LABOUR'S Pat McFadden called Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a “living U-turn” when asked about a list of pledges made by Labour which have now been scrapped - including the party's £28 billion a year green pledge.

The shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and party campaign coordinator was grilled on the recent flip-flopping of his party leader over the green pledge on both Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips and Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

The Labour leader is facing a growing backlash after dropping the flagship pledge last week, with the figure now drastically scaled back to just under £24bn over the five years of the next parliament.

In an interview with Kuenssberg, McFadden was asked if he was pleased with the U-turn as he was originally against the £28bn pledge. In reply he said: "It's not about me. It's about a decision taken by Keir Starmer and taken for good reasons".

READ MORE: Labour U-turn on green energy pledge ‘major setback for Scotland’ 

He defended the decision and said since the policy was announced, interest rates have gone up a “great deal”.

He added: “When it was announced they were at 0.1% basically zero, and they’re now at 5.25%.

“What that does to the cost of Government borrowing is it means it’s £70 billion a year more to service that debt now than it was when the policy was announced. And anyone watching this programme who’s had to refinance their own mortgage in the last year or so will understand that those kind of interest rates have an impact on your borrowing costs. So the economics made a difference here.”

In an interview with Phillips, he similarly said that it was an "act of strong leadership to look at your manifesto promises in the run-up to an election when it could be any time this year and really test them against current circumstances".

He added: “The second point I want to make on U-turns is, the Prime Minister we have is a living U-turn, he’s only there because they had to ditch a disastrous mini-budget, and the centrepiece of his leadership in the past year has been to ditch a policy on HS2, so he’s actually a living, walking U-turn."

READ MORE: Scotland’s energy potential ‘impacted by limits of devolution’ 

On a visit to Scotland last March, Starmer had promised that his plans would deliver more than 50,000 new direct and indirect jobs in the renewable energy sector in Scotland alone over a decade.

SNP Westminster Stephen Flynn has described the U-turn as "economically illiterate and a major setback for Scotland".

He said: "Sir Keir Starmer must come clean on the jobs and investment Scotland will lose as a result of his damaging decision to slash green energy funding.

"At a time when countries around the world are pumping money into green energy, it makes no sense for the UK to cut back. It's economically illiterate and a major setback for Scotland.