AR: Let’s turn to your announcement today, £200 million upfront then from GB Energy for solar panels. When will that investment, that £200 million upfront, provide a return, i.e., save more than £200 million for public services?

EM: Well, for the public services it‘ll provide a return straightaway because the great thing about this scheme is because we know schools and hospitals are facing still very high energy bills. Our dependence on fossil fuels causes those high bills. This is, frankly, a no-brainer because solar panels on 200 schools, 200 hospitals, will cut their bills something like an average of £25,000 a school, £45,000 for a hospital and that money will start flowing straightaway. Some of these panels will be in place over the summer so in the next academic year the schools will be seeing those cuts in the bills and because it’s funded by GB Energy the return is a day-one return. And it shows what a publicly-owned energy company, GB Energy, can do for communities up and down this country.

AR: Can I ask you about two specific aspects of Net Zero before we get to some of the wider issues? The first is that your election manifesto promised 650,000 new green jobs as a result of your Green Prosperity Plan across the country by 2030. How’s that going?

EM: [pause] Well, we’re confident we’re going to provide hundreds of thousands of jobs as a result of our drive to Net Zero. The CBI …

AR: How’s it going?

EM: … The CBI produced a really important report a couple of weeks ago which said that the Net Zero economy grew three times faster than the economy as a whole last year, a 10% more employment as a result of that. I think over 100,000 in the last couple of years. A total employment effect. And this is the truth Amal, this is the growth opportunity of the 21st century: turn your back on Net Zero and you turn your back on business investment, good jobs, innovation for the future and Britain leading in the key industrial areas of the future.

AR: But that’s a nice idea, nice ambition, but what’s, what’s the reality? How many jobs has your Green Prosperity Plan created? That’s what I want to know because there was another report, which I’m sure you saw and might have even raised your eyebrow, Mr Miliband, from the Tony Blair institute which came out last month and I know you speak often to that institute, they’ve got close ties to Sir Keir Starmer’s No. 10, and they said that the 650,000 new jobs is a complete fantasy. They say the best-case scenario, and I quote, is 425,000, so about a third less, by 2050. What do you know that they don’t?

EM: Ah, I, I, I’m very confident about our figures and I’m very confident that we will created hundreds of thousands of jobs in a green economy and, look, it’s all about the investments we make. If you take carbon capture and storage for example , £21.7 billion investment over 25 years, it’s going to create 4,000 jobs straightaway, up to 50,000 jobs over the medium term, so look …

AR: But what progress have you made so far?

EM: Let me just make this point. I’ve come back from China recently, you know, they realise that this is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. I’ve come back from India. They also realise this so we can argue about the figures till the cows come home but frankly if you, if you want to create growth in our economy, if you want to create the jobs of the future, this is an absolutely essential part of the answer.

AR: Sure, but it’s not about cows coming home or not coming home or whatever it is what cows do when they don’t come home, it’s …

EM: sniggers

AR: … about your manifesto promise. I just want to know. You made a manifesto promise –650,000 by 2030 – we’re nine months in, how much progress have you made in power to that 650,000 new jobs?

EM: Well, I’m saying that I’m confident about our pledges. I’m confident that we’re going to meet them er, and we are already making progress. I’ve given you [an] example that is carbon capture and storage. As a result of our Clean Power Action Plan, the plan that we have put in place, the clean power by 2030, we’re going to see £40 billion a year of mainly private investment, that’s £200 billion investment, also creating hundreds of thousands of jobs over the course of the next five years, so I’m absolutely confident about our plan for that target.

AR: Another promise made by Sir Keir Starmer was that bills for our beloved listeners would be £300 lower by 2030. How’s that going?

EM: [sucks in breath] We said that bills would be up to £300 lower by 2030. That is part of our Clean Power Plan …

AR: How’s that going?

EM: … it’s true to say that bills have gone up in the first eight months of this Government and I’ll tell you why: because of our dependence on fossil fuels and at the moment we’re in the grip of fossil fuel markets, controlled by petrostates and dictators so we saw the global gas price or the UK gas price, which is controlled by global markets, go up by 15% over the last quarter and that’s feeding through to bills and there is only one answer to this, which is clean home-grown power which we can control, so that every solar panel we put up, every wind turbine we erect, every piece of grid we build and this is controversial for some people, gets us greater energy security and takes us further towards cutting bills. But the truth is the cheapest form of power to build and operate in our country today is renewable power and that’s why we’ve got to drive towards it and that is absolutely what this Government – er – is doing, wasting no time in doing it.

AR: But of course, you make the case for what you’re planning to do to get bills down. It’s just the evidence of your first eight months is things are going in the wrong direction, so you said in the election last year bills will be £300 lower by 2030. Eight, nine months in bills are actually, according to Ofgem, £160 higher so they’ve gone in the wrong direction. If bills have gone up by £160 in your first nine months why should anyone have any confidence that you’re going to now get them down by £460 in the next five years? That’s hot air, you might call it.

EM: You need to interrogate the evidence about why bills have gone up. And the reason why …

AR: But whatever you’re doing’s not working is it?

EM: … well, er, er, absolutely it is, look the truth is you’ve got to interrogate the evidence about why the bills have gone up and they’ve gone up because of our dependence on fossil fuels and that’s why our mission is to stop our dependence on fossil fuels, put in place the clean energy we need so that we can get bills down. So there is only one way to bring bills down for good. At the same time we’re making decisions for example with our warm homes discount next winter to cut bills by another 100, £150 for 2.7 million families so at the same time that we have this long-term plan in place, in the short term we are making decisions that are fair to make sure that we help families who are most vulnerable.

AR: And the people who pay for this transition are your constituents, they’re our listeners, people who often don’t have much money. You’re asking your constituents to pay more in taxes to fund this agenda. You’re doing so while cutting support for some people with disabilities, some people with mental health conditions, some people who might argue that they’re simply too ill to work, so by the way cutting winter fuel payments for lots of people and international aid. Is that the Labour Party that you signed up for, and once led?

EM: I totally disagree with your analysis, Amal, of the meaning and importance of our clean power mission. Our clean power mission is about reducing costs for people because why did we, you know you can have short-term memories in this, why did we see bills rocket after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Why are bills staying high at the moment?

AR: But they’ve gone up – with Labour in power! [talking over each other]

EM: Because of our dependence on fossil fuels and there is only one answer as I’ve said, which is to drive towards clean home-grown power, so, so the old argument about climate and Net Zero was ‘well, it’ll be more expensive in the short-term but it’s right for the long-term’. The truth is that for a country like Britain where we are subject to global markets on fossil fuels this is actually the way to get bills down.

When asked where the solar panels will come from he conceded that some will come from China, which is responsible for an estimated 80% of total global supply. Quizzed as to why British ones were not being used, Mr Miliband told LBC radio: “Our solar panel industry has not got this kind of share of the market.”

When asked if they will come from China or Russia, he said: “Some of them will be, they’ll be from different countries, but that’s why we’ve got to build our domestic industry.”

Critics say it makes no sense for Britain to attempt to cut emissions in the UK by shipping materials from China, where they are likely to have been manufactured using electricity from coal-fired power plants. The Conservatives’ energy spokesman Andrew Bowie said: “If these solar panels do come from thousands of miles away it shows how ridiculous this whole thing is. Ed Miliband and his eco warriors need to get real.”