Ed Miliband says Boris Johnson ‘needs to do his homework’ ahead of COP26

Mr Miliband was speaking at a youth fringe event at Labour conference about tackling the climate crisis and was quizzed by teens about his vision for COP26

Ed Miliband says Boris Johnson “needs to do his homework” ahead of the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

The Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the UK was quizzed by teenagers at Labour party conference about how the opposition can apply more pressure to the government over the climate emergency.

When asked what he would like to see Mr Johnson do at the summit, Mr Miliband said: “He needs to do his homework, stay up late, don’t watch the telly. It’s a moment to really nose to the grindstone, do your revision.

“Leaders think the people who work for them go away and agree something and everybody takes a photo. It’s not like that at COP – its very complex and needs the engagement of world leaders.

“He’s got to really be focused on driving other countries to do better and setting a good example here at hope. He has to twist arms of world leaders.”

The Labour MP also told the Net Zero APPG event he believes the target of achieving Net Zero by 2050 is “too late”.

He added: “2050 is too late. Some people say 2050 is what the world needs to do and there’s different ways of interpreting the date and science is uncertain.

“Even the people who advocate for 2050, its based on 50% chance of keeping global warming to 1.5C, so hat’s a coin flip.

“Ideally, one wouldn’t want to be taking that risk. I’d prefer to go quicker, we’ll set out what we’ll do at next manifesto. What matters is what happens this decade. 2050 is easy for government [to say] because they’re not going to be in power.”

Four young Oxfam ambassadors told Mr Miliband how climate change is “not an important part of curriculum” and they “don’t learn enough about it.”

Mr Miliband told them how vital it is to amplify their voices when it comes to climate change.

“You are the people who are going to have to experience the effect of the climate crisis and you speak for future generations,” he said.

“In Wales they have FG act and commissioner which says when you make a decision, you’ve got to take the perspective of younger generations. Politics is bad at that, we generally think about short and medium term, not long term.

“Are we going to think in 10 years time, we really took it too seriously or are we going to think we weren’t doing enough? I think we will say we weren’t doing enough. “

• The Mirror’s NextGen International project is giving a voice to young people in six different countries around the world, empowering them to tell their stories of the climate crisis.