THE government must rapidly step up action on climate change or risk failure at the key COP26 climate conference later this year, its own advisers warn today.

Policies are urgently needed to instal clean heat pumps, improve energy efficiency in homes and encourage a shift to electric vehicles and less meat consumption, the climate change committee has stressed before November’s United Nations summit in Glasgow.

The committee is also urging ministers to prioritise adapting to the inevitable impacts of global warming, such as heatwaves, and providing people with more information to boost engagement with the problem.  

Climate change committee chief executive Chris Stark said: “It’s been a year when the government has been willing to make genuinely historic commitments, but surprisingly little has been done so far to deliver on them.”

Attacking the Tories’ “complacency, inaction and lack of direction,” shadow business secretary Ed Miliband said: “The government owes it to the country to get on with the hard yards of investment and delivery necessary to protect us.”