Call for green and growth stress test

Britain's manufacturers have warned that the government's green and growth ambitions are failing to match the ambitions of industry through a continued pursuit of complex, costly and incoherent climate and environment policies that are doing little but adding to costs and burdens, while failing to provide the right incentives to invest.

In response, publishing its 2012 Climate & Environment survey, 'Managing Green and Growth' EEF, the manufacturers' organisation has called for an urgent full scale review of the government's climate and environment policies ahead of the next Spending Review. This should provide a more strategic approach to policy with a better of mix of measures to realise the benefits of a low carbon economy and to reduce the cost and simplify the current administrative burden.

EEF has also proposed a new green and growth 'stress test'. This would require any new and reviewed climate and environment legislation to demonstrate a positive contribution to the government's green and growth ambitions before it goes ahead.

Terry Scuoler, chief executive of EEF, said: "Government must now learn from manufacturers' own efforts and develop policies which work with the grain of industry, rather than against it."