The Centre for Policy Studies was set up in the 1970s by supporters of Margaret Thatcher such as Sir Keith Joseph. It has remained highly influential amongst Conservative politicians ever since and many UK government policies have started life as proposals from the CPS. So, when we heard that they were investigating carbon pricing, we just had to get in touch and we are grateful that they have involved us in their consultations. This kind of work is the bread and butter of CCL—forming relationships with potentially influential people and groups as a way of spreading the ideas underlying climate income—and I’d hoped it would help push forward our campaign a little more.
But the result was so much better than anything we could have hoped for. Take a look at their recently released web page on Pricing Pollution Properly. Right there, near the top of the first page, it says “Pricing Pollution Properly calls for the Government to move towards an upstream carbon tax”. And this is immediately followed by “This would involve no increase in overall taxation, with all the revenue raised returned to people’s pockets via a carbon dividend”. The Executive Summary states that : ” Carbon pricing can ensure that decarbonisation is done in a fair and responsible way, which does not harm the least well off in society – either directly or through inflicting damage on the economy” – words that could have been written by any CCL member
This is the next best thing to having Climate Income as official Conservative Party policy and it could lead to that! It also means that other parties will now need to look seriously at Climate Income. Hopefully, the clear common sense that underlies it will be obvious to all and we’ll see it being taken up widely across the political spectrum.
The next steps will be to help CPS publicise their report with Conservative MPs. I hope that all CCL-UK members that have a Tory MP will step up and help this effort. Expect to hear more on this campaign very soon…