Polanski says Labour has ‘shocking record’ on climate issues as ministers expected to cut EV targets for car industry – UK politics live

Good morning. Monday is often the busiest day of the week at Westminster but, with the Commons still enjoying a mini November recess, today is looking a bit quiet. Andy Burnham is on a visit to a hospital this morning and he wants to talk about a £40m programme in England to try to keep vulnerable patients out of hospital. The Department of Health and Social Care has the details here, and Andrew Gregory explains it all here.

But Burnham may find he ends up taking more questions from the media on another Guardian story, Kiran Stacey’s scoop about the government being on course to water down electric vehicle (EV) targets.

With Burnham attending the Cop climate crisis summit later this week, the revelations won’t boost Burnham’s credentials with environmentalists.

The final EV decision has not yet been taken, but the Greens are already outraged. These are from Zack Polanski, the Green party leader.

This week leaders meet for the UN climate summit.

The context? A summer of heat deaths. Scientists saying 2026 will be the hottest year ever.

To bend over backwards to the car industry, and scrap plans for rapid electrification.

This Government is building up a shocking record of backsliding and bad decisions on climate issues.

At a time when we desperately need leadership, they bend to the will of polluters by slashing key rules and pushing ahead with fossil fuel extraction.

And this is from the former Green leader Caroline Lucas.

A truly terrible decision at a truly terrible time. The shift to electric vehicles is government’s single biggest decarbonisation policy. Cutting EV targets would send a message on eve of #COP31 that UK is no longer serious about #climate action.

Morning: Andy Burnham is visiting a hospital in Hertfordshire.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

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The Tories have criticised the Scottish government for posting a message on its X social media account about a Sikh festival at 11am yesterday – as the nation was observing the two-minute silence for Remembrance Sunday. Harriet Cross, the shadow Scottish secretary, said:

It is hard to see their decision to post about a Sikh festival at precisely 11am, at the very moment that people across the country were observing a two-minute silence to honour our war dead, as a coincidence.

There is no reason why they couldn’t have recognised both - not least out of respect to the 83,000 Sikhs killed fighting in both World Wars.

This failure to mark Remembrance Sunday shows a total disregard for the sacrifice our soldiers made and continue to make in defence of our country.

At 11am yesterday John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, was with other leaders in Edinburgh laying a wreath at a remembrance ceremony.

Businesses which trade goods made with slave labour will have to withdraw them from sale, the government has said, revealing it will change the law to enforce the new ban. The Press Association reports:

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said he plans to introduce new legislation to introduce mandatory human rights due diligence for companies, which will require them to remove products made with forced labour and modern slavery.

He outlined the move in a letter to the Commons business committee, which has been calling for new business safeguards against modern slavery for nearly two years.

The new duty will apply to British businesses with a global turnover of more than £350m, and non-UK businesses with a UK-generated turnover of more than £350m.

Those who do not comply with the new duty may be forced to withdraw products from sale which have come from forced labour or modern slavery, Reynolds said.

The commitee has been calling for modern slavery protections to be strengthened since it heard evidence from Chinese-owned clothing company Shein in January 2025.

In that session, the firm repeatedly declined to confirm whether its products contained cotton sourced from China, including Xinjiang, where it is believed that the Uyghur minority are subject to forced labour.

Here is an article by Fiona Harvey and Jasper Jolly published last month on what the consequences would be if the government were to relax its EV targets, as the Guardian today reports now seems inevitable. (See 9.26am.)

The end goal of 2035 is likely to remain, but under a consultation that ended on Friday, the 2030 targets could be weakened to 70% or even as low as 50% of new cars. Taken with previous watering down of the policy to allow more sales of hybrid cars – which use both electric and combustion engines – that change would lead to emissions greater than burning all the gas in the Jackdaw field, according to the ECIU [Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit].

If the mandate were cut more drastically to require only 50% of sales to be EVs by 2030, this could mean an additional 147 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, which would equate to about 58% of the likely emissions from burning the oil produced by the Rosebank field.

Jess Ralston, an analyst at the ECIU, said weakening the target would not solve the problems for manufacturers, who are already facing intensified competition from China as increasing numbers of people opt for EVs. It would also not benefit the public because EVs can be £1,750 a year cheaper to run, and potentially more with oil prices rising.