Category Archives: Government Relations

View from the US: The Rise of American Progressives

Erin Caddell of GK Strategy’s American partner Anchor Advisors examines the ideological battle reshaping the Democratic Party and what it could mean for investors, corporates and the future direction of US policy

Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, published in 1687, states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This centuries-old theorem may go some way toward explaining the ideological split currently occurring in the U.S. Democratic party – one that could carry significant importance for the congressional midterm elections in November 2026 and for U.S. policy for many years to come.

Republican President Donald Trump faces a difficult political backdrop approaching the midterms, often thought of as a referendum on the incumbent U.S. president’s first two years in office. Trump faces sagging approval ratings in his second term, with notable weakness on his handling of the economy due to rising inflation, as well as a Middle East war with no easy way out. As this column has noted before, Republicans are already defending one of the narrowest House majorities in American history (218-212, with four vacancies and one independent).

Given these dynamics, many Democratic leaders and pundits have suggested the party employ a midterm campaign version of Napoleon’s military adage to never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake: focus voters’ attention on Trump policies that many voters view unfavorably rather than on promoting a robust alternative agenda. To these strategists, the poster child for the ideal Democratic candidate in 2026 is Roy Cooper, a two-time former governor of North Carolina running for U.S. Senate in that state with the simple slogan “Make Stuff Cost Less”. Cooper focuses fairly narrowly on criticizing Trump actions that he argues have resulted in “farmers… getting crushed by tariffs” and “families… seeing prices rise at grocery stores and restaurants.” In response, Cooper proposes a modest set of reforms such as tougher anti-trust enforcement and making data centers pay more for the power they draw from public utilities.

Cooper may well reach the Senate – he has run ahead of his Republican opponent in every poll published since the race began. But the middle-of-the-road approach of Cooper and other moderates is not capturing the hearts of Democratic voters writ large. The hard-edged governing style of Trump and his Republican congressional allies, in areas ranging from immigration enforcement to foreign policy to social spending, has, to use a scientific term, made Democrats mad as hell. And – returning to Newton’s Third Law – Democrats want their leaders to push back hard at Trump with policies equal and opposite to those promulgated by the GOP-led Administration and Congress.

Evidence of Democrat voters’ more confrontational impulse is ample in recent party primaries to select candidates to run in the November congressional elections. In June, two progressive U.S. House candidates running to represent district in New York City – Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier – ousted incumbents, while a third (Claire Valdez, a member of the state Assembly) defeated the Brooklyn borough president in a race for another U.S. House seat. All three candidates support increased government support for public housing, universal federal health insurance, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, cutting defense spending, shifting energy production from fossil fuels to renewables to address climate change, and reducing American military involvement abroad, among other progressive policies. All are vocal in their criticism of Trump. It is not just in deep-blue New York where the left is gaining momentum: earlier this month, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old Democratic U.S. House candidate in Colorado, backing an agenda similar to her New York counterparts, unseated U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who had represented the district in D.C. for nearly 30 years. Progressive candidates have tallied recent election wins in states from Maryland to Oregon.

A number of the candidates cited above, and others squaring off against more-moderate Democrats, are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a left-leaning political organization founded in 1982. DSA’s importance in the U.S. political ecosystem can be easily exaggerated by both critics and supporters – the organization reports about 120,000 members, compared to 45 million Democrats and 39 million Republicans. Yet the DSA has clearly touched a nerve within a Democratic party still trying to figure out how best to oppose Trump and his MAGA movement – and position itself for a post-Trump future. The party’s goal to create “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society” (see below) echoes in the campaign speeches and placards of progressive candidates on the stump today. The most famous DSA member is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old political wunderkind who rode his own anti-Establishment, anti-incumbent wave to power in January, defeating Andrew Cuomo, former New York governor and scion of a well-known political family.

What is Democratic Socialism? “Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society… We want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish not just survive and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. We want to win “radical” reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life.” (Source: Democratic Socialist of America)

The recent success of DSA members and similarly inclined progressives has led to an equal and opposite (Newton again!) reaction from moderates who argue that moving too far to the left will cost Democrats in the midterm elections in November as well as the presidential election in 2028. In a July 20th note, Third Way, a center-left think tank, warned: “If [Democrats] follow the siren song of the left, they will steer their ships into the rocks. If they remain in the mainstream, they will have a fighting chance of winning not only the primary, but also most crucially, the general election.” Third Way and other naysayers of the progressive wave cite the example of Kamala Harris, who ran on a progressive agenda as the Democratic party’s presidential nominee in 2024 after then-President Joe Biden opted not to run for re-election. In the 2024 campaign, Harris proposed ambitious spending to combat climate change, an increase in the corporate tax rate and anti-price gouging laws for groceries, among other policies popular with many progressives. Trump, of course, comfortably defeated Harris in the presidential election (though the hurried mid-campaign handoff from Biden to Harris certainly didn’t help).

What does this mean for US-focused investors and corporates?

The moderate, middle-of-the-road approach of some Democratic candidates doesn’t seem to meet the political moment. Thus, we do think the progressive movement will move the Democratic Party to the ideological left in the years to come, even if “socialist” candidates remain a small portion of the electorate and the Congress. This could benefit sectors that have been out of favor thus far in Trump’s second term. For instance, health insurance companies that provide insurance under Medicaid and other healthcare programs for disadvantaged Americans could benefit from reversal of recent cuts to such programs under a Democrat-controlled Congress and/or White House. Similarly, apartment-focused real estate investment trusts (REITs) would benefit from expanded public spending on housing in a more progressive political climate. Child-care providers could see the same from federal programs to provide more support for working families. In sum, Democrats’ intense anger at Trump’s policies and persona are likely to be quelled only by a similarly forceful agenda on the other side of the spectrum – the equal and opposite reaction crystallized by Newton so long ago.

Capital isn’t glamorous, but it’s where health reform succeeds or fails

Drawing on his experience as a Health Minister and Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, GK’s strategic advisor Steve Brine argues the real challenge is delivering, not announcing, NHS infrastructure investment.

There is an old saying in politics that ministers like cutting ribbons more than fixing roofs. Reading the Government’s new 10-Year Capital Plan for Health and Social Care, I was reminded just how true that is.

Having served as a Health Minister and later as chair of the cross-party Health and Social Care Select Committee, I’ve learned that while politicians understandably focus on services, patients and waiting lists, none of those can be credibly improved without investing in the infrastructure that underpins them.

Estates, equipment and digital capability are not simply operational issues; capital isn’t glamorous – but it’s where health reform succeeds or fails

That is why I think this document matters, even if it contains fewer headline announcements than some may have wanted. It’s more of a capital investment framework than a capital spending announcement and while it is important because it starts to join together a series of previously announced commitments into one strategy, if you’re looking for lots of new money or major projects, you’ll likely be disappointed.

For investors, suppliers and those looking to support the transformation of health and care, this is best understood therefore as a statement of strategic direction. The Government is attempting to provide something the NHS has too often lacked: a long-term framework that links capital investment directly to service reform.

The themes will be familiar and re-enforce the view many of us held that the capital plan would essentially be the infrastructure companion to the 10-Year Health Plan which is now just over one year old.

Investment in neighbourhood health centres, modern diagnostic equipment (see my last piece), digital infrastructure, community facilities and the maintenance of the existing estate have all featured in previous announcements.

What is new is the attempt to bring those priorities together and explicitly align them with the Government’s ambition to shift care from hospitals into communities, from analogue to digital, and from sickness towards prevention.

As a minister, I learned very quickly that capital policy is health policy. You can’t expect clinicians to embrace new models of care if they are working in buildings designed before England last won the World Cup, nor can you promise a digital NHS without investing in the infrastructure that powers it. Too often, capital has been treated as something separate from healthcare delivery whereas in reality, it is one of its principal enablers.

That lesson stayed with me when I chaired the Health and Social Care Select Committee. Alongside colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee, we scrutinised the New Hospital Programme, asking not simply whether Boris Johnson’s ambitions were right, but whether they were deliverable.

That experience reinforced a rather obvious point: announcing infrastructure programmes is relatively straightforward; delivering them consistently over a decade, through changing political and economic circumstances, is considerably more challenging!

That is why I think investors should read this document with cautious optimism. The opportunities are clear. If the Government is serious about expanding community-based care, modernising diagnostics, digitising the NHS and addressing the maintenance backlog, there will inevitably be demand for expertise, technology, construction, data, equipment and innovative delivery models.

The direction of travel is now clearer than it has been for some time. The question not answered is pace. The plan sets out the destination far more clearly than the route to get there. There is relatively little detail about sequencing, procurement, prioritisation or delivery milestones.

History also provides a note of caution. During my time in government, I saw how easily capital budgets could come under pressure when day-to-day NHS spending became squeezed. Every government says it will protect long-term investment; not every government manages to do so.

And I note how one of the strongest themes is ‘repair first’ as large sums are earmarked for tackling the maintenance backlog, replacing obsolete equipment and of course removing RAAC. £6.75bn for hospital repairs over nine years and £2bn to remove reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.

Overall, I see this as a welcome piece of strategic thinking. It provides a clearer signal than we have had for many years that infrastructure is no longer being viewed as an afterthought but as a prerequisite for NHS reform. For those looking to invest, that matters.

The real test, however, will not be whether the strategy is well written, but whether successive governments (including the new one about to start work) have the discipline to stick to it.

Politics of Defence

The UK Government has today published its long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP).

Due back in Autumn 2025, the plan aims to fund Britain’s Armed Forces into the next decade. In one of his final acts as Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer today announced an additional £15bn in funding for defence over four-years with money taken from other departments to pay for it. Nonetheless, the government has faced criticism from across Westminster on the funding allocation and the extent to which the DIP meets the challenges the country faces today and into the near future.

For the Prime Minister, this has come at a huge personal political cost. Lord Robertson, the highly respected lead author of the UK’s first independent Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published in June 2025, gave a carefully constructed speech in April directly criticising Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves in what he described as a ‘corrosive complacency [today] in Britain’s political leadership’. More recently, two defence ministers, including the Secretary of State John Healey, resigned over the Prime Minister’s political weakness when faced with commitments to fund defence.

While the government has accepted the SDR’s 62 recommendations, the DIP today makes clear and sensible allocations in areas set out below and supportive of last year’s SDR. Yet at its heart, the monies still fail to add up to fund UK defence with many across defence industry and the military having already spoken to this fundamental point.

The plan itself focuses on cheaper, uncrewed autonomy, space, land lethality, cyber and electromagnetics in addition to £11bn to replenish the weapons and munitions sent to Ukraine and £63bn for the nuclear deterrent – it alone is some 20 per cent of the overall budget.

The 81-page plan delivered to Parliament by the new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis, sets the course for defence spend of only 2.7% of GDP by 2030. Tan Dhesi MP, Chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said the government has not provided a ‘clear pathway’ to spending the committed three per cent of GDP on defence.

There remain unanswered questions over the allocation of funds for capital spend in an environment of large personnel expense and general fiscal realism. While the SDR set an ambition within tight spending envelopes, the DIP was meant to be a serious credibility test of government.

In a wider update to the Commons, Dan Jarvis did not rule out the UK joining a defence investment bank, an idea championed by former Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, the now Prime Minister of Canada. This is something the Treasury has resisted. Of interest, former Health Secretary Wes Streeting asked Jarvis if the government would reconsider joining in the Commons earlier today.

Beyond equipment, the government has committed to invest £70m to support veterans through the Office for Veterans Affairs, including £12m investment in a new fund for reducing veteran homelessness.

Ultimately, all government policy, including defence, is Treasury-driven and what the PM thinks matters most; this most recent review and debate over funding secured the fate of Prime Minister Starmer. In a matter of weeks, the UK government will be under new leadership, faced with the very real and pressing challenges of national security. With visibility of government priorities and funding allocated, now the defence industry small and large can answer the government’s call and GK Strategy is ready to help with engagement, both in procurement and senior relationships in DE&S, Main Building and across Whitehall.

Please email Senior Partner and defence and security lead Scott Dodsworth to learn more. scott@gkstrategy.com

SD. Tuesday 30 June 2026

View from the US: Wealth taxes and universal income

Erin Caddell of GK Strategy’s American partner Anchor Advisors unpacks the prospect of wealth taxes on ultra-high net worth individuals and universal basic income to address heightened scrutiny of wealth inequality in the US

Stunning rise in tech wealth reignites policy debate about U.S. income inequality

The dramatic increase in market capitalization among US-based AI and other tech-related companies in recent years, encapsulated by last week’s whopper IPO for SpaceX, is reinvigorating a long-running debate about income inequality in America. Proposals for redistributive policies, such as wealth taxes and universal basic income (UBI), are gaining a new currency in US state capitals and in Washington DC.

The wealth creation of the AI boom is staggering. The SpaceX IPO made founder Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Following Musk, the next nine richest Americans have a collective net worth of $1.7 trillion according to Forbes. All but one of whom (Warren Buffett) is a tech co-founder. Americans for Tax Fairness, a tax advocacy group, estimated that the net worth of America’s roughly 1,000 billionaires has increased by $1.5 trillion in 2025 to $8.2 trillion. Much of the rise is being driven by AI’s boost to tech content and infrastructure providers (as well as the tax cuts approved by President Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress last year).

The achievements of the ultra-rich in harnessing the promise of the latest technology revolution have drawn the ire of everyday Americans grappling with high inflation, increased healthcare costs and the threat of jobs being displaced by AI. This shift in public sentiment is turning on its head an old adage that Americans do not support higher taxes on the wealthy because many believe they, too, will become rich one day in the land of opportunity. A YouGov poll released in January found that 59% of Americans surveyed agreed that the government should pursue policies that narrow the gap between the rich and poor, with a majority of those Republicans surveyed agreeing that the wealth gap is a big problem. Compare this to 1939, when a Fortune magazine poll found only 35% of Americans surveyed felt wealth should be redistributed through higher taxes on the rich.

Policymakers looking for support to address income inequality can point to evidence that the gap between rich and poor is even wider now than in the Gilded Age of the late 19^th century when the technologies of the Industrial Revolution created the first cohort of the ultra-wealthy in America; and ultimately a backlash that led to the antitrust actions around the turn of the century, and later to establishment of the federal income tax in 1916.

Gabriel Zucman, a leading international scholar of wealth inequality, published a book in May with the wonderfully direct title ‘We Need to Tax Billionaires’. It found that the wealth of the top 0.0001% of the world’s richest families represented more than 16% of world GDP in 2025, up from 4% in 1910, and 3% in the mid-1980s.

The early skirmishes on the income-inequality debate are playing out in the American states, where public sentiment can be codified into policy more quickly than at the federal level. Earlier this year, the legislation in Washington state (home of Microsoft and Amazon) was passed and its governor signed a new 9.9% state tax on annual incomes above US$1 million. Massachusetts has levied a 4% surcharge on $1 million-plus earners since 2022. Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Rhode Island are considering similar measures.

California, the epicenter of both the AI revolution and worries about thousands of jobs being made obsolete by it, recently submitted enough signatures to place a ‘billionaires’ tax’ on the November 2026 ballot. The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on California residents with net worth of greater than $1bn, a move projected to raise US$100 billion to fund healthcare, education and food assistance. The initiative has already roiled the state and potentially national politics. California Governor, and likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, has opposed the measure, arguing it would hurt the state’s tech industry. Labor unions that initiated the proposal are considering a compromise to lower the proposed tax to 2%.

Universal basic income (UBI) is the flip side of the wealth tax. Dating back centuries, UBI intends to provide a modest but unconditional income to all citizens of a society to recognize the dignity and value of each person and to share the benefits of a nation’s bounty. The idea has gained new currency amidst renewed concern in recent years about displacement of workers by technology. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey gave $15 million to a group called the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income to divide into a series of UBI pilot programs. UBI pilots have been launched in recent years in cities including Stockton, California; Durham, North Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland.

With Trump and the GOP focused on lowering taxes rather than raising them, wealth levies and UBI programs are non-starters at the federal level now. This could change. Democrats are making income inequality a key plank in their campaign for the November midterm elections. Should Democrats win back the White House and gain control of both houses of Congress in 2028 (as Biden and his party did in 2020), they would likely consider wealth-tax proposals already circulating among party leaders. The ‘Billionaires’ Income Tax’ bill proposed in September 2025, for instance, would subject individual taxpayers with assets of greater than US$1 billion or annual income of more than $100 million a year for three consecutive years to an annual tax based on the net gain of their assets (or to deduct the losses). The bill was proposed in the Senate by Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), a leading voice in Democratic tax policy, and co-sponsored by 20 Democratic Senators.

While UBI has less support at the federal level than wealth taxes, UBI could also gain favor in a Democrat-controlled White House, Senate and House. In October 2025, a dozen Democratic House members led by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) introduced the Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act, which would provide income equivalent to rent for a two-bedroom apartment for an initial test group of 20,000 Americans. Even Musk himself has become a proponent of UBI, posting on X in April that ‘Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI’.

Individual federal income-tax rates have declined in the US from 91% in 1955 (a vestige of increases to help pay for World War II) to 37% in 2025, while capital-gains taxes have held around 25% over the past decade, according to the Peterson Foundation (see below). Not coincidentally, the entrepreneur has risen in the eyes of the American public during this period, as the ’Organization Man’ archetype of the loyal cog in the paternalistic corporation gave way to the us-against-the-world mindset of the U.S. tech industry, best symbolized by the foundings of Apple and Microsoft in the mid-1970s.

Through the commercialization of the internet in the mid-1990s, to the rise of social media 20 years later, to the acceleration of generative AI with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, technology has become ever-more central to the U.S. economy and society. Yet the widening gap between the few at the top and the rest below seems to have driven a policy tipping point. With the federal deficit at 6% of GDP, the highest in U.S. history outside of war and the covid-19 pandemic, and individual tax receipts the largest source of federal revenue at 50%, it seems a question of when, not if U.S. policymakers will have to consider raising taxes. The ultra-wealthy are an easy target as part of such an effort. At the same time, pressure to distribute more of the benefits of the tech boom to the rank-and-file who bear its brunt also seems poised to continue to rise through increased support for UBI, as well as for higher standard deductions for federal income taxes, as multiple progressive policymakers have proposed recently.

What does this mean for US-focused investors and corporates?

We do not profess to be able to predict when or by how much tax rates on wealthy Americans will rise. But we do see several downstream effects impacting US-centric companies and their owners from the increased focus on income inequality.

First, a redistributive shift in the tax system would be positive for firms that help individuals and small businesses prepare their income taxes (yes, including those who assist wealthy people in looking for ways to pay less in tax), as well as the many companies that provide services to the tax-preparation industry itself.

Second, companies and investors should be more prepared to view their actions in the U.S. through a more populist lens and to delineate the benefits of their products and services beyond the limited traditional corporate stakeholders of shareholders, customers and employees. Take data centers. In recent years, the tech firms developing the data centers powering the AI boom, led by the multi-billionaires highlighted above, believed the substantial tax revenue they planned to bring to mostly rural or suburban communities where data centers are located would be enough to win support from local citizens. With many local governments across the political spectrum working to halt data-center construction due to concerns about resource utilization and quality of life, developers must take a more holistic approach, thinking through ways to offset the centers’ electricity and water usage; expanding efforts to reduce noise and other potential environmental impacts; and partnering with impacted communities to share in the benefits of the center’s economic activity beyond just paying a tax bill.

Third, should UBI proposals gain further support at the state or federal level, it would help providers of affordable housing, an industry already under the spotlight at the federal and state level as many regions of the U.S. deal with housing affordability issues and shortages.

Whatever the outcome of these and similar debates, income inequality and policies to address it are sure to occupy a larger place in the U.S. policy landscape in years to come.

NHS Recovery and Productivity: Diagnostics are the place to start

Drawing on his experience as a Health Minister and Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, GK’s strategic advisor Steve Brine argues that diagnostics are the critical but often overlooked foundation of NHS recovery, productivity and prevention.

Diagnostics rarely grab headlines in the way that waiting lists do. Yet during my time as a Health Minister, and later as Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, I came to a simple conclusion – if you want to improve outcomes, reduce elective waits and modernise the NHS, they are the place to start.

The reality is that no patient can begin the right treatment until the clinicians know what is wrong. Whether it is cancer, heart disease or a musculoskeletal problem, diagnosis is the gateway through which every effective pathway runs.

Too often, however, diagnostics are viewed as a ‘supporting service’ rather than the critical infrastructure on which the entire system rests.

That is why I have been encouraged by the development of Community Diagnostic Centres (CDC’s) under the last government and continued under this administration.

The concept is straightforward but powerful; bring scans, tests and investigations closer to where people live, rather than requiring patients to navigate busy acute hospitals. It is one of the clearest examples of the much-discussed shift from hospital to community becoming more than words on a page and something that patients can see.

When I was a Minister, we spoke frequently about prevention and early intervention. Now it’s the talk of the town.

For my money, diagnostics sit at the heart of both. A CT scan, MRI scan or PET scan (Positron Emission Tomography, which is particularly important in cancer diagnosis and treatment planning) is not simply a test. It is an opportunity to identify disease earlier, provide reassurance quicker, and avoid patients deteriorating while waiting for answers.

As Select Committee Chair, I often heard evidence about the pressures facing the NHS workforce and the challenge of delivering constitutional standards. The current debate about the 18-week elective target is important, but it is worth remembering that elective recovery ultimately depends on diagnostic recovery. You cannot clear waiting lists if patients are waiting months for scans, endoscopy or reporting.

That is why diagnostics should be seen as a productivity issue as much as a clinical one. Faster access to tests means quicker clinical decisions, more efficient use of outpatient appointments and better use of operating theatres. Every delayed diagnosis creates friction elsewhere in the system and, most important of all, spikes anxiety in patients. The dreaded diagnosis ‘odyssey’.

The challenge now is ensuring that CDC’s become a permanent part of NHS infrastructure rather than simply a waiting-list initiative. That means investing not only in buildings and scanners, but also in the workforce; radiographers, radiologists etc.

If ministers are serious about restoring performance (which as we will explore further in this series of blogs I am writing for GK Strategy is only part of the story), improving cancer outcomes and delivering care closer to home, it’s hard to look past diagnostics as the place where the next chapter of NHS reform must begin.

The Warm Homes Plan and the government’s green agenda

GK’s Hugo Tuckett examines the government’s publication of its Warm Homes Plan and what it means for the government’s green agenda

January 2026 saw the publication of the government’s long-awaited Warm Homes Plan. The plan, which is backed by £15 billion of funding and was originally due for publication in 2025, represents the sum of the measures that the government believes will deliver on its commitment to lower household energy bills by £300 over the course of this parliament (2024-29). It is also one of the government’s most entrenched policies, dating back to Labour’s time in opposition when Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced in 2021 that a future Labour government would deliver billions of pounds worth of new funding to support upgrades to the UK’s green infrastructure.

The Warm Homes Plan seeks to deliver a significant expansion of solar panels and heat pumps, marking a departure from previous efforts to improve the insulation of homes. Despite its original billing to improve households’ energy efficiency, the final publication of the plan sets out the energy secretary Ed Miliband’s ambition to deliver a ‘rooftop revolution’ and includes a range of measures designed to support a much greater uptake of solar panels. This has led to some concern amongst charity and industry groups who have warned that shifting to clean heat and electricity generation (including heat pumps and solar panels) before dealing with the scale of draughty homes is only going to lead to an increase in bills in the short term. It does though demonstrate the government’s shift in approach from seeking to reduce household energy consumption to increasing energy generation from renewable sources.

Ministers are eager for households to adopt a range of green measures to substantially lower bills and, in some cases, deliver ‘zero-bill’ households. The government’s thesis is that investing in the roll out of new technologies now, including heat pumps, will drive down costs further in the medium-to-long term. It also becomes much cheaper and more efficient to use a heat pump when combined with battery storage systems and solar panels. Critics will say that the government should be thinking much more radically about how it plans to rebalance the levies on energy, so that it can bring down the cost of electricity for all if it really wants to see people make the shift from gas to electricity. Aside from the government reiterating its decision to remove £150 worth of levies from energy bills through the abolition of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), this plan does not tackle that more intractable problem.

The funding included in the plan is predominantly aimed at low-income households, but there is some financial support available to all homes. The plan will administer £4.4 billion in grants to low income households and social landlords. This will include fully funded upgrade schemes, including solar and heat pumps, depending on the assessment of the building. It will also establish a £5.3 billion Warm Homes Fund which will be available to all households. This includes £2 billion in low-and-no-interest consumer loans and £2.7 billion for innovative finance products in the home upgrade system. The government aims to upgrade five million homes by 2030 and lift one million homes out of fuel poverty through the plan, which will be overseen by a new government body, the Warm Homes Agency.

The publication of the plan is a significant moment for the government and for energy secretary Ed Miliband. Despite previous climbdowns on the amount of funding that would be made available to support the government’s green agenda, Miliband has deftly navigated both HM Treasury and the Cabinet to retain a sizeable portion of funding to deliver on his ambitions in the sector when other departments are experiencing real-terms cuts. As the 2029 general election approaches, there will be real pressure on the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to deliver on the ambitions of the plan, which sits in an area of public policy where the government will be hoping to draw a clear dividing line with Reform UK. The government has spent a lot of its first 18 months in power talking up its efforts to boost the UK’s green credentials and lower household energy bills – now it’s all about delivery.