Rishi Sunak accused of planning U-turn on £11.6bn climate finance pledge

Government denies leaked report suggesting PM is on track to drop Britain's funding commitment

A leaked document has accused Rishi Sunak’s government of ‘moral bankruptcy’. Reuters

The UK government has denied it is planning to drop its flagship £11.6 billion ($14.76 billion) climate and nature funding pledge ahead of Cop28, following a leaked report.

Rishi Sunak’s government is being accused of “moral bankruptcy” after a document given to the Foreign Office suggested it was on track to discard its international climate finance policy.

The Prime Minister was warned scrapping the promise would “echo around the world” and affect those most vulnerable to global warming.

Seen by The Guardian and the BBC, the document says: "Our commitment to double our international climate finance to £11.6 billion was made in 2019, when we were still at 0.7 [per cent of GDP spent on international aid] and pre-Covid."

Officials have calculated the government would have to spend 83 per cent of the Foreign Office’s development assistance budget on the international climate fund, the leaked report suggests. This “would squeeze out room for other commitments such as humanitarian and women and girls”, civil servants noted in the report.

The Foreign Office refuted the suggestions.

“Claims that the International Climate Finance pledge is being dropped are false,” a government representative said.

“As the Prime Minister set out at Cop27, the government remains committed to spending £11.6 billion on international climate finance and we are delivering on that pledge.

“We spent over £1.4 billion on international climate finance over the course of the 2021/22 financial year, supporting developing countries to reduce poverty and respond to the causes and impacts of climate change.

“We will publish the latest annual figures in due course.”

Mr Sunak's climate policies have come under scrutiny after international environment minister Zac Goldsmith resigned last week.

He attacked the Prime Minister's approach to environmental issues, saying the government was "uninterested". He said Britain had "visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature".

Mr Goldsmith on Wednesday suggested any U-turn would "be seen as an act of betrayal on a profound level and will cause us irreparable reputational harm".

The peer in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament, said the fact the pledge had been made consistently by Mr Sunak and his predecessors Liz Truss and Boris Johnson "adds to a sense that the UK is no longer a reliable partner".

"Our competitors will be licking their lips," he said, adding that the Sunak administration "must keep this promise, or be made to".

In a further blow to Mr Sunak's green agenda, Britain's advisers on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) also last week said the nation had lost its position as a global leader on environmental action. The committee said ministers were not taking the robust action needed to meet the 2050 net-zero target.

The CCC found the UK was failing in improving energy efficiency in buildings, introducing eco-friendly heat pumps in homes, curbing emissions from industry and increasing the rate of tree planting, which must double by 2025 to help meet the goals.

Cop26 president and Conservative MP Alok Sharma said he hoped the latest reports were inaccurate.

“So hope the government is not planning to drop its climate finance pledge to some of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world,” he wrote on Twitter.

“I was at the UN when Boris Johnson made this commitment – to spontaneous applause. It was a proud moment for the UK.”

Green MP and former party leader Caroline Lucas said if the UK backtracked on its commitment, it would be seen as a betrayal of poor nations.

“The UK is one of the world’s richest countries and we’re really going to tell our kids we can’t ‘afford’ to pay for a liveable planet for them?” she wrote on Twitter. “And we’re going to betray some of the poorest countries? This Govt’s moral bankruptcy is truly sickening.”

Shadow cabinet minister Preet Kaur Gill said of the leaked report: “Unsurprising to anyone following UK development policy, but no less shocking. This was meant to deliver on a 14 year old promise to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries. Yet another broken promise that will echo around the world.”

Friends of the Earth campaign group said it would be “awful” if Britain tore up ditched its International Climate Finance promise.

But Richard Tice, leader of the Reform UK party and a former MEP, lambasted the policy and said it would be best for Mr Sunak to forget it.

In a message posted on social media, he said: “Let's hope for once, Rishi does sensible thing and drop this absurd pledge which is waste of our cash and make zero difference to natural climate change.”

Mr Tice said an “obsession with net zero” is making [the] UK poorer and colder”.