Robert Jenrick’s pledge to repeal the UK’s landmark climate change law has won him the backing of some of the country’s most notorious climate science deniers. 

The Conservative Party leadership candidate told The Telegraph on Saturday that he would repeal the Climate Change Act, first introduced in 2008, to remove what he called its “Soviet-style” carbon budgets. 

The legally binding carbon budgets require the government to draw up plans to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over five year periods, in order to meet its 2050 net zero target. 

The Telegraph interview was shared approvingly by the Bruges Group, a conservative anti-EU pressure group that has published leaflets claiming “there is no greenhouse effect” and “the dogma of global warming” is a socialist plot.

The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.

Last week, Jenrick was also endorsed by Tory peer Lord David Frost, a former Brexit minister who is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group. 

Frost – who has claimed “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” – praised Jenrick for saying he would “change the net-zero legislative framework”. 

The GWPF’s campaign arm Net Zero Watch (NZW) also praised Jenrick’s attack on climate targets, with its director Andrew Montford – a former GWPF deputy director – welcoming his supposed “return to energy rationality”.

NZW campaigns for new fossil fuel exploration, including opening new coal power plants, and calls for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

This comes after Bloomberg revealed that Jenrick’s rival for the Tory leadership, Kemi Badenoch, is running her leadership campaign from the home of Neil Record, a Tory donor and chair of NZW. Record gave £10,000 towards Badenoch’s campaign in July. 

“Robert Jenrick’s pledge to repeal the UK’s net zero target if he wins the next general election as leader of the Conservative Party is probably an indicator that he is not a serious candidate for prime minister”, said Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. 

“Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of the public want a quick end to the UK’s contribution to climate change. Jenrick’s apparent disregard for this shows that he is not focused on promoting the health and prosperity of the electorate but instead is seeking a fight with Reform UK over who represents the right-wing fringe of British politics.

“It will mean that the Conservative Party becomes largely irrelevant to mainstream politics in the UK.”

Bruges Group

In his Telegraph interview over the weekend, Jenrick attacked the carbon budgets required by the Climate Change Act. 

“It is ludicrous to set out Soviet-style five-year plans at a sectoral level which specify where you plan to reduce carbon emissions,” he said. “The state does not have sufficient understanding of the economy to do that well.”

Jenrick named the Climate Change Act – along with the Equality Act and Human Rights Act – among the policies introduced by the 1997-2010 Labour government that he wants to scrap. He claimed that Prime Minister Keir Starmer is planning a “second Blairite revolution” by handing power to non-departmental government bodies nicknamed “quangos”. 

Jenrick’s interview was shared by the Bruges Group, which posted on X: “Jenrick offers exactly what the country needs: A concrete legislative plan to undo the damage done by Labour and restore pre-Blair norms.”

Jenrick shared their post in turn, writing:

As DeSmog reported at the time, the Bruges Group held a fringe meeting at the 2022 Conservative Party conference featuring Jeremy Nieboer, a corporate solicitor, who promoted his book CO2 – Nature’s Gift. 

The book argues that the “dogma of ‘global warming’ was conceived as a means of socialist reversal of the global economic order”. 

He goes on to say that the “dangerous warming dogma” is a “colossal falsehood” that is “without any basis in physics and chemistry”.

Climate scientists working at the IPCC have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

The Bruges Group continues to attack climate action. In July of this year, the organisation said that Labour’s proposed ban on new North Sea oil and gas exploration would “undermine our energy security and prosperity”. 

“We live in an increasingly dangerous world and cannot afford to sacrifice either for the sake of green collectivist ideology,” the group added. 

In June, a month before the UK general election, the Bruges Group praised Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party Reform UK for its pledge to “scrap net zero”, and its anti-immigration policies.

Jenrick vs Climate

Jenrick, who previously supported the UK’s net zero targets, has become a critic of climate action over recent months. 

In February, he claimed in a Telegraph article that voters are sick of the “dishonesty” from politicians about “what net zero entails”. He said the UK’s net zero target was “dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality”. 

During his 2024 Conservative conference speech in early October, Jenrick said that, under his leadership, the “Conservative Party will stand for cutting emissions, but we will never do it on the backs of working people and by further de-industrializing our great country.”

Jenrick also advocated for “cheaper energy”, suggesting this can be achieved through more oil and gas extraction. 

This mirrored a speech he gave to the Legatum Institute think tank in May, during which he called for the construction of new “gas power stations”. 

Contrary to Jenrick’s claims, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the UK’s cost of living crisis has been exacerbated by its dependence on fossil fuels, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). UK households were the worst hit in western Europe, due to our reliance on gas to heat homes and produce electricity.

“The UK energy crisis is a fossil gas crisis,” Sarah Brown at the energy think tank Ember has said. The OBR has estimated that the government spent close to £70 billion on energy support measures in 2022 and 2023.

Jenrick has also vowed to appoint GB News presenter and former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his seat in July’s election, as chairman of the Conservative Party.

Rees-Mogg has a long record of opposing climate action. He has blamed high energy prices on “climate alarmism” and questioned the ability of scientists to project rising temperatures and their effects.