Tory leadership race live: Sunak pledges to maintain ban on new onshore windfarms as MPs set to choose final two candidates | Politics

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, has described Rishi Sunak’s promise to maintain the ban on new onshore windfarms as “economic illiteracy”. He said:

As Britain boils in an unprecedented heatwave, it is economic illiteracy and unilateral economic disarmament in the fight against the climate crisis that Rishi Sunak wants to keep the ban on onshore wind.

Anyone with such dangerous views is not a serious candidate for high office. But this is the reality: a Conservative leadership race in which candidates have engaged in fantasy climate denial that will lead to higher energy bills, damage our security and burdens future generations with extreme weather events.

My colleague Peter Walker has more on the reaction to Sunak’s promise in his story here.

Simon Clarke was doing the morning interview round for the government this morning. He was ostensibly speaking in his capacity as chief secretary to the Treasury (in which capacity he backs the government’s tax policies, including the national insurance increase), but he was also answering questions as a supporter of Liz Truss’s leadership campaign (which believes the national insurance increase was a mistake). Understandably, at time this was confusing.

Here are the main points from his interviews.

• Clarke suggested that, if Truss became leader, the government might abandon some of its current spending plans. He told LBC

[Rishi Sunak] was delivering against the spending plans set out by the current prime minister, Boris Johnson. Those spending plans do not automatically need to be the case under a new prime minister. That will be my crucial difference with Rishi. I don’t believe those plans should be regarded as set in stone. With a new leader come new choices, and Liz has set out very clearly the things that she would prioritise, which includes tax cuts. I think that must be right.

• Clarke refused to say whether he had told Sunak that he disagreed with the national insurance increase. Speaking on the Today programme, Clarke pointed out that he only became chief secretary to the Treasury after that increase had been agreed. Asked if he had told Sunak he thought it was a mistake, he said: “We are bound by collective responsibility.”

• He claimed he was not being inconsistent in backing one tax policy as a Treasury minister, while also backing an alternative approach as a supporter of the Truss campaign. The election of a new leader would allow policy to change, he said:

We are right on the cusp of electing a new leader of the Conservative party and prime minister and it will be for that leader to make new choices. Liz is clear, if she is elected there will be a new spending review, which will take effect from day one.

I believe it is absolutely the case with a new leader comes new choices.

• He said he was backing Truss for leader because she had an “exciting plan for growth”. He said:

I think she has the most exciting plan for economic growth and she set out a compelling plan to lower the burden of taxation.

I have very high regard for Rishi Sunak.

I am here to make the case for what I think is the right future step in terms of where we go from here and that is for a government led by Liz Truss.

• He defended the decision to remove the whip from Tobias Ellwood for missing the confidence vote on Monday (see 9.45am), saying that Ellwood made a “very serious mistake”. Clarke explained:

He was in Moldova, rather than Ukraine. He was not on government work, he is a backbench MP.

• He defended the decision to offer public sector workers below-inflation pay awards. He said:

It is crucially important, when setting public sector pay for the people who do so much hard work for our society, that we strike the right balance between managing the risk of worsening inflation, of baking it in and making it worse by setting very high pay deals while also looking after our workforce, and obviously the offer that is being made to the public sector has to be seen in the context of that £37bn package of support which is designed to help family incomes.

Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee who had the whip removed for missing Monday’s confidence vote, told Sky News this morning that his party risked “a long spell in opposition” because of the infighting taking place. He said:

The nation wants to be impressed and inspired, not demoralised, by what they’re witnessing right now. And we need to perhaps exhibit greater decorum, dial the temperature down a bit, showcase the ideas, the vision, focus on those things that are important, that the nation wants to see.

That’s what will earn us the right to stay in government otherwise, we’re just going to be letting ourselves down and indeed committing ourselves to probably a long spell in opposition.

Ellwood missed the vote because he could not return in time from a visit to Moldova. He said that he was sorry he could not get to the Commons in time, and that he kept the whips’ office informed of his situation. “There were a problems with travel,” he said. “I am very sorry I didn’t make it back.”

The removal of the whip means Ellwood can no longer vote in the parliamentary ballot for the Tory leadership, and Ellwood refused to comment on speculation that he was penalised because he is backing Penny Mordaunt, not the de facto No 10 candidate, Liz Truss. Explaining why he did not want to comment, he said:

I’d be then fuelling the blue-on-blue [attacks], which I’m actually trying to avoid.

Let’s focus on how we can move forward and make sure that we conclude this leadership campaign to the highest professional standard that I think the British people want to see.

Rising petrol and diesel prices for motorists and dearer food pushed Britain’s annual inflation rate to a fresh 40-year high of 9.4% last month, my colleague Larry Elliott reports.

Good morning. Boris Johnson will take PMQs for the last time as prime minister at 12pm, and an hour later Conservative MPs will start voting in what should be the last parliamentary leadership ballot. At 4pm we should know who the two candidates will be on the ballot for party members. Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, is almost certain to be on it, and Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, is likely to be there too, but Penny Mordaunt, the international trade secretary, has been in second place in all four previous ballots and she has a chance too.

All three candidates are making last-minute appeals to Tory MPs.

• Sunak has promised to maintain the rules that in effect ban new onshore windfarms in England. He made the pledge as he promised that he would also set a new “energy sovereignty” target for 2045, so that at that point the UK produces as much energy as it uses. Sunak said:

I am committed to net zero by 2050, but that can’t mean neglecting our energy security. So although the legal target for energy sovereignty will be 2045 and I will work night and day to ensure we beat that target, securing a safer future for the next generation.

Wind energy will be an important part of our strategy, but I want to reassure communities that as prime minister I would scrap plans to relax the ban on onshore wind in England, instead focusing on building more turbines offshore.

David Cameron’s government stopped the creation of new onshore windfarms in England by excluding them from subsidies available for other forms of renewable energy and tightening the planning laws, making it easier for communities to block developments. Johnson’s government has floated the prospect of lifting these restrictions. Although onshore wind is a cheap form of renewable energy, the turbines are particularly unpopular with activists in Tory constituencies.

• Truss has said that she will lead “a government of all the talents” is she becomes PM. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, in which she restates her commitment to reversing the national insurance rise and temporarily suspending the green levy on energy bill, she says:

As prime minister, I would unite the party and lead a government of all the talents that includes the best and brightest from across the Conservatives. The quality of candidates that have taken part in this leadership race reflects how healthy our party is and how alive with ideas it remains.

This implies MPs from all wings of the party could be included in her government. Truss’s supporters are also been reviving suggestions that Mordaunt is not experienced enough to be PM. Simon Clarke, a Truss supporter and chief secretary to the Treasury, said one reason why he was supporting Truss was that she was ready for the job “on day one”.

• Mordaunt has insisted that she is the only candidate offering “a genuine fresh start’. A source from her campaign team told journalists.

Today is about continuity vs change for the Conservative party. Penny’s been speaking with colleagues already this morning and so many of Tom and Kemi’s backers are calling out for change. As the only one not in Johnson’s cabinet, Penny is the sole MP left in the race who offers a genuine fresh start. Not every candidate would win an election, but time and time again the polls show that Penny is the candidate Labour fear the most.

MPs have a choice today – the same old or a new start for the Conservative party. Their colleagues, party members, and voters across the country are crying out for something new but only Penny Mordaunt can deliver that.

Here is the agenda for the day.

12pm: Boris Johnson takes PMQs for the last time as prime minister, facing Keir Starmer.

After 12.45pm: MPs begin the final day’s debate on the Northern Ireland protocol bill.

1pm: Conservative MPs start voting in the fifth parliamentary ballot for the party leadership. And it should be the final one, unless there is a draw, in which case a further ballot would take place. The ballot closes at 3pm.

4pm: Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, announces the results of the ballot – which should produce the names of the two candidates who will be on the final ballot for party members.

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