Households will face rising fuel bills as Britain shifts to a low-carbon strategy, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband warned.

Mr Miliband - who publishes the Government's renewable energy strategy on Wednesday - rejected reports that the change could add £230 a year to the average household fuel bills.

"I don't recognise those figures. I don't think those figures are accurate," he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show.

However, he insisted that failure to act would be even more costly as climate change produced more extreme weather conditions - from floods to heat waves.

"I think there are upward pressures on energy prices whatever route we go down," he said.

"We will have a lot more of those extremes of weather and that has got big human costs in Britain. It has also got massive financial costs as well, far outweighing any costs of making the transition."

Mr Miliband described the renewable energy strategy as a "route map" setting out the changes that the Government will need to make to achieve its legally binding targets of reducing carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050.

He said that there were three elements to the strategy - renewables such as wind power, nuclear power and clean fossil fuel energy through carbon capture and storage.

"It does mean big changes in people's lives," he said.

"That does mean some costs for transition. My job is to counter those effects as much as I possibly can, helping people with energy efficiency.

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Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley, Labour)

The opponents of carbon capture recently said in an article that I read that if we get this up and running only 25 per cent. of carbon would be taken out of clean coal. Is that a true statement or is it just them playing games?

Edward Miliband (Secretary of State, Department for Energy and Climate Change; Doncaster North, Labour)

We should never underestimate the ability of such people to play games. On the facts, we have said that as a condition of building any new coal-fired power station, at least 25 per cent. of the plant will have to be based on carbon capture and storage. There is a simple reason for that. Because it will cost significant amounts of money to build CCS plants, we think it right to demonstrate capacity at that scale. When the technology is commercially proven, which we hope will happen by 2020—that is the basis on which we are planning—plants will have to be 100 per cent. CCS-based. That is the most environmentally ambitious set of conditions for new coal-fired power stations of any country in the world.

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Lord Dykes (Liberal Democrat)

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to introduce incentives for the private sector to develop carbon capture and storage plans for heavy industry.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Minister of State, Department for Energy and Climate Change; Labour)

Our consultation document, A framework for the development of clean coal, published on 17 June (www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/clean_coal/clean_coal.aspx) sets out our proposals for supporting the large-scale demonstration of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

It also sets out our rationale for prioritising the demonstration of CCS on coal-fired power stations and our proposals for a levy on electricity suppliers that will provide the necessary funds to support the demonstration of CCS.

Our current view is that because the funds will derive from a levy on electricity suppliers it seems reasonable that only projects that supply electricity to the public supply should benefit. This would not necessarily preclude industrial based power projects being considered for support under these arrangements and we would welcome views on this point as part of the consultation that closes on 9 September.

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No worker will pay for the economic crisis, unions have insisted, after Chancellor Alistair Darling refused to rule out a public-sector pay freeze to provide an extra £5 billion public investment.

In a week where the government has come in for criticism for being evasive about spending plans, the Chancellor gave little assurance to working people.

"We will decide on our pay policy over the next few weeks. It has got to be fair to people who work for the public sector, just as we have to be fair to the private sector," he said.

Attempting to pitch worker against worker, Mr Darling insisted a race to the bottom was the only way for Britain to come out of the recession.

"We have got to be fair with regard to people who work in the private sector, many of whom have seen their pay conditions somewhere near freeze."

Mr Darling's comments follow a recommendation by Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred for real-term wage cuts, claiming that this would be a "pain free" way to help the economy recover.

In a highly controversial article in a Sunday newspaper, Mr Bundred said that £50 billion needed to be found to plug the hole in the public finances.

Instead of suggesting a tax rise for the highest earners, Mr Bundred insisted £5bn could be found by freezing public-sector pay.

Mr Bundred also attempted to speak for public-sector workers, suggesting they "have done well over the past decade" and would not mind wage reductions.

In a side swipe at the unions, Mr Bundred said: "Don't believe the shroud wavers who tell you grannies will die and children will starve if spending is cut. They won't. Cuts are inevitable and perfectly manageable."

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis had no time for Mr Bundred's protests and insisted that wage freezes were not the way to get through a recession.

"Let's be clear, the recession was caused by bankers and speculators and the lack of regulation. Low-paid public-sector workers, who will be helping communities through the recession, shouldn't be expected to pay."

The UNISON leader called for some "fairness to be injected into the system, crack down on tax evaders and make the rich pay their fair share."

NASWUT general secretary Chris Keates agreed that reducing the purchasing power of workers would not help Britain out of recession.

"The idea that you have to have some equity of misery, that because the private sector is suffering, the public sector must too is disgraceful."

She added: "What it is doing is not understanding the role of public services in a recession - to sustain and rebuild the economy."

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Earlier this year, the case of Jason Smith, a young private in the Territorial Army, was widely reported. He had died within two months of arriving in Basra when he literally overheated. His death was preventable and the court of appeal upheld a ruling that the government had an obligation to act to prevent similar incidents as much in Iraq as they do at home.

A story about the government's failure to put the lives of British troops first would ordinarily be a tabloid newspaper's dream. But Smith's story was also a landmark extension of the Human Rights Act and so it attracted deeply hostile coverage instead. "Human rights rule will cripple troops" ran a headline in the Sun, reporting the Ministry of Defence claim that the decision "will force officers to hesitate in making life-and-death decisions in battle".

There is an increasingly full history of tabloid papers attacking the HRA at every opportunity – an approach described in the commission's report as a "savaging of human rights by the media".

Only last month, a Daily Mail story headlined "The war criminals we cannot deport because of their human rights" suggested the Human Rights Act, and not – as is actually the case – a loophole in the UK's implementation of international law, was to blame for genocide suspects living with impunity in the UK.

Other similar instances include the case of Learco Chindamo, who became a hate figure when he was jailed for life in 1995 for killing headteacher Phillip Lawrence, when he was just 15. The decision not to deport him to his native Italy in 2007 was reported at the time as "the Human Rights Act gone wrong", when in fact the decision was taken under the terms of an EU directive and was not Human Rights Act-based at all.

In 2001 the case of Denis Nilsen attracted similarly damning coverage for the Human Rights Act, as the press reported the convicted killer had been allowed access to pornography in his prison cell because of his "human rights". In fact, it emerged that Nilsen's inability to establish a breach of his rights had denied him access to the material he wanted. The story is yet another example of the appetite for anti-Human Rights Act stories with a tenuous foundation in fact.

There are plenty of examples of flawed reporting in the British press and, on one level, these simply add to the list. But there is a darker side to this bias, which organisations at the forefront of human rights work reveal clearly in the report.

"The Human Rights Act is used as a vehicle to demonise certain communities – for example, asylum seekers [as] illegal immigrants," said one respondent. "It is only used in sensationalist journalism."

Another said: "One negative story about 'mad axemen in the community' can undermine 12 months of work."

There is an argument that the behaviour of journalists, editors and media proprietors is simply symptomatic of a widespread problem identified in the report – a general lack of understanding and education about rights.

As the former senior law lord Lord Bingham said in June, "The Human Rights Act … has been the subject of much hostility from those who find it less trouble to attack than to try and understand what [it] means."

And perhaps if tabloid journalists were genuinely aware that the old person in a care home, or the exhausted teacher, were benefiting from human rights, they would revise their stance. In this regard, critics say, the government is clearly at fault. "When stereotypical, misinformed or straightforwardly malicious attacks are made [it is up to the government to] say: "No, that is wrong, it is incorrect," says David Howarth MP, Liberal Democrat spokesman on justice. "It is a matter of political will. It is a matter of believing that certain values are more important than the political risks involved in supporting those values publicly".

Comments in the Daily Mail by a "frustrated" justice secretary Jack Straw that he could understand why the act was seen as a "villain's charter" did little to provide such support.

But not long before this, Straw had told a pro-human rights audience of his deeply felt commitment to human rights. "The foundation in people's souls for human rights is not as deep or strong as I would wish," he said.

Such ambivalence, from the very minister charged with overseeing human rights law, raises questions as to what can really be expected of the press.

Or, as some suggest, it's the other way round. Unless the press recognise the benefits human rights are already providing to their own readers, politicians will continue running scared.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrightsandwrongs/bad-press

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