Does the Budget mark the end of Miliband-ism?

New emphasis on cutting energy costs marks shelving of former energy secretary's 'mission' to deliver clean power by 2030

John Healey used his Budget this week to replace a focus on clean power with a goal of cutting costs for households and businesses, which allies of the chancellor describe as the biggest shift in UK energy policy for 20 years.

But sceptics, both inside and outside the government, view the symbolic repudiation of Ed Miliband's time as energy secretary as more about political signalling at a time when the consensus over net zero is fracturing.

As Prime Minister Andy Burnham seeks to show voters he is serious about easing the cost of living, Healey pledged "a new course on energy" on Wednesday.

"From this point, our Labour government priority is first and foremost cheaper energy," he told the House of Commons, vowing to "drive down all aspects of energy bills".

It marked the deprioritising of Miliband's "mission" of clean power by 2030, a key pledge of Sir Keir Starmer's administration and one of the few that saw significant progress.

Yet Miliband -- who was moved to the Foreign Office by Burnham in July after failing in his bid to become chancellor -- also insisted his clean-power plan would lead to cheap power, promising to bring bills down by £300.

Now Burnham's government argues that a focus on cost represents a change in policy, acknowledging there is a trade-off between rapid decarbonisation and cheap energy, and tacitly accepting that the £300 pledge is off track.

With household bills up 13 per cent since Labour won power in 2024, it is part of what Burnham positions as a "pragmatic" approach to energy, under which production in the North Sea gasfield of Jackdaw was approved last week.

While Miatta Fahnbulleh, Miliband's successor as energy secretary, has called the Rosebank oilfield a "different proposition", Healey has hinted that he would like to see the controversial project also secure government backing.

One senior government figure said the "big shift" on energy had been "under-appreciated" in Budget fallout dominated by living standards, spending plans and welfare.

The plan marked "a new priority for energy policy, possibly the biggest change since the late 2000s", the person said, referring to the period when Miliband first served as energy secretary and made climate change a cabinet-level priority.

Healey also used his Budget to cut spending on green projects by taking £1bn out of the £10bn capital grant for the Warm Homes Plan, including reducing funding for heat pump grants by £700mn. He took a further £700mn out of hydrogen and carbon capture funding, and £1.5bn out of the £5bn Warm Homes Fund loan pot.

But with the government still committed to reaching net zero across the economy by 2050, Adam Bell, partner at consultancy PF Global, warned that such moves might run into the country's legally binding decarbonisation targets.

"Various measures like cutting heat pump grants means that the government is unlikely to hit its carbon budgets and will be subject to legal action," he said. "I think you can reasonably say this represents a slowdown on decarbonisation compared to the Miliband regime."

The first test of the policy will come at the next auction round of renewables subsidy contracts this year. The Treasury has said it will commit to projects only if they will "lower bills" but has yet to define what this means.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has indicated that it will take a similar approach to the last auction, which concluded in February and procured a record 201 projects.

Tone Langengen of the Tony Blair Institute, a think-tank that has pushed for a shift in policy, said the critical question was whether the energy department would change tack.

The new emphasis on lower bills could "be a substantive change" if the government followed through with wider energy market reform, she added.

One ally of Fahnbullerh said affordability had been her "number one priority" since becoming energy secretary.

Healey in a post-Budget interview said he would end a system where "extra costs for a range of different policies" were "being loaded directly on to consumer bills", pledging "no more levies".

Sam Richards, chief executive of the pro-infrastructure group Britain Remade, said the energy department under Miliband had "been able to treat bills as a shadow tax system" and said the Treasury should take advantage of now having "the whip hand" over policy.

But those sympathetic to Miliband counter that he was pushing for a similar move to Healey.

Cost has been the main issue: according to forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility, environmental levies are expected to total £14bn in 2026-27, rising to £16bn by 2031-32.

While Miliband became a hate figure for the right, admirers say his depiction as an eco-zealot was not fair and that clean power was never prioritised over costs.

Instead, they say the change in political messaging shows Burnham seeking to persuade voters he is on their side as Reform UK and the Conservatives abandon net zero and accuse it of pushing up bills.

With ministers broadly expected to miss their goal of decarbonising the grid by 2030, others argue that to keep talking about it makes little political sense as the industry gets on with building the swaths of new wind and solar farms that have been procured to get close to the target.

New wind and solar power farms in Britain are cheaper to build than new gas-fired generation, according to the latest government estimates, but this does not take into account the costs of building new grid connections to remote wind or solar farms, or backup generation.

Modelling by the state-owned National Energy System Operator in 2024 found that "overall costs to consumers would not increase from the shift to a clean power system", but the comparison is highly sensitive to volatile gas costs.

More fundamentally, prioritising affordability does not get around the need to invest significantly to modernise and decarbonise the electricity system.

Dieter Helm, Oxford university economics professor and former government adviser, said: "Nothing has fundamentally changed; the costs are the same."