Camilla and Tim clash over climate change

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:07With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI-powered shortlisting delivers a curated shortlist of top freelancers matched to your goals in under six hours. No endless searching required. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. Andy Burnham's been accused of cowardice after it emerges he wants to drill more in the North Sea, but he's worried about the optics.

1:53And can the right debate climate change without it descending into this? While people are watching thousands of acres of land burning up in Europe. The number of wildfires that we're having today is less than we had 30 years ago. OK, thank you for proving my point, Camilla. As I said at the beginning, everyone says, I do believe in climate change. I take your point. We are, we are, we are. This is conservatism, everybody. This is what, this is how conservatism works. You just say. The Titanic is thinking, why don't you have a martini at the bar? Now, Tim, you've written a now infamous column about climate change, which saw you become the subject of a grotesque pile on.

2:36Some could say a digital lynching, because you suggested that the right don't take climate change seriously enough. And then you were accused of being a wetty. And everyone said, what's happened to Tim Stanley? What's happened to the Telegraph by implication? because we know a lot of our audience are climate change sceptics. Should we put it like that? Have I melted in the summer heat? That's what people were asking. You were basically making the point, look at these wildfires, look at these floods, look at just the state of the world. We've got to take this seriously, even though we disagree about the solutions.

3:08And therefore, who better to welcome into the Daily Tea studio than Claire Coutinho, who is the shadow energy secretary and therefore the woman charged with the Tories' approach to net zero. and other policies. You make your case, Tim, because you made it really well in the column, even though everyone hated you for it. Well, I'm still receiving graphs in the post. I know. People are still sending me graphs. By the way, I'm also getting emails. You tell Tim Stanley. Oh, really? Yes. Pass it on. How funny. Well, just to pick up on something you said there, you said our readers are sceptics about climate change.

3:39And that really interests me. Because one thing I said in the piece is the right comes across as if it is sceptical of climate change and then lots of people said to me no we're not we accept that it's happening we're challenging what's caused it and the right way to fix it but then once they had said that they sent me loads of graphs that proved it's not happening and i think that actually a lot of people on the right just think it's not happening but at the same time it's so obviously happening that they have to they have to square those two things up when you say it's so obviously happening I'm going to be the climate change sceptic because I appreciate that if you're a COVID sceptic, suddenly people started rushing to say that you're an anti-vaxxer.

4:20And the same sort of thing is going on here, right? I'm a bit sceptical about some of the data that keeps on. I mean, the BBC is emblematic of all this. The weather map is red. We're on the verge of a climate catastrophe. You know, sack Polanski on steroids. Basically, we're all going to die. And people have pointed to scientific data saying, the temperature of the earth has always fluctuated. Can we just all keep calm? Claire? By the way, the temperature of the earth has always fluctuated and we've had catastrophes as a result of that. So again, I come back to, everyone keeps saying to me, I'm not denying climate change, but, and one thing they say is, but it's happened in the past.

4:59Yes, it has happened in the past and it has been catastrophic for humanity. Claire's across the data. Have we got concrete proof that climate change exists? So I would say basically there's in this debate of all debates, there is a lot of duff data and ideology on both sides. And for me, the far more interesting question is we are not denying that there is climate change. But the question is, to Tim's point, what we should do about it. And I think the much, much more interesting policy question for politicians is how do you come up with a set of policies that is going to work for the environment?

5:35I do believe it's a deeply conservative principle that we should hand down a better environment to the next generation, but also not kneecap our economy, bankrupt us and damage living standards. And far too often what you see in this debate is the conflation of things which are not the same. So, you know, believing in climate change is not the same thing as supporting net zero. Supporting net zero is not the same thing as protecting nature. And a good energy policy, which is what we've been talking about today, is one that will do its bit for the environment, but also make sure that what we can hand down to the next generation is not just a better environment, but a strong economy and a high quality of living as well.

6:20Yes. I mean, that's the David Frost argument, too. we can agree or disagree on climate change let's assume we agree we can then disagree or agree on the policies that come forward and the frost argument would be i think climate change probably is happening but it's the definition of madness to repeat the same action again and again and expect a different result and that is chasing arbitrary net zero targets which only succeed in making us poorer and colder yeah and there is evidence for that by the way i mean regardless Miata Fanbula, who's your opposite, who's the actual Energy Secretary who took over from Ed Miliband after the elevation to Downing Street of Andy Burnham.

6:58I mean, she is, I've written a piece about this. The whole of that department now is full of net zero zealots. She can't even accept, by the way, that green levies have pushed bills up. So there's a denialism on the kind of climate emergency front, as well as there might be a denialism on the climate change sceptic front. I think I'm right in saying there's more experience in working with friends of the earth than there is in working in the private sector full stop in that department now, which is astonishing to me. It's an incredibly commercial department. Huge amounts of economic policy is formed on the basis of energy policy.

7:35And I don't think they've got anybody who's got any commercial experience in there. Well, they're all elected in 2024, apart from Baroness Curran. She's got previous parliamentary experience, but she's in the Lords, so she can't face scrutiny in the lower chamber. None of them have any business experience. And none of the ministers, there's seven ministers in that department. None of them have any scientific or engineering background whatsoever. And these are the people who are going to orchestrate the repowering of our energy grid. I blame some of the confusion in this debate on the culture warrification of everything.

8:05And I understand that many right-wing people are sceptical about climate change alarmism because they see it as a cover for introducing socialism. Let me offer an imperfect analogue. I believe the coronavirus exists and that it kills people. That doesn't mean I believe in 24-7 lockdowns and handing over the power to the state to run my life. I do believe that we should monitor it, that we should track and trace for it, that we should advise people to behave sensibly and maybe place some restrictions in case of an emergency. In other words, there is a nuanced response to it. But as we all know, some people on the right have persuaded themselves the coronavirus essentially doesn't exist or doesn't matter or is a conspiracy by aliens and Jews to persuade us to introduce communism.

8:54Likewise, there is a perspective on the left of the coronavirus is why we need communism, why we need complete control over everything and everyone all of the time. And this is my analogue for climate change. Now, one other frustrating response to my piece is left-wing people said, Tim Stanley is slapping down Kemi Baden-Ock. I'm not slapping down Kemi Baden-Ock. I agree with her and she agrees with me because, correct me if I'm wrong, her position is climate change is real. We do need to do something about it. It's just that net zero is a bad policy because it will undermine economic growth without doing sufficient good for the environment to justify the cost.

9:37It's actually stronger than that. It's that it's doing bad things for the environment. So the report that we set out today looks at where emissions are in the economy. You've got 10 % in the power sector, 90 % are elsewhere in things like heating and transport. and what we're doing through net zero legislation what it forces you to do and what the Labour Party have taken even further is to completely decarbonize your electricity first and all that's doing is making electricity more and more expensive that makes electrification more and more out of reach for ordinary families so that 90 % of emissions becomes even harder for people to deal with because they can't afford the tools that they need to do that so actually net zero is not just not doing enough for the environment, it's actually making the problem worse.

10:20The other problem that you've got is it's offshoring our emissions because again, it's putting all these onerous taxes and burdens on our businesses and companies. So they're shutting down, they're moving overseas. Where are they moving? To places like China, which are 60 % powered by coal. And then what happens is we import back those same products that we used to make with our actually pretty clean energy in Britain with twice the emissions. Again, that is worse. So I think that's what the left need to engage with. And to your point, if you look at what's happened in climate policy, there are a lot of people on the left who are quite warm to this idea of having a kind of climate dictatorship.

11:01So you see people on the left, these Labour MPs campaigning against AI. You see Sadiq Khan, who's very happy to ban air conditioning. You know, Ed Miliband has this fatwa on heated toweling rails. And the problem with that is, again, you are not going to have people in Britain supporting these environmental policies if what they do is look around the world and see that we alone are being asked to turn our backs on modernity and live in the dark ages. I think there were even some green councillors who were saying that they wanted to ban leaf blowers and go back to rakes. Although I'm going to stop you there, Claire Coutinho, because the Tories drank a lot of this Kool-Aid back in the day, didn't they?

11:41I mean, the green crap. Was that a David Cameron thing? It was David Cameron, yes. He came up with the green crap, then he quickly wanted to ditch it. Now you're running away from it. Some could argue you're arsonist. Sorry to use this terminology when we consider wildfires, but you are the arsonist trying to put out your own flames. Well, neither Kemi or I have ever shied away from criticising our party for those decisions that were made. I mean, I wasn't there when the net zero legislation that Theresa brought forward was passed, but she was. And to be fair to Kemi, she was one of two people in the entirety of Parliament who spoke up and asked questions when that legislation was being passed.

12:14But neither of us have been shy about criticising our predecessors for pursuing this approach. But again, I don't think it's enough to just recognise mistakes. you've got to ask what you can do about it. And what we've done about it is changed the position. We've inherited a position on energy and climate that we've completely transformed. And I would say our position now is the only credible position in politics, which is a position which protects the environment, also supports the economy and genuinely gets you to cheap energy. This report that we've launched today is the most extensive and detailed analysis on the cost of energy that's ever been produced in British politics.

12:52and it gets you to a saving of£320 billion on people's energy bills by 2050. No one else is doing that work. Only we are. And I think that is the best way we can atone for the mistakes that we made before. So break it down for us. I mean, usually these things are three-point plans, five-point plans, seven-point plans or ten missions. Well, just give us the headline policies. So what we've done is we've compared a net zero grid, one that uses lots and lots of wind and solar, with one that prioritises cheaper power. So it uses much more nuclear, a bit more gas, and still a bit of wind and solar.

13:28And what we found is that cheap power pass saves£320 billion by 2050. That's the equivalent to£540 per household per year for 20 years. And it's still at the end of it, your power comes 80 % from clean power sources, mainly because you're putting a lot of nuclear in the system and then removing a lot of wind and solar from the current government's plans. Okay, so replace wind and solar with some more nuclear. And a bit more gas as well. If it's online, yeah. Carry on. Yes, and then you would also take out some of the policies which we think are counterproductive. At the moment, there's a tax, for example, that sits on gas power that's pushing up the cost of power across the system.

14:08But again, just come back to this bigger point, it's completely counterproductive to make your electricity expensive, which is what this carbon tax does. If what you actually want for those 90 % of emissions elsewhere in the economy is for people to adopt electricity. So the question is whether you can have a little bit more gas in your system, a lot more nuclear, and actually make it much easier for people to switch from, say, gas boilers to electric heating if they want to do so. And we believe that for all of these things, economy, AI, living standards, and the environment, whatever you want to do, the best thing that we can do in energy policy is to make electricity cheap.

14:42All right. So I'm going to ask you some quickfire questions just so we know where you are now on this. arbitrary removal of petrol and diesel cars by some strange date? No, we want consumer choice to be king. We think politicians should lift the barriers, make electricity cheap, let consumers choose. Must have a heat pump, get rid of your boiler. Again, no, we want consumers to choose. But again, lift the barriers, make electricity cheap. Frack, baby frack. Big focus is more on the North Sea because it's dying at the moment. So what we are saying is you've got to change all the policies in the North Sea.

15:15Otherwise, your whole gas industry dies. All right, so drill, baby, drill. Yes, 100%. So new licenses. Yes, 100%. OK. And then EVs, where are you on them? Again, if consumers want them, great. But we should be lifting barriers, not forcing people to choose. But are you going for ramp up charging points? Yeah, because if you say people want them, well, one reason why they don't want them is because of the lack of infrastructure, the lack of charging points. So again, I think absolutely fine for government to help with charging infrastructure. But we don't want to force people to buy products they don't want to use.

15:50Where's Burnham on all this? I mean, who knows? So his new energy secretary talks about pragmatism. But as far as I can see, all the policies are the same as Ed Miliband's policies with some tinkering around the edges, perhaps. And he was the most ideological politician that I've ever come up against in energy policy. He is living in a fantasy land when he talks about either energy, net zero, any of his targets. And there are a few small changes here and there. They said, oh, we'll sign off one oil field in the North Sea, but we'll still keep a ban on new licenses. I think she, the new energy secretary, said, oh, I'll push back Clean Power 2030, which is their plan to decarbonise electricity by one or two years.

16:31But it's still going to make electricity vastly more expensive overall. And then Andy Burnham said, you know, he believes in the North Sea. But now we read in the last couple of days that he doesn't like the optics of signing off those new fields because we've had this summer of wildfires. But that to me is actually worse than Ed Miliband because he knows it's the right thing to do. He's just too chicken to do it because if you use that gas from the North Sea, it's better for the environment than importing all this dirtier gas in from abroad. And he seems to understand that, but yet not be willing to make the necessary...

17:05You're calling the Prime Minister a coward here, Claire Coutinho. Yeah, well, I think that's fair when it comes to the North Sea. People are losing their jobs. Thousands of people are losing their jobs. He knows it's the right thing to do to sign off these fields. But what we read this week is that he doesn't like the optics of it, so he's going to push back this decision to the autumn. I mean, how many more people are going to lose their jobs? I think that is a cowardly decision. That is a cowardly decision. But he won't win any Telegraph votes with this policy because we polled our readers and said, do you support opening Rosebank and Jackdaw?

17:392 % said, no, we have to think about the environmental consequences. And 98 % said, yes, we need to use our domestic energy resources. I don't think that's just telegraph readers. Even Dale Vince, I read somewhere. That's true. A friend of this podcast. We had him here for 15 minutes. Then he felt emotionally challenged by some of my questions and he had to storm out in his vesting singlet. Dale, come back to us. Because even, you're right, even he is having a second thought. Yes. But that's because we're not there yet. We're not at a place in which we can rely upon green power, partly because we delayed things like rolling out nuclear.

18:16I assume there is a big upfront cost to your cost-saving plan, because there must be if nuclear is involved in it somehow, because that's very expensive to build. Yes, so you would have more upfront cost on nuclear. But overall, like I said, you make huge savings. And that's because even though you're spending a bit more to build more nuclear, you're building half the amount of grid in that cheap power system because you need huge this is one of the things you know these extra hidden costs that people don't talk about when wind and solar are being spoken about you have these huge hidden extra costs one of those is building all of those pylons and cables to bring power from scotland down to where it's needed and half the savings that you make of that 320 billion that we i talked about come from building far less grid so So yes, of course, you need to build different kinds of infrastructure, but you build far less infrastructure overall and that infrastructure is more productive.

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21:28It is a rule in column writing that no one reads the column. You may just as well ask a sub to write you a headline and then I could just write out the telephone directory underneath it, right? And people will just respond to the headline. That's not always the case. I think you're being cruel. I read your column. I read your column. I read your column. Sometimes I even put comments under. Really? That's interesting. I'm joking. I look for all the sweary ones. But I think the one reason why this triggered such a great response was one, because some people are nervous that the right and the conservatives are coming across as not caring about the environment.

22:08So when all the talk is about energy policy, and not about what you can do to stall climate change, you're going to hit a general election at some point in which the public, who very much do care about it, are going to say to you, what are you going to do about these rising oceans and about these wildfires, etc. So there's a rhetorical emphasis there, which I think some people are uncomfortable with. The other thing is I noticed that what I wrote very quickly snowballed into a debate about the Tory party. Is it too left-wing, too right-wing? Who should be allowed in it? Who shouldn't be? And there are reports now of previous cabinet members, people like Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt, who are regarded as being more liberal in Tory circles, not being allowed to run again.

22:51In other words, is there a purge going on of wets or liberals or moderates? And is that going to result in a party which may be more coherent philosophically, but perhaps is less attractive to that group of people who I've described who are concerned about things like the environment and want to know what a conservative government would do to preserve their ecology? So firstly, like I said before, I think it is a fundamentally conservative principle to want to protect the environment. But I also think one of the biggest problems in politics that we've got at the moment, and indeed we had under previous conservative governments before, is being more interested in the optics than finding out the right solutions for the country and then persuading people that you have them.

23:38And that is what Kemi and this new generation of conservatives are trying to do. So we set out like we talked about the policies this morning. But the point is, we need to persuade people that our plans are better for the environment and the economy. And I think obviously that we've got a very strong case. In terms of the individual candidates, I don't know anything about the individual candidates. But what I do know is that Kemi has said two things that you have to sign up to if you want to be a Conservative MP is that we will leave the ECHR and we will scrap net zero legislation. And I think that's absolutely correct because you have to have people in your parliamentary party who are going to support your main agenda.

24:15And there's two things that we want to do if we get into power next time. We want to control immigration and we want to get to cheap energy. And everybody needs to sign up to that. And I think that is perfectly appropriate and the right thing to do for any leader. because we've seen in multiple parliaments, including in Keir Starmer's and before that with us, that if your parliamentary party is not with you to do these difficult things, then you end up in stasis and that's not good for the country. Putting aside the arguments about whether this is democratic or not, and I think parties have every right to decide who does and doesn't run.

24:49She's not saying there can't be members. She's just saying, I want a parliamentary body that's going to support a Tory manifesto when they get... That's perfectly reasonable. But as you know, Claire, politics is about signalling And it isn't necessarily the detail of scrapping net zero or the ECHR. Those two things send a signal to many voters who might in the past have voted Conservative that you don't care about the environment and you don't care about human rights. And there are a lot of people in perhaps more swing Lib Demi type seats, sort of Guildford St Albans type areas, who look at what you're doing and what Kemi's doing and thinking, she's chasing reform voters, not me.

25:28Well, firstly, I don't think it is right for us to say we support net zero because of the optics, even though we think that's worse for the environment. That's not our job. But forgive me, this is not. You're talking about the optics. You're banning someone from running who might say that. So you can have a party saying that's our policy. But by saying publicly we are not allowing anyone to run who takes that position, my point is you're sending a broader signal to people about the direction that some will be uncomfortable with. That is our direction. And my response is that it's not the signalling we should care about.

26:01It's the policy intent. We want to fix the problems for the country. We are deadly serious about that. And you cannot get to cheaper electricity, which, by the way, you need for a cleaner environment unless you scrap net zero legislation. So there are lots of people who want to have a conversation about optics and signaling and blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. What we are focused on is making sure we've got the right policies for the country and we want people to be persuaded by them. Now, obviously, this is a big change for the Conservatives. Again, I don't think anybody else is talking about energy policy in this detailed way.

26:32This is a completely new approach from what's happened, not just in this country, but across northern Europe for some time. That means we have to go out there and persuade people. I'm not saying, you know, we don't care what anybody thinks. We want to go out and make the case for this. But what I think is absolutely wrong is to say Conservatives should sign up to policy that they know is failing because it looks better. What did you make of Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, making a joke that the good thing about climate change was that it would help people in the wine industry in Kent and southern parts of the UK to prosper?

27:08my my issue with reform and look i agree with people actually you know often across the political spectrum on different bits of what they say at the headline level but what i don't see from them is any serious work underneath energy is a technical area what you can't do is just say net stupid zero click your fingers and think you're going to cut people's bills and actually an entire time that we've been in opposition i've not really seen any serious energy policy from reform. There was a point where they seemed to announce our policy and no one on their side could really understand the details or knew what they were talking about.

27:43They say you're announcing their policy, you say they're announcing your policy. You're basically just crossing over on policy. You want to ditch net zero, you want to drill more in the North Sea, you want a plan that provides for renewables but also more nuclear. But it's not enough. I'm sorry. It's not enough just to say, oh, ditch net zero legislation. You have to know what you're putting in place for your energy policy and like i said we've set out the most detailed energy analysis that's ever been done in british politics this morning because we care about what that looks like you know if they seize serious policy from them i will i will look at it like i like i say i'm not i think actually energy policy can sit across the policy spectrum i've had people on the left and the right agree with me and disagree with me uh but i do think it takes hard yards and actually one of the things i would say about reform is they seem to have spent their some are arguing with each other and having fake by-elections.

28:33And I do think this stuff is more important. Final question, because we had Tim Montgomery in the studio discussing his, how do we put it, issues within the party, because he's just been suspended and he pointed the finger at Zia Yusuf and we know that Zia Yusuf has got some problems with some of the former Conservatives in his midst. If they had buyer's remorse, would you take back the likes of Tim Montgomery, Robert Jenrick, your old friend Danny Kruger back into the Tories if it all went wrong for them at reform? Well, you know, I like Danny in particular. He's actually a genuinely good friend of mine.

29:12You know, these decisions aren't for me. But what I would say is I care about fixing the problems the country has and I'll work with anyone to do it and I think that their issue I have some sympathy for them because we have this in previous parliaments nobody is immune to it but if you spend more of your time disliking other members of your team rather than focusing on a single plan that works then you're too distracted the country has these major problems there's there's so many things that we need to do and fix and actually politics for a long time has not been working and people have not been coming up with proper policy or solutions.

29:50And I think everybody should be full guns ahead on that. I mean, I only ask because unlike Penny Morda and Grant Shapps, arguably, the Robert Jenricks and the Danny Kruegers of this world do tick the... That's the irony, isn't it? We want to ditch net zero. We want to leave the ECHR boxes. These are Bade Knox red lines. Again, like I said, I have no issue with any of these people. It's not the personalities that I care about. I care about making sure that we can put something forward that works. I do want to pick up on the Richard Tice wine thing because I think it's absurd. And there is a strain of right-wing thinking, which is techno-futurist, which says whatever happens, we'll just adapt.

30:30The market will magically adapt and life could actually be better if you think about it in some way. Well, putting aside the fact that he's saying such glib things while people are watching thousands of acres of land burning up in Europe. All right, but as accurately as pointed out in the spectator, the number of wildfires that we're having today is less than we had 30 years ago. This is based upon a map which includes Siberia. Scientific study. Right. Okay, fine. Thank you for proving my point, Camilla. As I said at the beginning, everyone says, I do believe in climate change. It's just all about who's causing it.

31:09And then you come back to me with, yeah, it's just not happening. No, I didn't say it's not happening. I quoted Matt Ridley, who knows more about it than you and I. Yeah, that's my point. That's my point. This is what right-wing people do all the damn time. I do believe in it. I'm just going to prove to you that it's not going to happen. I'm going to see this net zero policy that isn't working. So there as I switch lines. Aside from Richard Tice saying that at a time when people can see and can feel that the environment is changing, aside from the economic damage it's going to do to, for example, farming, people actually die as a consequence of climate change and extreme heat and the kind of man who can fly around the world and escape to the air conditioning of dubai can laugh off this change and say the market will adapt if you are an old person now stuck in an outdated building which is like living in an oven and you're thinking how do i cool yourself down well i looked into how much a small air conditioning unit costs.

32:07It's about£500 when I last Googled it. Well, I bought one for my son and it was about£100, but OK. Right, OK. One with the tube out the window, because he said he couldn't study for his GCSEs unless I provided him with it. OK, fine. I take your point. We are, we are, we are. This is conservatism, everybody. This is what, this is how conservatism works. You just say, just buy yourself an air conditioning unit. No, because conservatism works like this. Conservatism... The Titanic is thinking, why don't you have a martini at the bar? The sensible conservative response, and this is where, unfortunately, Claire, your party did fall short.

32:39The sensitive conservative response, along with trying to pursue a very sensible and not economically illiterate strategy of trying to bring on more renewables, while at the same time not putting an end date on non-renewables that then leave people short of both money and heating and indeed transport. they look at the way that the climate's changing and particularly in the uk they say to themselves do you know what when we're building sheltered housing and when we're building social housing my god we better provide for if we're going to provide for heat pumps because they're more economically efficient we should also arguably provide for air con because people are going to be boiling alive your old college michael gove i mean he disputes this there's some dispute about it back when he was at the he was community secretary and housing secretary put a block on putting air con in new builds that makes my head explode for the last two summers i've run a campaign to allow people to have air con but the thing that i think you know this is this exact problem this this this whole debate is because yes extreme heat kills people but so does lack of access to energy so does lack of access to air con and a sensible policy is to say of course we should look at the climate see what we can do but we need policies that work and on the second tier as well.

33:57We need to make sure that people can have affordable energy and people can have aircon. And actually on the left, they'll ban aircon and they're making energy really expensive. And there are some elements of the right who say we don't care about the environment. Let's just step back and do nothing. It's only the conservatives who say, let's look at how we can do both. To Camilla's point, you can't have an environmental policy that bankrupts people. And that means people can't turn their heating on in winter either. That is what we are heading towards at the moment and that is just as bad. Also, like wonderful policies that sound great on paper.

34:28Let's rewild. Let's stop dredging. And people's homes are flooded. It's lunacy. And the conservative response is, no, hang on a minute. Rather than running around with our arms in the air going, oh, my God, oh, my God, can we please have a sensible response to what is happening to the environment to protect people first? I mean, the other way that this thing goes bat-esque crazy, to be potty-mouthed as ever, you've pointed out yourself, you know, ridiculous concerns over the preservation of badges, over the actual building of affordable homes, when we're in the middle of a housing crisis with 1.3 million people waiting for council properties.

35:10This is the other thing. And the left want to be all kind and cuddly and say, oh, for goodness sake, save the voles. This is where I object. I don't like the lunacy of some of this stuff. It's self-defeating. Much as I care about our green and pleasant land, I promise you I do. Sorry for quoting Matt Ridley. I've never seen it. It's because I've had three weeks of graphs. I don't disagree with everything you're saying. I just can't help but notice whenever the subject comes up, I find Conservatives go, but we will have more sparkling wine. I've never said that because I'm a teetotal. Second of all, do you know why I have to devolve to Matt Ridley or George Monbiot or whoever, because I did double award science at GCSE.

35:52I didn't even do triple award. I didn't, I'm not good at science. I don't understand this stuff. No, I was exactly the same. And I was at a high power. I'm sceptical about everything I'm told. I'm sceptical about the world is ending as much as I'm sceptical about no, it isn't. I went to a high powered grammar school where everyone did the three sciences separately, chemistry, biology and physics. So if you did dual award, you were a real failure. And we had our own little table. where the jewel award is sat. And it was like me next to some kid in a neck brace. And the science teacher would say, we're going to be doing this.

36:25And then she'd turn to the table and say, and the jewel award people, if you just want to entertain yourselves right now for this bit, because you won't understand what we're going to discuss. To conclude this, that is why I wrote that piece about the ministers in the department. Now I get the whole argument, you know, where Streeting wasn't ever in the army, what the hell is he doing as defence secretary? I don't know what your scientific qualifications are, if you have any. Well, look, so maybe I'm being harsh. I was a mathematician. Well, that's handy. When I was in the department, one of the first things I asked them to do was to prove to me that renewables were cheap.

36:58Because, you know, I've heard everyone say this for years. This is the policy I've inherited in the first few weeks. I was like, just prove it to me. And they sent me all these spreadsheets, and they assured me that it was all the case. And I combed through them, and I saw that they couldn't prove it. They didn't have the evidence. and that is because I think I have a sort of maths background that I could see that. And so I commissioned the work. I started that systems costing. Ed Miliband, when he came in, cancelled it, which shows you that he didn't want to know the truth and that's also why we've done this work we've launched this morning.

37:27And on the one hand, I think it is important that you've got ministers who are able to do those things. But I also quite strongly feel that you shouldn't have to be a mathematician combing through spreadsheets to work out that what the civil surface is telling you is wrong. you should be able to be a non-scientist and say look what i care about is cheap energy put the accurate facts in front of me and whether it was you know lockdowns or immigration policy or energy policy or whatever it is there's a lot of bad decisions that have happened in government because we do not have good analysis and people who are dual science or whatever it might be should be able to get as robust analysis to answer the big picture questions that politicians have it is so it is so hard to get anything done i think a better mix a better mix of science and numbers.

38:10It is so hard to get anything done. And to people saying, why is Kemi doing this? It's because when you go into government day one, you have to walk in with a position, this is what I want to happen. And if you go in with any ambiguity, a million people will either persuade you or work behind your back to see that something else happens instead. So unfortunately, it's not nice, but you do have to tell your team, this is where we stand and you're all going to agree to it right let's all leave the studio share a bottle of no seco she's got a bun in the oven you and i if we drank i mean we'd be even madder than we actually i wouldn't come back i mean honestly i wouldn't come back i'd be in las vegas by tomorrow afternoon indeed um good luck with the baby thank you your second child we wish you very much luck very much coming in autumn a new arrival coming in the autumn folks and uh we'll be back tomorrow 5 p.m

39:06Thank you.

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