Budget-2011

Today’s Budget will do little to help people cope with long-term rising fossil fuel prices, capitalise on the UK’s huge green job potential or tackle climate change, Friends of the Earth warned today.

Friends of the Earth’s Executive Director Andy Atkins said, “In the face of a global oil crisis this Budget will increase the UK’s oil addiction – and people across the UK will be forced to pay the price.

“The Government talks about ending our fossil-fuel dependency, but like a 40-year-old smoker pledging to give up in 10 years’ time, the Chancellor is taking a reckless gamble.”

For Birmingham Friends of the Earth, Joe Peacock said, “The Government ought to be supporting regional green jobs and helping everyone to access employment better by sustainable means of transport rather than pretending that more aviation and cheaper petrol will really help.

“We need to be developing a resilient economy based around producing goods in a sustainable way here in Birmingham and we see little recognition of this at all from the chancellor.”

On the Birmingham and Solihull Enterprise Zone, Joe Peacock added, “It is imperative that in our LEP this is located where jobs and investment are needed, not in an unsustainable location dependent upon long journeys and resulting in more urban sprawl and ever more dependency upon the private car”

On the Green Investment Bank, Andy Atkins commented, “The Green Investment Bank should have been a vehicle to drive the UK’s economic recovery, but by delaying the bank’s borrowing powers the Treasury has sneaked round the back of the motor and siphoned off the fuel – just as the rest of Government is firing up the ignition.

“In the global race to develop green industry, the Treasury seems determined to make the UK lose.”

Friends of the Earth’s full briefing on the Budget is available at: www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/budget_2011.pdf