It is “up to” King Charles whether or not he attends the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, environment secretary Therese Coffey has said, after former prime minister Liz Truss reportedly told the new monarch to stay away.
Her successor in No 10, Rishi Sunak, has now been accused of a “massive failure of climate leadership” after announcing he would not attend the event himself, on the same day the United Nations warned there remains “no credible” pathway in place to rein in global temperature rises to 1.5C.
But Ms Coffey defended the PM by insisting it is “standard practice” for the “big political” Cop events to take place every five years, claiming the “UK continues to show global leadership, as opposed to just a gathering of people in Egypt”.
The row came as the Daily Telegraph reported that Mr Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt were considering either increasing the government’s windfall tax on energy companies or expanding it to include renewable energy firms in a bid to plug Britain’s multi-billion pound fiscal black hole.
