From lockdown to net zero, Sir Patrick Vallance seems wedded to fearmongering

News that Sir Patrick Vallance had thrown his support behind Labour’s fanatical green energy proposals comes as no surprise. The medical professor seems to exist in a permanent state of catastrophisation.

Sir Patrick, who became a household name during the pandemic as Britain’s chief scientific adviser, has backed Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to decarbonise Britain’s electricity supplies by 2030.

Warning that the race to net zero should be treated with the same immediacy as the search for a Covid vaccine, he insisted: “I believe that one such priority is the urgent need to end the era of excessive carbon emissions, high energy bills and energy insecurity by accelerating the net-zero transition to clean, home-grown energy.”

Accelerating? Labour has given itself just six years to end the electricity grid’s dependency on fossil fuels, all as part of a net-zero regime that we’d be lucky to survive without bankrupting Britain. And Sir Patrick wants it to happen more quickly?

Appearing to criticise Tory plans to delay the implementation of some net-zero policies, he added: “If we choose to go slowly others will provide the answers and we will ultimately end up buying the solutions.” Following Sue Gray’s defection from the Cabinet Office to become Starmer’s chief of staff, we now see the true colours of yet another former civil servant.

Indeed, there is a correlation between Sir Patrick’s sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach to lockdown and his latest pronouncements on net zero: fear appears to be the key factor driving his judgment.

What we really need when it comes to these sorts of totemic issues is unhurried and well-balanced decision- making, based on understanding for those set to lose out financially or socially. We lacked that during the pandemic.

In the autumn of 2020, for instance, graphs presented by Sir Patrick at a Downing Street press conference, which suggested that the UK would see up to 1,500 Covid deaths a day within weeks, were criticised for overstating the risk. The forecasts were eventually revised down after “an error was found” by the Government.

We must learn from the mistakes of Covid, rather than repeating them. During the pandemic we locked down for much longer than we needed, causing our economy unnecessary harm. Rushing into decarbonisation will have a similarly damaging effect.