Sir Patrick Vallance, whose face become synonymous with covid briefings during the lockdown, came out in support of Labour’s Great British Energy plan in the election campaign today.
The former chief scientific officer’s backing was unveiled as Sir Keir Starmer revealed that the publicly owned company which he argues will bring down energy costs will be based in Scotland.
But Sir Patrick is just the latest former senior Whitehall mandarin to support Labour in a move which has already angered the Tories.
Previously, Sue Gray quit as second permanent secretary for the Cabinet Office to be Sir Keir’s chief of staff.
And there have been reports of high flying civil servants quitting their roles to work for Labour. This included Nick Williams, who previously spent nearly six years at the Treasury as a policy adviser, quitting along with three other Treasury officials to work with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves.
The declarations of allegiance by Ms Gray and others to Labour have already led to the Tories raising questions about civil service impartiality. And just before the election was declared, common sense minister Esther McVey produced a new set of guidelines to try to enforce impartiality among civil servants and end activism.
There have also been threats of civil servants going on strike over the government’s support for Israel in the crisis surrounding Gaza.
Writing in The Times, Sir Patrick suggested that Labour’s plans for Great British Energy, a publicly owned company which also aims to drive Net Zero policies, could be “done fast.”
The former adviser, who now chairs the Natural History Museum board, also took aim at Rishi Sunak for slowing down the implementation of Net Zero policies.
He wrote: “If we choose to go slowly others will provide the answers and we will ultimately end up buying the solutions.”
He also noted: “I am often asked which of Britain’s many pressing public policy challenges need a vaccine-style approach.“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, homegrown energy.“With a determined effort using currently available technologies and those that are close to being deployable, a clean power system by 2030 is achievable.”
Great British Energy is one of the six first steps included on Labour’s election pledge card.
For the Conservatives, minister Esther McVey dismissed Sir Patrick’s intervention.
She said: "Independent experts with real expertise in the energy sector have described Labour's virtue signalling, unfunded green policy as ‘unachievable, incoherent and not credible’. No amount of former civil servant endorsement can distract from the fact that Labour have no plan and no ideas for the future."
