The new Secretary of State, Ed Miliband has today made his first statement since taking up the post to the House of Commons. During his statement he endorsed the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change, which will see an 80% reduction target for greenhouse gases put into the Climate Change Bill. He accepted all recommendations by the committee, although did not provide full clarification on the inclusion of aviation and shipping emissions, due to a lack of clarity on how these are calculated.
He spoke of his support for investment in new environmental technologies and feed-in tariffs (which he will put into the Energy Bill) however he did not make any significant announcement on heat policy. He spoke of the unfairness of energy price disparities and claimed he would consult on new legislation to force energy suppliers to remedy this if they did not act rapidly to do this.