The UK’s Environment Secretary, George Eustice, has gone against scientific opinion and said that warning people not to eat meat will not solve the climate crisis.

Eustice’s approach has even been backed by the man who set the UK on a path to carbon neutral, former business secretary, Chris Skidmore. The pair have put their neck on the line by suggesting that feeding cattle grass rather than grain should be one of the key issues on the plan to reach net zero. Eustice spoke out in a week when the government was warned that not enough is being done to get people to cut a fifth of meat from their diet by 2030. The Climate Change Committee says that 10 per cent of the country’s emissions come from livestock and that land used for farm animals could be used for woodland.

“The Climate Change Committee say we should be eating higher-value meat, meat that costs more money, and probably a little bit less of it, but it should be produced to the very highest standards in a pasture-based system,” said Eustice.

“I agree with that overall but I don’t agree about getting there by lecturing people about what they should eat.”

Skidmore meanwhile has told The Sunday Telegraph in a column that a focus on nuclear should be the priority for the Prime Minister, with a worry on energy supplies unless we attack the issue now.

“Boris Johnson is right to invest in Britain’s future as a “global science superpower”, yet for energy, this means going nuclear or go home,” Mr Skidmore said.

“Unless we invest in a new fleet of reactors, we will face potential power shortages a decade from now as our existing fleet begins to shut down. Again, we can avoid the mistakes of the past by training a new generation of workers to onshore our nuclear capacity, rather than find ourselves in the debt of China or France.”