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| Zac Goldsmith resigns accusing Sunak of being ‘uninterested’ in environment | Zac Goldsmith resigns accusing Sunak of being ‘uninterested’ in environment |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Tory peer quits as minister after privileges committee criticism and accuses PM of causing ‘paralysis’ on green issues | |
| Zac Goldsmith has resigned as a minister, accusing Rishi Sunak of being “simply uninterested” in the environment – less than 24 hours after he was criticised by the privileges committee for undermining its inquiry into Boris Johnson. | Zac Goldsmith has resigned as a minister, accusing Rishi Sunak of being “simply uninterested” in the environment – less than 24 hours after he was criticised by the privileges committee for undermining its inquiry into Boris Johnson. |
| The Conservative peer and former MP published a long resignation letter detailing his disappointment with the prime minister for causing “paralysis” on the environment within Whitehall and choosing to attend the party of a media baron rather than an international environmental forum. | The Conservative peer and former MP published a long resignation letter detailing his disappointment with the prime minister for causing “paralysis” on the environment within Whitehall and choosing to attend the party of a media baron rather than an international environmental forum. |
| Goldsmith’s accusations are likely to be unhelpful to Sunak in the lead-up to an election, with opposition parties expected to emphasise the government’s failure to do enough on the climate emergency, animal welfare and sewage discharges. | Goldsmith’s accusations are likely to be unhelpful to Sunak in the lead-up to an election, with opposition parties expected to emphasise the government’s failure to do enough on the climate emergency, animal welfare and sewage discharges. |
| Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, lost no time in calling Goldsmith’s departure a “devastating indictment of Rishi Sunak and his whole government on climate and nature”. | |
| It has been a privilege to have been able to make a difference to a cause I have been committed to for as long as I remember. But this govt’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we face makes continuing in my role untenable. Reluctantly I am therefore stepping down pic.twitter.com/KDJKN3i6ER | It has been a privilege to have been able to make a difference to a cause I have been committed to for as long as I remember. But this govt’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we face makes continuing in my role untenable. Reluctantly I am therefore stepping down pic.twitter.com/KDJKN3i6ER |
| The peer’s resignation comes a day after the privileges committee named him as one of the politicians who had undermined its work on whether Johnson misled parliament. The Lib Dems had called on Sunak to sack Goldsmith as a result of the committee’s findings that eight politicians had put “improper pressure” on its inquiry. | |
| The committee highlighted that Goldsmith had retweeted a tweet calling the inquiry a witch-hunt and kangaroo court, stating: “Exactly this. There was only ever going to be one outcome and the evidence was totally irrelevant to it.” | The committee highlighted that Goldsmith had retweeted a tweet calling the inquiry a witch-hunt and kangaroo court, stating: “Exactly this. There was only ever going to be one outcome and the evidence was totally irrelevant to it.” |
| Government sources suggested Goldsmith had been asked to apologise over the privileges committee report but he subsequently resigned. | |
| In his letter stepping down from the Foreign Office, where his portfolio was overseas territories, Commonwealth, environment, energy and climate, Goldsmith said it had been a privilege to work as an environment minister, particularly under Johnson. | |
| But he said he had been horrified by the Sunak government’s “abandonment” of policies around animal welfare, and that its efforts on environmental issues at home had “simply ground to a standstill”. Addressing Sunak directly, the Tory peer said: “Prime minister, having been able to get so much done previously, I have struggled even to hold the line in recent months. | |
| “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested. That signal, or lack of it, has trickled down through Whitehall and caused a kind of paralysis.” | |
| He added: “This government’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced makes continuing in my current role untenable.” | |
| Goldsmith also claimed the UK had “visibly stepped off the world stage and withdrawn our leadership on climate and nature”. | |
| “Too often we are simply absent from key international fora. Only last week you seemingly chose to attend the party of a media baron rather than attend a critically important environment summit in Paris that ordinarily the UK would have co-led,” he wrote. | |
| It is understood Goldsmith had been feeling uneasy about Sunak’s commitment to the environment since the very beginning of his premiership, when the prime minister had to be cajoled into attending Cop27. | |
| The Conservative peer told friends at the time that he was considering resigning from a government that had seemingly deprioritised the environment and the natural world, a view that was cemented by a tussle over nature-based payments for farmers. | |
| However, he planned to stay in post for as long as it took to get the international forest agreement, agreed at Cop26, over the line. The deal between more than 100 leaders to save the world’s forests, partly made possible with funding from the UK, was seen as one of the great successes of the climate summit. | |
| But this month the peer made up his mind to resign when Sunak’s government scrapped the kept animals bill after pressure from the hunting lobby, which was concerned that hunting hounds would be impacted by measures in the animal welfare bill. The legislation would have cracked down on puppy farming as well as banning keeping primates as pets and banning live exports of farm animals. Friends say he was “sickened” by the decision, and wrote to Sunak begging him to reconsider, but say that the letter was ignored. | |
| After learning that international development funding to protect forests would not be honoured by Sunak, allies of Goldsmith say he made the final decision to quit. | |
| The politician, a longtime ally of Johnson and his wife, Carrie, has resigned from a post before for environmental reasons, when he triggered a byelection over the issue of Heathrow expansion in his then seat of Richmond. | The politician, a longtime ally of Johnson and his wife, Carrie, has resigned from a post before for environmental reasons, when he triggered a byelection over the issue of Heathrow expansion in his then seat of Richmond. |