Tory MP describes Government's climate change plan as 'virtue signalling gesture politics'

Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley, said the UK is now responsible for less than 1 per cent of global emissions and reducing that to zero would "make no difference at all to global temperatures” as countries like China and India scale up their fossil fuel burning activities.

In a letter to a constituent, he wrote: "Such action would be utterly futile, virtue signalling gesture politics which would also bankrupt the country along with many families.

“The estimated cost of getting from less than 1 per cent of global carbon emissions to net zero is estimated to be £1tn in the UK - that is money the country and many of my constituents can ill afford, especially when the actions of other countries will make it utterly futile.”

The MP, who has been approached for a comment, also wrote that it would be "much more sensible" to spend money on adapting to changes in the climate rather than making an "unrealistic" attempt to change the climate.

It comes as the UK is due to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference at the end of the month, when world leaders will be urged to radically reduce emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C (compared to pre-industrial levels).

Philip Hammond claimed that cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 will cost the UK over £1tn when he was Chancellor in 2019, but this figure has been disputed.

Earlier this year, a major study from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that climate change is unequivocally” caused by human activity and it has increased the frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, floods and other extreme weather events around the world.

The report, which is the first instalment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, was compiled by dozens of climate scientists from around the world and signed off by 195 Governments.

Countries around the world have been aiming to limit global warming to 1.5°C since they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, but projections in the report show the global temperature is expected to exceed that threshold over the next 20 years and surpass 2°C before the end of the century.

This week, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned that current plans by countries to cut emissions over the next decade left the world on track for a “catastrophic global temperature rise” of 2.7C.