GWPF welcomes Boris Johnson's last-minute delay of gas boiler ban

The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) has welcomed the decision by Boris Johnson to delay the planned gas boiler ban which the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) planned to announce next week.

According to a report in today's Times, BEIS had been due to publish its heat and building strategy next week "but this is now understood to have been delayed, possibly until the autumn. At a meeting last week Boris Johnson was said to be concerned that it did not do enough to protect consumers and wanted further safeguards...."

Boris Johnson is right to be concerned about the social and political risks and repercussions of a hugely unpopular ban on gas boilers. 

The GWPF has been urging the Prime Minister for some time to pause and reconsider the poorly designed and extremely costly green home heating plans. It's time to abandon them now before they collapse into a humiliating fiasco.

The last-minute intervention by 10 Downing Street is a clear indication that growing criticism of the gas boiler ban is beginning to make a real difference and that the Prime Minister is now gravely concerned about the economic and political consequences of the ban.

In response to the latest developments, Steve Baker MP has warned that

if ministers don’t obtain the consent of the public for Net Zero now, with full and frank explanations of the costs and changes they are planning, eventually there will be a terrible revolt. The boiler debacle points the way to utter political fiasco."

The Prime Minister needs to put a stop to this rush into an inevitable political fiasco. He needs to send his ministers back to the drawing board and allow households to make their own decisions about what heating system is cheapest and works best for them.