Keir Starmer said he won’t tell people how to live following a report from climate advisers suggesting people eat less meat and reduce reliance on fossil fuels to hit net zero
Keir Starmer has said he won’t tell people to cut down on kebabs to tackle the climate crisis.
The pescatarian Prime Minister said slashing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 and firing up clean power was “so important for the next generation and generations to come”.
But he said he wouldn’t tell people how to run their lives. It comes after the Government’s climate advisers said people would need to change their behaviours such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels, switching to heat pumps and eating less meat – equivalent to around two kebabs a week.
Emily Nurse, head of net zero at the Climate Change Committee, says: “We are absolutely not saying everyone needs to be vegan. But we do expect to see a shift in dietary habits.”
But grilled about whether people need to curb their kebab consumption, the PM said: “I’m not in the business of telling people how they should run their lives.
“I am absolutely clear that we are going to get to clean power and absolutely keep our commitment to net zero because it is so important for the next generation and generations to come.
“That does not mean telling people how to run their lives. That is not the right way to go about it.”
Mr Starmer gave up meat more than 25 years ago but admitted in the past that he has gone back to eating fish.
He previously revealed that he didn’t let his children eat meat until they were 10-years-old, while his wife Victoria doesn’t eat meat or fish.
Speaking on the Table Manners podcast in 2023, Mr Starmer said: “I gave up meat probably about 25 years ago, after university, as a matter of principle and that’s why I struggle with it because I love meat.
“To start with I gave up fish as well, but then I went back to fish because I found it too much. Then I got together with Vic, my wife, she’s been proper vegetarian since she was eight or nine years old.”
He went on: “Our boy is 15 and our girl is 12, so our girl has never in her life tasted meat or fish. What we said to the kids was, by the time they were about 10, is ‘it’s up to you, we don’t have meat or fish in the house, we don’t cook it’.
“Until they’re about 10 obviously they’re just eating with us. So, we never did and at the age of 10 we said you can do what you like, and our boy said ‘great’.
“The moment we go out there’s a Deliveroo for Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald’s, so he’s taken full liberty with the licence to do what he likes.”
