Deliver two million new high quality jobs in clean growth

Our verdict

• This is a promise to collaborate with private companies to deliver two million new jobs in “clean growth”, which the government defines as growth which increases “our national income while cutting greenhouse gas emissions”.
• In November 2020, the government announced the creation of a new Green Jobs Taskforce to deliver “skilled workers for the UK’s transition to net zero” – the taskforce’s terms of reference specifically mention working towards this policy pledge as one of its key objectives. The March 2021 Budget contained various measures that may contribute towards the creation of green jobs, but observers have commented that it was short on detail in this regard and displayed a lack of joined-up thinking. The Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy, published in March 2021, points to a forthcoming action plan from the Green Jobs Taskforce which will contain recommendations on how to fulfil this policy pledge. The May 2021 Queen’s Speech pointed to projects and initiatives that will potentially create up to 360,000 green jobs.  It’s worth noting that in June 2021, the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change gave evidence to the Green Jobs Inquiry of the Environmental Audit Committee that the 2 million target was an estimate of “a wide range of between 1 million and 2 million jobs… In that sense, it is a very broad definition”.  This casts some doubt on whether the government aims to honour the more specific pledge of 2 million high quality jobs.
• This promise spans a decade, and counting the number of “high quality jobs in clean growth” resulting from this specific policy is impossible. However, the launch of the Green Jobs Taskforce, green initiatives outlined in the Budget, and job creation projects mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, show that efforts are ‘in progress’.