Green industrialist Dale Vince denies donations to Labour paid for influence

British green energy industrialist Dale Vince has defended making £1.5 million donations to the Labour Party as well as contributions to Just Stop Oil saying he does not seek influence.

The founder of Ecotricity said he made the donations during the past  10 years to help Labour into power as he supported its environmental stance.

He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday: “The reason I do that is I want them to win the next election as there is a funding gap between Labour and the Tories, a very big funding gap, and I am trying to do what I can to try and close that gap.”

He added: “I am very clear with them that I do not want anything and they are very clear there is nothing on offer anyway.”

Mr Vince said he had not influenced Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to end North Sea oil and gas exploration and he added that this was the right-wing press “joining the dots” to suggest it was a result of his donations.

Defending the Labour proposal he said of current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: “He has no mandate to drill in the North Sea for oil and gas, in fact he has no mandate at all, he should call an election”.

Mr Vince accepted Labour’s announcement to delay funding green policies as “very sensible” because of the current economic crisis.

But he said that investing in green energy could boost the country’s economy.

He said: “In terms of the cost-of-living crisis that we face, energy bills are a big part of that, if we transition to 100% green energy, we are at nearly 50% already.

“We can eradicate fuel poverty, we can separate ourselves from global fossil fuel markets and be truly energy independent, the economic benefits to our country would be in excess of £50 billion a year kept in our country.”

He added: “For every billion pounds we invest in fossil fuels versus renewable energy, we can get twice as many jobs from renewable energy and twice as much GDP growth so a lot of what we need to do to get to a green economy doesn’t require money at all.”

Mr Vince also defended the Just Stop Oil protests saying the “few minutes disruption” did not compare to UN figures stating that “four million people had lost their lives and 20 million are made homeless each year” because of climate change.