It could be lights out for solar power under this government

Ten times as many of the jobs lost at Redcar are at risk under the government's plans to cut solar power subsidies by 87% - and it may be schools that suffer most

Ministers rightly wring their hands over the 2,200 jobs being lost at the 98-year-old Redcar steelworks hit by low-cost Chinese competition. But they seem deaf to warnings of 27,000 jobs being potentially lost in a brand-new industry now facing crisis due to their own clumsy cuts.

Almost 1,000 redundancies have already been made by the solar panel installers Mark Group and Climate Energy. No one in the industry believes this will be the end of the sad story.