Kemi Badenoch has been accused of breaking a promise made to Tory MPs during her leadership campaign after abandoning the party’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050. Chris Skidmore, who served as a government minister between 2016 and 2020, stated that Badenoch had made clear to a group of Tory MPs and other Conservatives at a leadership hustings in 2022, when she was seeking their votes in the race to replace Boris Johnson, that she backed the policy. Skidmore recalled how she told a Conservative Environment Network hustings of 60 MPs that I organised with former business and energy secretary, Alok Sharma for the leadership in 2022 that she believed in net zero – and made that promise in private to us all. Former Tory energy minister Chris Skidmore, who led a high-level review into how the UK could achieve net zero by 2050, added that he spoke with her during a cabinet committee meeting chaired by Cop[26] president Alok Sharma and she restated again the importance of net zero for green trade and building international supply chains.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/23/kemi-badenoch-accused-of-breaking-pledge-to-tory-mps-of-net-zero-by-2050