey to net zero. We have taken action…’paras 2.47-48
But hidden away, a dozen pages after its section reporting measured progress on the EV transition, and in response to the CCC’s emphatic ‘Stop airport expansion without a UK-wide capacity management framework’ – (DfT responded last year that they wouldn’t produce one) – are these weasel words: ‘The government recognises a role for airport expansion where it provides economic growth and is compatible with our legally binding net zero target and strict environmental standards.’page 62. Which, decoded, means the government intends to ignore the CCC recommendation and continue to promote aviation demand & capacity growth, with all its consequences for (relative) emissions increase – as per article 3
On 19th May our report was sent to the Labour shadow ministerial team and the DfT. In August the updated version was circulated to all 411 Labour MPs, together with summary 7 page and even 2 page briefings. The latter suggested how particularly the many new Labour MPs could contribute to resolving the government’s immediate pressure points around reductions in public expenditure and competition between road and rail capital schemes. The report had also been sent to Labour related organisations such as their own in-house think tank Labour Together; the Labour Climate & Environment Forum; and SERA (the Socialist Environment & Resources Association). What has been the Labour response? There was none, not even some polite acknowledgements. To be clear that wasn’t necessarily unexpected or a huge disappointment because it was sort of anticipated within the question.
The larger point at issue is what does this lack of response tell us about Labour’s ability to engage collaboratively in, and develop effective policy-making. That there was not a glimmer of interest in what was a constructive attempt to contribute to a debate around transport decarbonisation would point towards a diagnosis of widely spread and structural policy incompetence, which is one that commentators across a broader spectrum have suggested about the new government (‘Despite being out of office for 14 years, Labour took power with an undercooked agenda ...’, today’s Economist). (Even though that explanation might appear to be credible we’re still confronted by the same problem discussed above: how can we know about the competence of Labour’s transport policy making capacity, in or out of office, seeing that process is also not publicly accessible and is consequently opaque.)
At this point it would be reasonable to slightly lose patience and assert some straightforward protocols such as: ‘it’s the responsibility of political parties seeking office to adequately prepare and disclose what they intend to do on issues of very considerable significance. If they don’t do that, then the default interpretation – that such as civil society should make – would be: ‘If you don’t want negative inferences to be drawn from the ambiguity you’ve created by your policy silence, then you should make public statements to the contrary’. And if you don’t, it’s your responsibility – ‘you’ve only got yourself to blame’. There have been so many opportunities for Labour to indicate potentially positive answers to our Question which have not been taken.
On that basis, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that the Answer we should assume from the silence of Labour transport ministers about our Question would have to be: No, it’s not their intention to make transport decarbonisation a central priority for them, until such time as there is explicit evidence to the contrary.
But then let’s note this caveat: it’s not the responsibility of any particular group of campaigners at any particular time to pronounce such a conclusion. The real arbiter of our Question has to be the Climate Change Committee and so far we know that: the DfT has persistently ignored the CCC analysis and its recommendations relating to roads and aviation; the new Labour government have started down that same route, with its immediate flouting of the ‘no airport expansion’ recommendation; that CCC recent progress reports have become increasingly concerned about this because the data evidence shows that there are policy shortfalls against carbon budgets.
It’s also the case that the Answer to our Question needs to be provided in a more definitive arena, and one where the rulings can actually require a change of policy direction.
THE COURTS AS ULTIMATE AJUDICATOR OF BOTH QUESTION AND ANSWER
So where are we now at the start of 2025? With first our report and then these articles we’ve done sufficient to demonstrate that the problem with transport decarbonisation (a.k.a. the Question) actually does exist.
Article 1 showed that: the failure to focus transport strategy around decarbonisation must de facto indicate the DfT doesn’t have the answer to the problem it itself has created, and that Labour ministers may not know it exists (maybe because they are insufficiently inquisitive) or are choosing to ignore it for their own motives.
Article 2+3 have demonstrated with factual and mathematical certainty* that the Question around decarbonisation does exist – regardless of what DfT officials and Labour ministers wish to admit – and that the problem will continue to get worse unless the overarching policy frameworks change direction. [*But NB the the precautionary caveat about this at the end of the article]
Article 3 pointed towards a solution within the framework established by the independent expertise of the CCC, and its duty to periodically set the next carbon budget (which as we approach NZ 2050 becomes ever more crucial): that the transport emissions pathway needs to be revised downwards within CB7.
Article 4 substantiated the potential for civil society to initiate judicial review if the Climate Change Act is not being respected, and established a potential ‘Case for the Prosecution’ in 2025 should that be necessary.
As a result, by locating the issue of ‘Questions & Answers’ in a legal framework, it also shows how the ‘stratagem of suppression’ being practised by the DfT and its ministers can be overcome. Because if the validity of the Question is provable within the legal requirements of that framework, it follows that an Answer NOW has to be provided. What that verdict is however will have to be determined in a forum of legal standing, rather than in some articles on a website: in a court of law.
At the moment the government are stuck at the midpoint of a three stage ‘Denial, leading to Resolution’ cycle, where in:
stage 1 – government ministers and the DfT continue to deny the existence of the Question. Therefore no Answer is needed and there are no political or governance means which can make them deviate from that pretence.
Stage 2 – Thus it is first necessary to force the existence of the Question to be admitted, and therefore also the obligation to provide an Answer. The only process that can require a government minister to do that is within the legal framework of the Climate Change Act.
This is where we are now. Within a legal framework, it can be argued that ‘silence is an admission of guilt’. If ministers – specifically the Secretaries of State for Energy Security & Net Zero, and for Transport – are forced into court, they’ll have no other recourse but to explain what their pathway analyses and justifications are and tell the truth. That is, they’ll be forced to Answer the Question. That’s the great strength of the era of ‘decarbonisation by legal challenge’ and the availability of an exact legal framing. Even government ministers are required to reveal all.
Stage 3 – Therefore the Answer to the Question … will have, if necessary, to be found in court. In 2025. And with a potential judicial review of the Labour government’s Climate Plan that’s now under development. The advantage of utilising this arena is that the court case would implicate the government as a whole, which will be attempting to argue that it has been able to demonstrate a cross-government lawful carbon budget. In that situation it’s the DfT – with by far the largest emissions sector, stacked with delivery risks – which is causing the problem.
In other words, to slightly reword the title of this article, it’s the DfT versus a lawful government climate plan. Reframed in this way, it confronts Secretary of State Miliband and ultimately Prime Minister Starmer with a choice. Either to continue to stand behind an unchanging DfT, responsible for so many structural policy failures over the decades, from Beeching, through various failed deregulations, to just the latest: the massive cost overruns which have wrecked the prospect of a south-north high-speed rail network. Or to support the government’s third attempt – which by now is getting precious close to falling out of reach – at a climate plan that fulfils the requirements of the act Labour itself passed just 15 years ago. With the legacy of Atlee’s 1947 Planning Act now under threat, will Miliband’s 2008 Climate Change Act be next?
This examination of our Question has revealed that it can’t be answered at the moment because of the inherent nature of the DfT itself, rather than whichever political party is in charge at any moment. It’s the core DfT policy frameworks for roads and aviation that have to be changed and removed. Which finally leads us to the most difficult Question – and Answer – of all: even if that were to happen, is it too late to introduce new strategy priorities for the DfT – now focused on transport decarbonisation – and consequently is it too late for the hugely challenging UK 2030 -68% reduction target to be met? Well a good response often invoked in such circumstances is ‘it’s never too late’.
But a more pessimistic conclusion might be this: if Labour by now hasn’t been prepared to even acknowledge the existence of this problem, and its scale, after 6 months in office, how could it possibly begin to tackle it in the 5 years remaining before we reach 2030? Realistically the answer to that question has to be: there’s very little chance at all. But, still, no reason not to attempt it.
Comments/questions about this article to info@transportnorth.org.uk
Precautionary caveat: The analysis of this series of articles – that transport’s uniquely large and rising share of the UK carbon budget is such that it will be difficult if not impossible for the government to propose a lawful climate plan in 2025- is a hypothesis which can only be proven by quantified modelling. This would need to be undertaken i) by the government itself in the form of a scenario demonstrating the opposite, and/or ii) by CCC within the modelling it is now undertaking for CB7.
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The previous four articles in this series are: The government’s proposed new transport strategy: ‘integrated’ or already ‘out of service’? published on 4th December; Transport eats the UK carbon budget – 11th December; CCC needs to revise the aviation emissions pathway downwards – 18th December; and Legal showdown: the DfT versus the Climate Change Act – 28th December. They will be available shortly in a searchable PDF download.