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Barry Gardiner's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 164 Parliamentary debates in which Barry Gardiner has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 2 Jul 2026: Air Pollution

  15:20

  The current official advice from the UK Health Security Agency that the health effects of UFPs are “adequately covered” by the particulate matter air quality standards is simply outdated. Black carbon is a major contributor to climate change and poses a significant health risk as a universal carrier for a wide range of toxic chemicals that find their way into our bloodstreams. We need a comprehensive monitoring system and specific targets for UFPs and black carbon as the evidence of their severe health impacts grows.

  Around half of all homes in the UK still use gas hobs for cooking, which for most people will be the biggest source of NO 2 pollution in their home. Yet gas cookers and hobs have been left out of home decarbonisation policy, and are totally ignored in the warm homes plan. If we want to protect people’s health from air pollution in the home and fully remove their reliance on fossil fuels, we need a policy pathway to transition to electric cooking in the home, such as the one developed by Global Action Plan and CLASP in partnership with experts and academics.

  That recommendation stands today, in the year that marks the 70th anniversary of the very first Clean Air Act. Just as we have the Climate Change Act 2008, under which the Government produce and can be challenged on legally binding carbon budgets, we need a clean air Act under which the Government set out detailed, thorough and demonstrably achievable plans to bring down the levels of pollutants. With legally binding pollutant budgets, the Government could set a graduated timeline by which the UK would have to meet the WHO guidelines for a comprehensive list of pollutants, building on the 2030 targets and with limit values for perhaps 2035 and 2040.

  The Clean Air Fund suggested to the Select Committees that our target for meeting WHO guideline levels for most pollutants should be 2040. I do not know whether that is the best target; I would like to see it brought forward. However, if we set that as the goal, just as we have set net zero by 2050 as the goal, we could at least be making progress towards it. Co-ordinating a national action plan on air pollution under a new clean air Act would ensure that air pollution is no longer relegated to being just a DEFRA issue. In reality, it affects, and is affected by, every single Government Department.

  [Source]

• 24 Jun 2026: Climate Change

  That is the speech that I want to ensure the Minister never has to make. It is why their lordships’ reasoned amendment in the other place last night was so ill conceived, and why today’s debate is so important. It is also the reason that the remarks of the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), were so ill judged, and I want to answer some of the questions that she posed. She will recall that, in 2023, her own figures put the number of jobs that would result from the net zero target at between 135,000 and 725,000. She said that there might be a decline of between 8,000 and 75,000, but according to the Climate Change Committee’s progress report on the net zero economy, the number of green jobs that has been reached is 650,000. That is the figure that the committee has come out with today.

  The shadow Secretary of State also said how silly it was to talk about soil structure and waste, so perhaps she does not quite understand that soils and waste are actually emitters of carbon, and that if we want to achieve net zero and get a clean, green energy infrastructure, we have to think holistically.

  [Source]

• 1 Dec 2025: Budget Resolutions

  As a result of those emissions, global mean temperatures have risen by nearly 1.5°C. That is the level that we know gives us only a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. What does dangerous climate change actually mean? It means the systematic collapse of our economy. It means refugees fleeing parts of the world where life has become impossible because of temperatures persistently above 40°C, drought and failing crops. It means unprecedented societal chaos as supply chains fail and competition for food turns to violence. It means war.

  What the Government have failed to understand is that they cannot weigh up the cost of addressing climate change against the cost to the economy, when the whole economy depends on keeping climate change under control, so the first budget we need is a global carbon budget that sets the quantity of CO 2 that we can emit if we are to meet our Paris temperature agreements. If we are to stay below the 2°C threshold, we have only 530 billion metric tonnes of CO 2 that we can release into the atmosphere. That may sound a lot; in fact, it is only 13 years of emissions at their current rate. The budget to stay within 1.5°C is a lot worse: just 130 billion metric tonnes, which is just three years of emissions at today’s level.

  [Source]

  18:48

  The Budget should have been bold. It should have put our country on a wartime footing with a national programme of retrofit, no new build that is not net zero in its embodied and operational carbon, a huge roll-out of public transport and a major programme of electrification. We have a huge majority, yet we act as though we are afraid of the power that we spent 14 years seeking.

  Today, the green economy is growing three times faster than the rest of the UK economy. If growth truly is our ambition, it is in that clean, affordable and secure future that we should be investing. People often talk of a just transition. I prefer to talk of a bloody marvellous one. What’s not to like about warm homes with affordable energy; comfortable, efficient, speedy and reliable public transport; the creation of thousands of new jobs; decent air quality; a secure food system with reliable supply chains; and a stable geopolitical world? We live in an age of public sufficiency and private luxury, as Professor Kevin Anderson said last week at the national emergency briefing. A Budget that was adequate to the challenge we face would have turned that on its head, creating a society where every private home had what was sufficient and every public domain was one of luxury. That would be the just and equal society I came into the Labour party to create.

  [Source]

• 25 Nov 2025: COP30

  15:04

  I thank my right hon. Friend for the leadership he has shown internationally and nationally over the past 20 years—it has been quite remarkable. I thank him for his statement today. He will have seen over the time that has elapsed since COP26 in Glasgow the change in the language that is used. In Glasgow, when discussing the Glasgow climate pact, we talked about “phasing out” coal and fossil fuel subsidies. We then moved to “phasing down” and then to “transitioning away”. Now we have a “plan” or “pathway” to transitioning away. That, I am sure, causes alarm bells to ring in his head, as it does in mine. Can he tell us what he sees as the role of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance? He spoke about the need to work with other countries for a really ambitious future. How does he propose to do that?

  [Source]

• 12 Nov 2025: Carbon Budget Delivery Plan

  17:05

  Published just two days before the legal deadline, the Government’s new plan states that they have sufficient policies to achieve their sixth carbon budget, which required a 77% reduction in emissions from the 1990 baseline. So, do they? Remember that carbon budget 6 is the first to include international aviation and shipping. The plan highlights where decarbonisation will be the hardest, and shows us those sectors that need to be prioritised if we are to achieve a totally clean, secure and affordable energy system by 2050. Our homes and buildings’ operational and embodied carbon need to be addressed, and our heavy industries, such as steel, glass and ceramics, need to find high-energy, low-cost solutions. The aviation sector must show how it can meet the Government’s expansion expectations without an over-optimistic reliance on the production of sustainable aviation fuel or a dependence on greenhouse gas removal technologies that are still not proven at commercial scale.

  First, let us examine the energy and emissions projections that undergird the plan. The emissions projections include all planned, adopted, implemented and expired climate change policies. They are expected to deliver more than 100% of the emissions reductions to meet carbon budgets 4 and 5, but are projected to contribute only 76% of the savings needed for carbon budget 6. Over the summer, the Climate Change Committee examined 163 of those plans for reducing emissions. Fewer than half were considered to be fully credible, and more than a third were considered to be insufficient or to have significant risk of failure. On its top recommendation—to make electricity cheaper—the committee said that it had “not…seen any progress” in the past year.

  It is good that the plans are improving and becoming more credible year on year, but the delivery plan states only that the Government “expect” the energy and emissions projections to deliver the requisite emissions reductions. It does not say that they are confident or give a percentage of probability, as we find in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The excellent people at Carbon Brief note that by counting all the various policies—past, present and future—alongside other modelling adjustments, the baseline for carbon budget 6 is already reduced by 46.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

  The policies assume the success of the zero emission vehicle mandate and the SAF mandate—policies that are still very much in the pipeline. The SAF mandate Bill is still only on Second Reading in the House of Lords. The first warning I give, then, is that the first tranche of policies—at table 3 in the plan—cannot be taken as a given, even though they have been incorporated into the lowering of the baseline for how we measure CB6.

  Warning No. 2 concerns what the plan terms “wider factors”. That principally means the adoption of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that are likely to improve energy efficiency, help integrate renewable energy generation and support sustainable practices, according to the technical annexe. The Government’s analysis finds that those wider factors, which also include consumer behaviour, could reduce emissions by an average of 20 megatonnes of CO 2 equivalent a year over the period of CB6, from 2033 to 2037. The annexe admits that there is

  The Environmental Audit Committee has recently published its report on warning No. 3, aviation. The final hearing of our inquiry was told that demand management would not be one of the measures to reduce emissions in the sector. Shockingly, that was despite the fact that in its advice on carbon budget 7, the Climate Change Committee said that demand management should account for 54% of emissions reductions in the sector by 2040. SAF only accounted for 33%, and efficiency improvements of technology were a paltry 13%.

  The Department for Transport says that aviation can be fossil fuel-free by 2050 without demand management. Will the Minister ensure that the Government publish that unlikely analysis so that we can properly examine it? I am in no doubt that the Climate Change Committee will be keen to do so. I note that the committee clearly states that

  “the aviation industry adopting the cost of aviation decarbonisation will help manage demand”.

  The Whitehead review recommends that the sector should be required to pay for the greenhouse gas removals it needs to reach net zero, and that Government should ensure that they do so. A fossil-free sector will drive competition between SAF technologies and the new greenhouse gas removal technologies, which is a good thing and to be welcomed, but getting those technologies up and running with far greater urgency is an imperative, given the Government’s desire to go ahead with airport expansion. I remain sceptical at best about the Government’s approach to aviation, and it surely has to be seen as one of the biggest potential pitfalls in their net zero plans, relying so heavily as they do on technology that is not currently readily available.

  The fourth warning is one voiced by many climate scientists, such as Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester. It is that the Climate Change Committee appears to have changed its mandate from advising Government on what they must do to meet the scientific realities, to advising the Government only what they consider the Government will find politically acceptable and be willing to accept.

  I have been a champion of the Climate Change Committee. I believe its independence and forthright advice have been why we managed to achieve such enormous bipartisan progress in tackling climate change. I commend the previous Conservative Government on all the progress they made on that, and I think we need to restore that bipartisanship. However, Professor Anderson rightly warns:

  If we carry on as normal, seeking to do just about enough, we risk overshooting our carbon budgets. In doing so, we fail future generations, and we fail those in the global majority for whom the planet has already warmed too much—whose crops are failing through drought, whose homes are already under floodwater, and whose forests are already burning. Let us all be clear; the costs of inaction on climate change are far greater than the costs of action. That is why the carbon budgets are so important. It is all our responsibility to ensure that we have adequate policies in place to deliver them.

  [Source]

• 16 Oct 2025: Business of the House

  The long-awaited report by the Joint Intelligence Committee on the link between biodiversity, sustainability and national security is still not with us. Lord Dannatt and other senior military figures have increasingly expressed concerns about the threat the collapse of global biodiversity poses to our food security and the security risks arising from climate change. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that, contrary to recent press stories, the JIC report has not been blocked, and can he tell the House when it will be published?

  [Source]

• 16 Oct 2025: Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

  The ocean accounts for 99% of our planet by volume and nearly two thirds by surface area. Every second breath we take is supplied to us by the ocean. Some 90% of the excess heat in the climate system has been absorbed by the ocean. The ocean is our greatest nature-based solution to climate change, and it is only by restoring the health of our marine ecosystems that we can deliver on our promise to meet the 30 by 30 target in the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework. The BBNJ treaty is the missing part of the jigsaw. That is why today’s debate is so important, and why the Bill is so important.

  [Source]

• 14 Oct 2025: COP30: Food System Transformation

  COP30 is the COP at which the ratcheted-up nationally determined contributions must take account of every sector of the economy. Countries have been struggling to do so: by the fall of the third extended deadline last month, only 60 of the 190 countries had submitted their revised NDCs. It is vital that food systems be integrated into NDCs submitted to COP30, focusing on sustainable agricultural practices and climate-resilient farming. We need to support countries in prioritising food security, sustainable livelihoods and environmental resilience.

  [Source]

• 14 Jul 2025: State of Climate and Nature

  16:23

  I thank my right hon. Friend for this statement; I have waited 14 years for it, and I look forward to such a statement being given to the House in each of the next 14 years. One of the key drivers of climate change is deforestation. One of the key drivers of deforestation is cattle ranching and soy production. One of the key drivers of cattle ranching and soy production is City of London finance, which is used to bankroll what is happening. What restrictions can he place on the financial giants of the City to make sure that we stop this at source?

  [Source]

• 30 Apr 2025: Global Deforestation

  09:45

  Forests are amazing, or, to be a little more scientific about it, forest ecosystems provide critical and diverse services to human society. They are a primary habitat for a wide range of species. They support biodiversity and conservation. Forest growth sequesters and stores carbon from the atmosphere. It contributes to regulation of the global carbon cycle and mitigates climate change. Healthy forests produce soil and conserve it. They stabilise stream flows and water run-off, preventing land degradation and desertification. Forests reduce the risks of natural disasters such as droughts, floods and landslides. They contribute to poverty eradication and to economic development by providing food, fibre, timber and other forest products for subsistence and income generation. They are a key genetic source for the pharmaceutical industry, contributing to global human health, and they even serve as sites of aesthetic, recreational and spiritual values in so many cultures.

  The drivers of deforestation are well known. Agricultural expansion remains the single largest cause, and according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, is responsible for 88% of global deforestation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that it contributes 11% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Similarly, in its report on deforestation in January last year, the Environmental Audit Committee identified what we might call the seven deadly sins of deforestation—the seven commodities that are driving 90% of global deforestation: beef and leather, soy, timber, palm oil, paper, rubber and cocoa.

  “Protecting and restoring mangroves, forests, and peatlands could provide around a third of the most cost-effective climate change solutions we need, while supporting species and helping communities adapt to become more resilient. Shifting towards more sustainable forms of agriculture would not only protect the planet’s lungs, but it could add a further $2.3trn in productive growth to the global economy and create a further 200 million jobs by 2050…We know that there is no pathway to Net Zero emissions—or indeed the Sustainable Development Goals—that does not involve protecting and restoring nature on an unprecedented scale. But despite the huge contribution nature can make, it attracts just 3% of global climate finance.”

  The taskforce demanded action, and in the Environment Act 2021 it got a pale version of it. The Act introduced measures to prohibit UK businesses from using commodities grown on illegally deforested or occupied land. At the COP28 summit in Dubai in 2023, the UK delegation announced the list of commodities that could be included in environmental law and explained that businesses with more than £50 million in global annual turnover that use more than 500 metric tonnes of commodities a year would need to source from land they could prove was not illegally deforested.

  The failure to impose adequate due diligence on companies, banks and finance houses and institutions has meant that, since the Glasgow declaration, UK banks have provided more than £1 billion to companies that present a forest risk. Last July, UK investors still held £1.4 billion-worth of assets and shares issued by these companies. The largest 50 of those investors make up 99% of the total UK forest-risk investments, yet 18 of them were actually signatories to the net zero asset managers initiative. Sadly, just eight have made any clear public commitment to eventually removing deforestation from their portfolios. That leaves 42 that should be ashamed of themselves.

  Three names stand out, but for all the wrong reasons: HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered. Between them, those three banks have provided 97% of the £4.5 billion-worth of credit lines for forest-risk companies since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015. It is not just in government where there is a gap between policy and action. In 2017, HSBC committed

  In fact, it has provided credit lines amounting to £1.9 billion to forest-risk companies such as JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which, despite a record of corruption and forest destruction, just last week was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission to list on the New York stock exchange, giving it access to new sources of finance and capital markets. It is, of course, just a few months since JBS dropped its net zero by 2040 climate pledge, claiming, “Well, it was never a formal commitment.”

  There can be no one silver bullet but, my goodness, there must be a desire to start. With COP30 this November being hosted in Brazil, there is a compelling case to move from intention to delivery. First, the Minister knows only too well that we must urgently expand the due diligence regime to cover all forest-risk commodities, whether legal or illegal, under producer country law. We should introduce criminal liability for companies knowingly profiting from deforestation, and require UK banks and investors to disclose their deforestation risk.

  Thirdly, the tropical forests forever facility—TFFF—championed by Brazil, will inevitably assume centre stage as we progress towards Belém and COP30. By using arbitrage between the cost of long-dated Government bonds and loans and the returns of a more diversified portfolio, the TFFF fund seeks to provide a long-term payment for conservation and restoration of tropical forests. The facility would help to address a significant market failure, placing a value to the ecosystem services that those forests provide, and returning that to the forest communities that curate them.

  Will the Minister tell us how the UK will be involved in the TFFF? What conversations has she had with colleagues in international development? How will the fund prioritise and reward the role of indigenous and traditional knowledge partners in forest stewardship? She knows that indigenous peoples need specific legal protections, recognition and direct funding. Forests thrive when indigenous rights are upheld. Our aid and climate finance must prioritise those locally led solutions. That is fundamental, not just for nature and climate mitigation, but for justice, for addressing poverty and for human rights.

  After years of declining indicators, we now have an opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation. I am proud of the direction that our Labour Government have taken since July, from creating a special envoy for nature to committing to deliver three new national forests. Domestically, the Government are investing up to £400 million in tree planting and peatland restoration over 2024-25 and 2025-26. However, if we are to lead globally we must also act globally, and that includes how we mobilise capital. Public funding is crucial, but on its own it is not enough. We need to unlock private finance to support conservation and sustainable development, especially in regions safeguarding the planet’s remaining great forests, and that means scaling up tools such as green bonds, blended finance and debt-for-nature swaps. The City of London can and should be a hub for that kind of innovation, not only for climate finance, but for nature-positive finance.

  [Source]

• 30 Apr 2025: Energy Grid Resilience

  Energy resilience comes from a secure supply of clean and cheap energy. The major cause of the financial crises that the world has experienced over the last 40 years is the insecurity of supply of the fossil fuel markets, with Ukraine being just the latest case. As for cheap, the last Government in answer to a parliamentary question admitted that the levelised cost of gas was £114 per megawatt-hour, whereas offshore wind was £44 per megawatt-hour. As for clean, the House may be aware that wind and solar are not known as great emitters of greenhouse gases. So renewables are clean, cheap and secure. Renewables and resilience go together.

  [Source]

• 23 Apr 2025: North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support

  This debate takes place at a key point in the transition away from oil and gas production in the North sea. With the Government’s consultation on building the North sea’s energy future under way, and with the clean energy mission driving forward at some pace, securing clean energy generation and the wealth creation and jobs that will go with it is non-negotiable if we are not to repeat the same unjust transition as before.

  The current North sea transition deal is not fit for purpose. It places far too much responsibility on the companies themselves. Those companies are not delivering what is needed: a mere seven out of the 87 North sea oil and gas operators are even considering investment in renewable energy by 2030. We cannot outsource the future of our workers and our energy security to the very companies whose current business model is failing. We need a radical shift. The time for a coherent deal for the North sea is now. It is vital that the Government commit to bringing forward a bold and ambitious plan with the urgency that this time demands.

  The unjust transition at the refinery in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) and the situation in Port Talbot are warning signs that early Government intervention and investment are paramount if we are to secure the future of our workers. They deserve to experience a smooth transition. Over 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have transferable skills, but they report a lack of support for transitioning into other industries. The energy skills passport is a start, but workers are footing the bill for their own retraining, which often duplicates their existing qualifications. The Government need to commit to streamlining the process. Crucially, the Minister should meet with the Treasury to deliver the £335 million-a-year training fund that unions and climate groups are rightly calling for—a fund that provides paid time off for workers to retrain.

  [Source]

• 10 Feb 2025: Biomass Generation

  Drax has exploited UK taxpayers for far too long. It has lied about meeting sustainability rules, burned 1 million tonnes of wood from primary forests, gagged whistleblowers with non-disclosure agreements, and pretended that it could sequester carbon from replanted forests in time to meet our 2050 targets. Today, the Government have brought that a stop. They have debunked Drax’s lies, cut its subsidy, and set a clear and sensible exit strategy that will maintain security of supply. After 15 years of campaigning, I welcome this breakthrough for honesty and common sense.

  [Source]

• 10 Feb 2025: Rosebank and Jackdaw Oilfields

  15:58

  I welcome what my hon. Friend has said about the importance of the just transition and the need to move gradually to renewables. He quoted from our party’s manifesto that

  “they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis.”

  Can he confirm that the 3 million oil barrels that would come out of Rosebank would in fact not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure and would only worsen the climate crisis?

  [Source]

• 24 Jan 2025: Climate and Nature Bill

  10:39

  I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for introducing the Bill; it has had a very long gestation, involving many Members on both sides of the House, but it is good that it has cross-party support. Indeed, the first thing I want to focus on is the importance of cross-party support. These issues had cross-party support in the House for many years following the Climate Change Act 2008, and that continued until about 2015. That was tremendously important in the progress that not only we but the world were able to make. People saw that it was possible for Parliament to come together and do things that were considered radical to tackle climate change. Latterly, unfortunately, that consensus has broken down somewhat, and it is important—it is the duty of all Members of the House—to try to repair that consensus and to build on it. Unless we do, we will face the sort of future that the hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich outlined.

  Those objectives are the climate and nature targets, and it is great that the Bill makes the link between the two; that is fundamentally important. However, I want to counsel against annual targets in this regard. As we know—it is well documented in the OEP report that the hon. Lady referred to, as well as in the Climate Change Committee’s reports—there is natural fluctuation annually in what happens around us. Sometimes that is because of the El Niño effect, and sometimes it is for other reasons—nobody in the House will be more familiar with the El Niño effect on the oceans than the hon. Lady. It is important that we understand that sometimes an annual target, to be consistent with the five-year targets and the overall long-term target, will look like it is going backwards. We need to look at that very carefully in the Bill.

  I gently point out, however, that the climate assembly disagreed with some of the things that the Committee on Climate Change told us were essential to do. The 66% figure in the clause is actually quite a low threshold. Sometimes the report from the climate assembly was clear that people were not prepared to go as far as the Committee on Climate Change and other nature organisations, such as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, believed was imperative. On who is in charge, there is a failure to connect things up, because the clause says that if something is recommended by 66% of the assembly, it must be included in the strategy. We will need to go through those areas in serious detail.

  Finally, it is important that the Bill talks about the impact of climate, biodiversity and nature on each other. I pick up on what the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich— the grandfather of the House, as he styled himself—said about Drax. We are going down the wrong road with Drax. I understand the reasons why: Drax power station provides 4% of UK electricity in the power sector. It seen as an important area, so the question is, if we take it away, how will we fill it? But we cannot allow the damage to old growth and to virgin forests that we know is happening in Canada. More than that, as has been said by the noble Lord Birt, who has also seen some of the whistleblowers’ accounts, as I have, those accounts make it clear that the Ofgem investigation was correct in saying that the sustainability of the feedstock had been not only misreported but deliberately misreported. That means that the people concerned in Drax are not fit and proper to run the company, and we should not be paying them—at the moment—£9 billion. We have now to decide whether we will subsidise that even further. The impact on biodiversity is disastrous, and although they say it is renewable, it is not within the timeframe to meet the 2050 climate target. It is salient that the previous Secretary of State, after she ceased to be the Secretary of State, said, “We knew all along that this was not sustainable.” If that is the case, perhaps she should have done something when she was Secretary of State, but it is this Government who must now act to ensure that no further subsidy is paid to Drax.

  [Source]

• 21 Jan 2025: Environmental Protection

  17:40

  The Minister has been most generous in giving way to Members. She mentioned that the scheme will apply to plastic and metal drinks containers. What discussions has she had, or what information have her officials gathered, about the potential for manufacturers to switch their containers to glass and the impact that might have on use of resource and climate change?

  [Source]

  18:01

  I commend the previous Government for much of the work they did. I commend the fact that they put in place the Environment Act 2021. I do so because it is really important that we adopt a bipartisan approach to these matters. When we are talking about the environment and climate change, yes in this Chamber we can have some political point scoring occasionally, but it is much more important that we create the bipartisan platform that means successive Governments can build and work from it.

  [Source]

• 28 Nov 2024: Fishing Industry

  14:55

  Climate change represents a significant threat to marine life and the fisheries that depend on a healthy ecosystem, but it was not climate change that collapsed those stocks; it was heavy and constant overfishing. We sometimes hear big fishing interests blame climate change for the collapse, and it certainly makes the recovery of those populations harder, but the truth is that we consistently set catch limits above scientifically advised levels. That has crashed those stocks and will continue to do so as long as Ministers are prepared to go into the negotiations and ignore the science.

  In introducing the debate, the right hon. Gentleman spoke about climate change and cod stocks. In recent years, every time quotas for North sea cod have been set at sustainable levels in accordance with the science, the stocks of cod have increased. Every time quotas have been set out of line with the science, the stocks have declined. Our understanding of the additional pressures of climate change should be driving us to be even more precautionary in our approach to the protection of fish stocks—not to be pretending that it is the cause of their collapse. While I am thinking about cod and the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) about the processing industry, I should say that the cod that comes to Grimsby is predominantly from Greenland, Norway and Iceland, which have a much more precautionary approach to setting the quota.

  [Source]

• 25 Nov 2024: Storm Bert

  18:09

  Last July, the previous Government issued its third national adaptation plan, and this March the Climate Change Committee issued its independent assessment of NAP3. It said that it falls far short of what is needed, that it lacks the pace and ambition to address growing climate risks—which we are already experiencing—and that it fails to set out a compelling vision for what the Government’s well-adapted UK entails, with only around 40% of the short-term actions to address urgent risks identified in the previous climate change risk assessment.

  Will the Secretary of State ensure that the key recommendations of the Climate Change Committee in its assessment of NAP3 are implemented and that an urgent refresh of NAP3 takes place, to strengthen it and avoid locking in additional climate impacts? Key reforms must be implemented over the next year, along with enforcement. Those are the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee. Can he assure the House that he is taking those seriously and moving them forward?

  [Source]

• 7 Oct 2024: Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage

  I had rather hoped that my right hon. Friend was going to start his statement by saying, “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—”. I have waited so long to hear a Secretary of State make such announcements from the Dispatch Box, and I am delighted. However, my right hon. Friend knows that carbon capture technologies reduce the energy intensity of fossil fuels by up to 25%, which makes such electricity much more expensive than that produced from renewables. Can the Secretary of State confirm that CCUS will be used not simply to allow the continued extraction of fossil fuel for our power sector, but only for the hardest-to-abate heavy industries and for the production of green hydrogen, thereby keeping domestic fuel bills low and delivering on this Government’s commitment to decarbonise our power sector by 2030 through much cheaper renewables and nuclear, not more expensive gas with CCUS? Finally, may I caution him against swallowing too much of the hype around blue hydrogen?

  [Source]

• 26 Jul 2024: Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

  10:51

  My hon. Friend, very importantly, mentioned the role that carbon capture, usage and storage has to play in the decarbonisation of our economy. I am sure he will have seen the latest National Audit Office report on CCUS and will therefore be aware that the Department has increased its reliance on CCUS substantially since this was first mooted. The NAO is clear in its report that uncertainty remains about the funding available for future stages of the CCUS project proposals; that the previous Government were behind in agreeing support for track 1; and that future progress on the programme is dependent on reaching financial investment decisions for at least some of the track 1 projects very swiftly. Will he give us an update—if not now, at some point later—on how this essential part of the programme will be handled?

  [Source]

  The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. On the issue of undergrounding power lines, although that may in some cases be necessary for communities, does she not accept, given that it is 10 times the cost, that it is possible to screen the power lines and, in doing so, create biodiversity corridors that can connect biodiversity from one part of the country to another, so that biodiversity can cope with climate change?

  [Source]

• 25 Jul 2024: Convention on Biological Diversity

  17:05

  In simple terms, that is what the convention on biological diversity has sought to do since it opened for signatures at the Earth summit in Rio in 1992. It has been ratified by every member state of the United Nations, with the appalling exception of the United States of America. Its aims are the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. It has two supplementary agreements: the Cartagena protocol, adopted in 2000, which seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms created by modern biotechnological practices, and the 2014 Nagoya protocol, which aims to share the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way.

  [Source]

  17:08

  A nature positive, net zero future can be delivered only if actions for nature and climate are hardwired into decision making. All public bodies must have a legal duty to help recover the natural environment. We must ensure that Government and industry take a strategic approach to planning for new energy infrastructure, which puts nature at its heart, and introduce mandatory reporting against the taskforce on nature-related financial disclosures aligned with global nature preservation and restoration targets.

  That brings me to the question of who in Government will be attending COP16. I know the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers have been invited. What an amazing signal it would send to the rest of the world that the UK is back, seriously engaged on the international stage with the most critical threats facing our planet, if the Prime Minister were to lead our UK delegation and if not only the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were to attend, but the Foreign Secretary. The CBD has sometimes been seen as the Cinderella COP to the Climate Change Convention. In truth, they are twin crises in which each turbocharges the other. The loss of biodiversity will deplete all of the provisioning resources and ecosystem services on which human life depends. This is not just an environmental problem, but an economic and a security problem.

  I have another reason for wishing that the Prime Minister would go to Cali. I hope he will announce that the UK is willing to host the next CBD COP—COP17—in London in 2026. The fourth goal that was set in Montreal at COP15 was the goal of finance and resource mobilisation. Where better to make progress on the financial framework for delivering our 2030 and 2050 targets than the City of London—the world’s financial centre?

  [Source]

• 25 Apr 2024: Global Ocean Treaty

  14:26

  Known as the “biological pump”, billions of metric tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere are transferred to the bottom of the ocean every year, reducing the impact of global warming. Without the high seas shielding us, we would already be in a full-scale climate breakdown. Over 90% of the warming of the earth between 1971 and 2010 was directly absorbed by the oceans. If we increase the phytoplankton in our oceans by just 1%, it would have the same climate benefits as 2 billion mature trees.

  Protection of the high seas is desperately needed for both ocean health and human wellbeing. Properly protecting 30% of the high seas would create havens for ocean wildlife that sustain and replenish the waters closer to shore. Importantly, it would enhance fish populations and food security. The high seas should be a global commons benefiting all of humanity. In fact, they are grossly abused. The result is that 80% of fisheries worldwide are fully or over-exploited, depleted or in a state of collapse. Continuing with the status quo and avoiding the necessary steps to curb overfishing and avert climate breakdown will lead to the comprehensive collapse of fisheries, and the lowest-income nations will suffer the most.

  [Source]

• 16 Apr 2024: Grid Decarbonisation: Cost

  If grid decarbon-isation by 2030 really did cost the billions of pounds that the Secretary of State claims, she might care to explain why her own policy is to achieve 95% of full decarbonisation by the very same date. She knows that independent analysis actually says that Labour’s plan would reduce families’ energy bills by £300 a year, so will she ’fess up? Will she admit that the true price of her failure will be paid for by hard-pressed families in their energy bills?

  [Source]

• 15 Apr 2024: Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

  I am sure that my hon. Friend has, like me, marvelled at the Government’s ability to legislate for Rwanda to be a safe country—Lords amendment 2 addressed that. Will he join me in urging the Government to use their amazing power to legislate to ensure that carbon dioxide emissions no longer cause global warming, and sugar, fat and alcohol no longer damage human health?

  [Source]

• 20 Feb 2024: Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

  11:46

  This Bill will not secure British energy independence or help to meet UK or global climate targets. We know, because the Energy Secretary told us so herself, that this Bill will not lower energy bills, yet here we are debating this Bill instead of focusing our minds and time on real solutions that will accelerate the energy transition that is already happening all around us. That energy transition is not only underpinned by a strong scientific consensus to address climate change, but founded in a mission to make energy affordable and to unleash new economic opportunities across Britain, particularly in the regions left behind by previous energy transitions.

  I pay tribute to all the workers in oil and gas, who help to keep Britain’s lights on. Their hard work over many years powers our country, and their skills will be essential in making Britain a clean energy superpower. That is why we must respect those workers, and why we should be truthful with them. They deserve no less than that, and we in the labour movement remember only too well what happens when communities are faced with the sudden loss of jobs. We remember the closure of the pits and the communities that were left with nothing, because Government failed to put in place genuine alternatives and a just transition.

  I know that British exceptionalism is almost an article of faith or mantra with this Government, but being the first country that sells the last drop of oil is not a feasible strategy. That is not just because the world signed up to transition away from fossil fuels at COP 28, but because the North sea is a declining basin that is nearly empty. New licences between now and 2050 will only provide 103 days of gas. That is just four days of gas every year. Saying that we will expand oil and gas licences in a declining basin and pretending that that will make any real difference to jobs in the North sea is nothing short of dishonest. It may provide campaigning material to pretend otherwise, but people’s livelihoods are more important than political game playing, and we ought to stick to the facts.

  [Source]

  15:05

  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that we must manage the decline, but we must manage the decline in the community’s livelihood, which is not necessarily the same thing. If we make sure that we have a just transition, and introducing support for retraining and gaining skills, as outlined in the amendments that I am supporting, he will find that his constituents and many others around the country will much better weather that decline and prepare for the sort of future that we want.

  Amendment 14 sets out the need for formalised collective agreements with unions and the workforce to create just transition plans. In Spain, we have seen what can be achieved when Governments, businesses, workers and unions come together. The just transition agreement that the Spanish Government have negotiated with affected workers, unions and businesses is popular, economically responsible and environmentally sound. It is a settlement for all involved. That is the approach that ought to be taken in the North sea. The region needs a new settlement, in which: there is an increase in domestic manufacturing; a new generation of renewables, such as green hydrogen, turbocharges employment in energy-intensive industries; the technology of carbon capture, usage and storage and the UK’s unique storage capacity for sequestering carbon can provide a new service that is exportable to the world; the benefits of the energy system are shared fairly; jobs are truly safe and secure; and, above all, those communities who were once the proud purveyors of our fossil fuel energy become our proud sequesterers of the world’s emissions and the champions of the renewable powerhouse of the future.

  [Source]

• 22 Jan 2024: Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

  18:14

  As the world’s hottest year on record was concluding, nearly 200 countries agreed at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels. The contrast between the promise made in Dubai and what the Government seek to do today could not be more profound, nor more depressing. By inviting Parliament to enable annual licensing rounds for offshore oil and gas extraction, the Government are failing to understand that to transition away from fossil fuels, we have to stop producing them. The Government argue, “But it is still a declining field.” “This simply slows the rate of decline,” they say. The problem is that it also slows the rate of investment in a just transition that will unleash the power of wind, solar, tidal and energy efficiency.

  [Source]

  18:16

  I recognise the work that Harbour Energy is doing and I also recognise the work that the Government have done in trying to attract more investment into green energy and renewables, and I welcome that work. I want us to have a cross-party consensus around getting to net zero. The trouble is that—and the Minister knows this to be true—he and many people on his side, including the Prime Minister, have tried to make this a wedge issue, a political issue to divide people. I think he really does need to step up to the plate. If he wants cross-party consensus, he has to try to build it, not score cheap political points.

  [Source]

  18:27

  The Rosebank field that was recently licensed sees a pipeline run through the Faroe-Shetland marine protected area, which threatens ocean life. If a major oil spill from Rosebank were to happen, 20 MPAs could be seriously impacted. This Bill is an attack on nature both by its indirect impact through increasing emissions and its direct impact on the marine environment. The Government appear to believe that they know better than the International Energy Agency, the United Nations Secretary-General, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of the world’s leading scientists, all of whom are clear that new oil and gas licences jeopardise further the goal of 1.5°C. This Parliament’s own independent adviser, the Climate Change Committee, confirmed to Parliament only last year that the expansion of fossil fuel production is not in line with net zero and that the oil and gas field that is required in the UK as we make that journey to net zero does not require the development of any new fields.

  The floods that we are seeing devastate communities and lives around the country are but a foretaste of the terrifying impacts of climate change beyond 1.5°. This Bill does nothing to mitigate them. It does nothing to support the billions of people across the world who live on the frontlines of climate breakdown. It ignores the plight of millions of bill payers who find themselves priced out of our broken energy system. And it ignores the workers who power our country.

  [Source]

• 14 Dec 2023: COP28

  12:30

  There is much in the Minister’s statement that I commend and agree with, and in particular I reinforce his praise to our officials who played such a significant part in the negotiations. I regret the tone of some of his responses to colleagues, because the cross-party consensus on this issue over the past 30 years has been fundamentally important to the progress that we have been able to make. The science is clear; the world’s Governments are not. Those who are ready to deliver the transformation required to win the war against climate change are now considering whether the United Nations framework convention on climate change process is capable of delivering it in time. How long does the Minister think it will be before we see coalitions of the willing, such as the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance, imposing sanctions on those recidivist countries who are still driving our world towards disaster?

  [Source]

• 9 Nov 2023: Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

  12:00

  What we have in this King’s Speech is not the Bill to tackle fuel poverty that we need, but a Bill to shovel yet more public money to the oil and gas sector through the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. The Government seek to justify the Bill by saying it will “enhance” this country’s energy security. It will not, because companies such as Shell and Siccar Point Energy sell their gas on the international markets and refine their oil abroad. The International Energy Agency has made it clear that we have already identified five times the amount of oil and gas that the world could possibly use if it is to keep within the 1.5° threshold of dangerous climate change.

  The Secretary of State tries to persuade the House and the public that these licences are justified because of the tax revenue they will bring. That might be an argument if the facts did not tell us that any tax revenues will not flow from these licences for the five to eight years that it will take to develop them. That might be an argument if the facts did not tell us that it will divert investment away from the real, cheaper, cleaner renewable energy that will actually reduce bills. It might be an argument if it were not the case that, even with the windfall tax, the tax take from oil and gas producers is less than the global average.

  [Source]

• 13 Jul 2023: NATO Summit

  11:14

  Russia has built 475 new military sites and 50 major new military bases on its northern frontier—its northern flank—in the past six years because the loss of the summer sea ice has exposed that flank. That makes clear the way in which climate change is affecting and endangering all our lives not just in terms of the environment and food security, but militarily. What discussions did the Prime Minister have at the NATO summit about the Arctic Council and how its balance, which has moved from 5:3 to 7:1, has furthered that isolation? Did he discuss how the northern sea route has been claimed by Russia as an inland sea and how warships are now having to declare when they go through?

  [Source]

• 6 Jun 2023: Net Zero: 2050 Target

  16:47

  Sir Christopher, under your guidance, I will try to speak swiftly. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) on introducing the debate; I welcome much that he said. We are debating the Government policy on reaching net zero by 2050, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to think about the Government’s barriers to reaching net zero by 2050, because the truth is that we are not on a path to net zero.

  Not all is bad. Under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021, the UK created a strong legal framework for achieving net zero emissions by 2050. We, on both sides of the House, should be proud of that. However, legal promises alone cannot stand. They must be accompanied by consequential and transformational political action. The question is not what we have committed ourselves to, but how we are implementing the steps that are required to get there.

  The Government know that. The 2021 net zero strategy clearly outlines the fact that achieving net zero

  Again, I welcome the language, but the net zero growth plan does not follow that vision. Instead, it sets out a vision for a market led and technology driven net zero transition. A technology centred, market led approach is Government-speak for a voluntarist business-as-usual approach. This is too important to get wrong.

  Rooting our net zero approach in technological developments blinkers us to the essential unity of the twin crises of climate and the environment and ignores the very nature-based solutions that the UK Government have rightly championed internationally. It shows a fundamental incoherence in the Government’s philosophical approach. We will neither achieve our environmental goals nor reap the benefits of the economic opportunities of the 21st century if we leave it to the market to lead. The Climate Change Committee has pointed out that while currently more than 31,000 people across the UK are employed in offshore wind alone, that is set to rise to 97,000 by 2030. This is a huge opportunity.

  I welcome some of the investment that the Government have committed to achieving net zero, with £30 billion of public investment for a green industrial revolution, £36 billion of funding for improvements in energy efficiency, £20 billion for carbon capture and storage and a billion for low-carbon technologies. The Government appear to remain perfectly convinced that their approach will catalyse around—they say—£100 billion of private investment in developing those new industries and new carbon technologies, such as offshore wind and carbon capture and storage. That is a combined total of £187 billion.

  By contrast, the Climate Change Committee has made it clear that we need between £300 billion and £430 billion of investment to achieve our goals. More importantly, it is clear that a strategic programme is required to reform the regulatory frameworks and to remove those barriers to the planning and construction of renewable energy infrastructure. It is not just about money; it is about the whole regulatory framework. The 2022 Climate Change Committee report points out that that has not been done; there is no adequate policy framework for catalysing the large-scale transformations necessary to achieve the established net zero targets by 2050. It is concerned that there does not seem to be any urgency on the part of the Government to do so.

  I welcome the independent review conducted by the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore). He recognised the barriers that remain in place. His review said that the Government should take immediate action, and it recommended 25 short-term policies that the Government should achieve by 2025. The review called those policies “25 by 2025”. The idea was both to remove barriers that prevented business and industries from supporting the net zero ambition and to provide an immediate signal of intent to the private sector that the Government were serious about delivering their net zero target.

  We were disappointed on the Environmental Audit Committee when the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), responded to questions in our most recent hearing. When asked about wood pellet biomass at the Drax power station—a technology that emits 18% more carbon than coal, yet still remains a critical part of the Government’s net zero agenda—the Secretary of State said that he hoped he might be able to say more in a future session. Well, we all hope that, because we have been eagerly awaiting the Government’s biomass strategy, which was due to be published last year and has still not made it into the public domain. His response on hydrogen, supposedly a key part in the Government’s plan, was equally disappointing. The Secretary of State—

  [Source]

• 15 Mar 2023: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  18:00

  I welcome the action taken on prepayment meters, which will make a real difference to some of the poorest families in our country. But again, what chutzpah. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), my constituency neighbour, has been urging every Chancellor since George Osborne to resolve this inequality. I welcome the action taken to allocate £20 billion—over 20 years—for carbon capture, use and storage. But again, what chutzpah. Thirteen years ago, the incoming Tory-Liberal Government inherited £4 billion already allocated to CCUS, and they cut it.

  Equally, it makes no sense to be paying 100% of the cost of oil and gas companies such as BP and Shell for exploitation of new fossil fuel reserves in the North sea, which will contradict our net zero objectives. These companies are already making record profits on the backs of bill payers in the UK. I would ask the Chancellor to put a green filter on R&D tax credits.

  The Chancellor had four E’s, but he missed out the most pressing E of all: the environment. The Committee on Climate Change set out that we will not achieve our net zero target without a strategic programme to reform our regulatory frameworks and market design that galvanises between £300 billion and £430 billion of investment and removes the barriers to the construction of a new renewable energy infrastructure. I am afraid this Budget simply does not measure up.

  [Source]

• 10 Jan 2023: Stamp Duty Land Tax (Reduction) Bill

  14:39

  I am very grateful to the Minister. I listened carefully to what she was saying about global economic circumstances, in particular Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the effect that that has had on people in this country through their energy bills. She will know that the Government set a target for a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. To achieve that, will she consider looking at whether stamp duty might be raised up or put down in accordance with the energy performance certificate ratings of properties, perhaps providing a way for households to benefit financially but ensure that they meet the Government’s target?

  [Source]

• 6 Dec 2022: Sustainable Energy Generation: Burning Trees

  09:49

  It is a pleasure to join in the debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for introducing it. I feel for her: about a decade ago I was in exactly the same position as a Back Bencher trying to tell my Front Bench team that they were mistaken in going down the biomass road. I think the Government are at the point where they will listen; indeed, I hope that is the case because, if they do not, it will make a mockery of all that we are doing on not only climate change but biodiversity.

  The Department has been asked what the natural absorption rate of the emitted carbon would be if we replenish those lost resources—that is, if we replace those trees to absorb the emitted carbon. It gave an answer—it was, “We do not hold this information.” Well, other people have calculated it, and it is 190 years. We have seven years left until 2030, when the whole world must be on a declining pathway of emissions, and 27 years until 2050, when we have to achieve net zero. So the timescale—even accepting the principle that this is only about carbon emissions and that this is a cycle—is just too long.

  The Government will no doubt talk about how CCS can be married up with BECCS. They will say that if we can capture those carbon emissions, that will make it all right. However, only 44% of emissions released at the Boundary Dam project in Canada were captured. The Government have not been prepared to say that they would hold Drax to what Ember, at least, has said should be the target—95% of emissions captured.

  The trees on the entire area covered by the second Drax logging licence have now been cut down. It is simply not the case, as the company said, that the forests have been transferred to other logging licences. It said it does not hold those licences anymore. Again, that was a lie. “Panorama” checked that claim by going to the Government of British Colombia, who confirmed that Drax does still hold those licences. I understand how things progress, and I have no doubt that the company was set up to try to do good. We all thought at that stage that this was really going to be a sustainable way of tackling climate change, but Drax has got further and further into a reality that is now simply leading it to lie to the public. It is time that the Government distanced themselves from that lie.

  I am sorry the Government are now considering a further proposal from Drax. I really hope—not only for climate change purposes, but because of the wider biodiversity impact—that they will think very long and very hard, take notice of what the hon. Member for North Devon and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North have said today, and just say no. We have to transition away from burning trees. It is a damaging way of using forests, and it cannot be sustained.

  [Source]

• 21 Nov 2022: COP27

  00:03

  That the UK is reducing emissions faster than other countries may be true, but it is not sufficient to meet the timescale within which we have to reduce emissions globally to realise 1.5°. Will the Minister tell me today what she is doing in terms of putting new money into that loss and damage fund, and to identify the new money? Much of what she has identified so far has been pre-announced—it is old money. Will she also tell me what she is doing to ensure that the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero will be adequately funded not only by the UK, but by other countries?

  [Source]

• 17 Nov 2022: G20

  11:13

  When the Prime Minister met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier this week, did he challenge him on the way Saudi Arabia has been blocking the proposal at COP27 for the phasing down of all fossil fuels?

  [Source]

• 25 Oct 2022: Topical Questions

  T8. The Minister accused this side of the House of misrepresenting the figures on climate change, but it is the independent Climate Change Committee that says that the Government are not on track to achieve net zero and that 61% of their own targets for emission reductions have no credible plan in place to achieve them. Is the committee also misrepresenting the facts?

  [Source]

• 17 Oct 2022: Energy Prices Bill

  20:34

  While failure to address the demand side shows that the Government should have been investing in a comprehensive retrofit scheme over the past 12 years, it also highlights their failure, until Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, to understand just how essential energy security is to our national security. Energy efficiency and renewable energy were regarded, in the words of our Prime Minister—that is, three Prime Ministers ago—as “green crap”. The truth is that, if we had rolled out a comprehensive programme of renewables and energy efficiency measures over the past 12 years, that stuff would now be regarded as green gold and there would be scant need for the provisions of this Bill.

  [Source]

• 17 Oct 2022: Energy Prices Bill

  19:20

  Before the temporary windfall tax the UK levied the lowest tax take from its oil and gas producers anywhere in the world, and even with the temporary windfall tax it still taxes a full 6% below the global average. If the UK taxed these companies even at the global average, it would recover an extra £13.4 billion for the Exchequer each year. The Committee on Climate Change wrote to the previous Chancellor—when he was the previous Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy but one—saying that he should support a tighter limit on production with stringent tests and a presumption against exploration. He took no notice, and the measures in this Bill are the consequences of the Government’s now being forced to protect consumers and business from their past failure to invest in renewables.

  [Source]

• 14 Jul 2022: Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

  15:06

  The Dasgupta review, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred, set out with great economic force the consequences of what Professor Dasgupta termed “impact inequality”: the imbalance between humanity’s demand and nature’s supply, and the need to reconstruct economics so that nature is an essential part of it and ecosystem services are properly valued. It was disappointing that when the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to discuss the Dasgupta review, it became clear that she had not read it. Yesterday, when the chair of the Committee on Climate Change appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and was asked about DEFRA’s plan for net zero, it was notable that he said not only that there was no clarity for others, but that there was no implementation that it was possible to judge because the metrics were not there. Just as the Government should implement net zero stress tests for all budgets, so they should implement net nature tests against all expenditure to ensure that alignment with our post-2030 biodiversity framework is maintained.

  [Source]

  15:16

  Indeed. One of the things COP15 is grappling with at the moment is how to reconcile the different metrics that different countries use to assess their national biodiversity and sustainability action plans, and how to integrate them into a common measure. It is much more difficult to do this with biodiversity than it is with climate change. We know the common measure in climate change—it is CO 2 —but we do not have an easy common measure for biodiversity. My right hon. Friend is right. It is one of the things that COP15 really has to grapple with.

  The COP is setting out its target to halt the loss of biodiversity, but as I said earlier, sadly that has been our 10-yearly target for nearly three decades now. For effective implementation, we must ensure that there are key staging posts to show that we are on the right track to achieving the long-term objective. Interim objectives around the amount of reforestation and the amount of marine protection zones must be used as staging posts in the same way as we in this country use the five-yearly carbon budgets as staging posts towards our 2050 net zero target.

  [Source]

  15:19

  I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is right that we need to look at land restoration as one of the key indicators. It is particularly the case in sub-Saharan African countries, which are facing an increasing challenge of desertification from climate change, which they are having to fight against, rather than just looking at the land that is already semi-desert and trying to see how to restore that. It is a huge problem. The NBSAPs must be living documents, which is why they need to be ratcheted up, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, every five years between major COPs.

  Let me turn to finance. I pay tribute to Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who spoke at the beginning of COP26. For my money, she was the most powerful speaker at the whole event. She pointed out to the politicians assembled for the launch of COP26 that the promise we had given was for $100 billion a year to be put into the global planet fund to help the global south to cope with climate change and to take effective mitigation efforts. We have not delivered that, and we are nowhere near delivering it. She pointed out that it was not because we could not afford it, because we had just spent $9 trillion—trillions, not billions—bailing ourselves out over the covid pandemic. The funds are available and they must be made available.

  The extent of quantitative easing that the global north has allowed itself since the 2008 global financial crisis has been more than $36 trillion. What is COP15 asking for? It is asking for the same as was promised at COP26: $100 billion a year, rising to $700 billion a year. That is essential. If we are to enable those developing countries in the global south to do exactly what the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was talking about with regard to the restoration of degraded land, and if we are to deal with these problems, we have to be serious. As the human species, we do not have the right not to be.

  [Source]

• 4 Jul 2022: CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

  16:15

  Rwanda and the UK hosted the “Keeping 1.5 Alive” event in Kigali, but at the same time, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said that the requirement—the opportunity—to keep within 1.5° had now shifted forward from 2032 to 2025. Given that most major emitters in the G7 are not even meeting the Paris commitments that they made seven years ago, what realistic chance does the Prime Minister believe there is of the G7 stepping up to the plate in the next three years to achieve that turning down of emissions?

  [Source]

• 12 May 2022: Fairness at Work and Power in Communities

  14:39

  The insecurity that climate change puts over all our lives needs to be tackled in a comprehensive housing policy. For all the talk about a windfall tax—and we should talk about it—the cheapest energy is the energy that we do not use, so we should insulate the 19 million homes that need insulation. The Government have known this for years. Every Select Committee of this House has told them what to do and there has been complete inaction. Where in the Gracious Address is the real sense of commitment to tackling this as part of the housing crisis? There has been a 38% rise in street homelessness and a net loss of 22,000 social homes across England. We need the Government to tackle the housing crisis.

  [Source]

• 15 Nov 2021: COP26

  First, may I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma)? He has gained enormous international respect for the diligent, courteous and tenacious way in which he conducted the negotiations as COP26 President.

  Given that article IV of the Glasgow climate pact requires us to accelerate the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies, can the Prime Minister tell us whether the 130% tax super deduction announced by the Chancellor will now have a climate filter imposed so that the taxpayer does not end up paying the full cost of projects such as the Cambo oilfield, and whether the Government will use the $27.5 billion windfall from the International Monetary Fund special drawing rights to significantly scale up their provision of climate finance to developing countries, as demanded under articles III and V?

  [Source]

• 28 Oct 2021: Income Tax (Charge)

  14:45

  Let me now turn to the way that is required. It is to be regretted that the Chancellor does not use public transport when in London. Were he to do so, he would have seen the poster campaign that says, “The world is looking to you, COP26.” One of those posters says, “Secure our priceless planet. Or argue over cost.” Yesterday, the Chancellor could truly have given us a Budget of optimism: a Budget that addressed the infrastructure needs of our country, the skills development required for a just transition to a net zero economy, and the basis for sustainable economic growth. He failed, and did so in a way that displayed such an astonishing lack of awareness of the problem and what one can only call contempt for the reality of the crisis that it appeared a deliberate provocation to all those about to meet this weekend in Glasgow for COP26.

  The Chancellor referred to the tax super-deduction of 130% allowances for capital investment. He failed to mention that these have no environmental or climate filter and that some of the biggest fossil fuel companies will be able to use them to receive from the taxpayer not only the entire cost of their polluting capital investments but a bonus 30% for doing so, in projects like the Cambo oil field,. This incentivises the very behaviour COP26 is trying to curtail.

  [Source]

• 27 Oct 2021: Sustainability and Climate Change (National Curriculum)

  10:20

  We need to develop the education and skills necessary for that expertise. The Government cannot impose obligations on local authorities and in the planning system without the capacity to deliver on those targets. If we do not train the necessary people, those targets will be meaningless and we will fail. It is vital that we see education as the pump-priming part in the delivery of the targets set in the Environment Bill and the net zero strategy.

  In the Government’s response to the Dasgupta review, they mentioned the newly established sustainability and climate change unit under the Department for Education. However, as the chairman of the EAC said, the Committee’s latest inquiry on green jobs was quite clear that the Government are not grappling with the skills gap needed to achieve net zero. I hope the Minister prioritises the new unit and that it will be able to bridge the gap between the skills shortage and the demand, including through education and retraining of the current workforce, who will be affected by the changes, and where we need a just transition.

  Teach the Future asks for a Government-commissioned review of how the whole English formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis, the inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in teacher training and a new professional teaching qualification, and an English climate emergency education Act. I hope the Minister will respond to those three asks.

  [Source]

• 21 Oct 2021: COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

  14:27

  “Code red for humanity”: that is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called this crisis. It says that we need to mobilise on a warlike footing if we are to prevent the human tragedy and conflict that would result from a failure to meet the 1.5° target.

  The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) and others have argued about money. What does it profit a man if he maximises the income to the Exchequer but loses his granddaughter’s future? The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that delaying action on climate change would double the UK’s national debt simply because of the cost of coping with the consequences of air pollution, flooding and heatwaves. The argument about finance is wholly on this side’s favour.

  One of the big announcements to be made at COP26 is about the global green grid, pioneered by the Climate Parliament, which I chair. It will establish a global system of interconnectors to take renewable energy from where the sun is shining, where the wind is blowing, where the tides are coming in and going out, to where it is needed around the globe.

  The COP has to deliver on these main things. Powering past coal is absolutely vital. The announcement from China that it would no longer fund coal-fired power generation in other countries was a critical step, but we now need China, India and Australia to get on board with the powering past coal convention. The delivery of the £100 billion a year to the developing world is about trust, and so is loss and damage. Addressing loss and damage is essential to building that trust. Low-lying countries and small island developing states cannot adapt to climate change, and they need compensation.

  [Source]

• 23 Jun 2021: Deforestation in the Amazon

  14:44

  So, yes, let us label properly, accounting properly for the actual deforestation, but let us also insist on mandatory reporting for companies and, in particular, for those banks and funds that are financing the destruction. As President of COP26, let us ensure that indigenous land rights are a key priority in Glasgow.

  [Source]

• 26 May 2021: Environment Bill

  I also support new clause 19, tabled by the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Land conversion to agriculture for our high-meat, high-dairy diets is a key driver of biodiversity loss. It is responsible for 14% of global emissions and for 35 million tonnes of CO 2 in the UK alone. Tackling deforestation in UK company supply chains is therefore essential, and the new clause would introduce a labelling scheme so that consumers can be assured that the food they are eating is not a driver either of biodiversity decline or the climate emergency.

  The right hon. Member also spoke about new clause 12, arguing that we should permit fracking in the UK as an interim fuel as we transition to a fully renewable energy system. The problem is that the interim is too short and the return on investment demanded by the companies takes too long. That would mean that fracking companies left us with stranded assets. Some would say that is their problem, but when the Government have offered the fracking industry the most generous tax reliefs anywhere in the world and 75% capital allowances, it is not their problem, but that of taxpayers. So fracking in the UK should be prohibited and new clause 12 would do that.

  [Source]

• 3 Mar 2021: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  16:03

  Our species is grappling not just with one global pandemic, but with the two global emergencies of climate change and the destruction of nature through biodiversity loss. Today should not just be about the allocation of money; it should be about the management of our assets. Once we understand that our economy is bounded by nature, natural capital, we will perhaps understand the need to stop consuming each year goods and services that the planet takes 1.6 years to reproduce. Economists call this living beyond our means. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that we need urgent and unprecedented transformational change. If this Budget had adopted the principles of the Dasgupta review, we would have got that change. It would have set out the basis of a green industrial revolution, full investment in low-carbon infrastructure and the greening of our economy. It could have created a million new jobs.

  On the super deduction of 130% tax reliefs on investment, the Chancellor should have said that this could be used only for sustainable green investment, and not to subsidise what could be environmentally damaging infrastructure by oil and gas corporates. No wonder it took him until precisely 37 minutes into his speech before he even mentioned the word “green”—and that, ironically, came just after saying there would be no fuel duty rise. I welcome what he said about changing the remit of the Bank of England to consider environmental sustainability and net zero, but a transformative Budget would have mandated both climate and nature-related financial disclosures by listed companies. He patted himself on the back and said that he would be ready when the next crisis comes. The truth is that the next crisis is already here: it is called the climate catastrophe and environmental destruction, and this Budget has not prepared us to meet it.

  [Source]

• 26 Nov 2020: Climate Change Assembly UK: The Path to Net Zero

  14:35

  Please do not worry, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is not my speech that I am holding. You and I have seen a lot of reports since we came into the House, and I have here the “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”, the “UK National Ecosystem Assessment”, the “State of Nature” report, “Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming”, the “Clean Air Strategy 2019”, “Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK”, “Reducing UK emissions: Progress Report to Parliament” and “How carbon pricing can help Britain achieve net zero by 2050”—just a small selection of what is on my shelf. Do we really need another report? Yes, we do.

  All those reports are politicians telling the public what needs to be done. This Climate Assembly UK report, “The path to net zero”, is the public telling the politicians what needs to be done. About time too! Some fantastic principles have been used to get there. The report is 552 pages long—it is a big read—but it is underpinned by fundamental principles: education and information, fairness, freedom of choice, protecting nature and restoring our natural environment, strong joined-up leadership from Government and a joined-up approach. That is what makes it different.

  “We want the transition to net zero to be a cross-political party issue, and not a partisan issue”.

  “There should be a Minister with exclusive responsibility and accountability for ensuring net zero targets are met and government departments are co-ordinated in their efforts and achievements to meet their targets”.

  [Source]

• 25 Jun 2020: Transition Pathway Initiative

  I am very grateful for that answer, and congratulate the Church’s pension trustees on their innovation and vision. The TPI has worked with major global companies to reduce their emissions and has established a framework for pension funds to move towards net zero emissions. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether our own parliamentary pension fund is able to sign up to the initiative, and what more the Church could do to encourage other pension funds to join that $20 trillion of assets?

  [Source]

• 20 May 2020: Rescheduling of COP26

  What discussions he has had with the Scottish Government on the rescheduling of COP26 to be held in Glasgow in 2021.

  [Source]

  11:50

  As a man born and bred in Glasgow, I welcome the fact that COP26 is going to be hosted there. However, the original plan included a proposal to house 30,000 delegates in cruise liners docked in the Clyde. Not only was that ludicrously expensive, but the pollution from the diesel from those vessels would have sent entirely the wrong message from the COP. What assurance can the Minister give that more suitable accommodation is now being prepared?

  [Source]

• 4 Feb 2020: Points of Order

  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Today the Prime Minister is holding an important strategy meeting about COP26—a meeting that many think should have been held before the former president of the COP was appointed, never mind sacked. Have you received any indication from the Government that a statement will be made in the House about perhaps the most important issue facing our country over the next 12 months, which is the climate conference in Glasgow in December? We want to be absolutely bipartisan and ensure that that conference is a success, but we need it to be discussed and debated in this place. The Government must be open with us about the strategy that they want to adopt, so that we can back them and ensure that we achieve the real objectives of the COP.

  [Source]

• 30 Jan 2020: Global Britain

  12:31

  Perhaps those who have the audacity to ask for a plan ought to be prepared to provide suggestions, so in that spirit, let me be clear that the Opposition will champion the United Kingdom as a leader on the world stage that uses its position to tackle injustice and the imminent climate catastrophe. That means that we want to invest in future technologies and next generation industries, foster innovation and grow jobs in the economy, and to do so in a way that helps our trade partners to do the same. We do not see trade as a zero-sum game of winners and losers. We see open and fair trade as a way of increasing global wealth, along with global justice and equality.

  [Source]

  12:52

  Later this year, the UK will host the crucial United Nations framework convention on climate change—COP26—in Glasgow. This is a truly global responsibility but, sadly, it will also be the moment when America finally pulls out of the Paris agreement, in accordance with the notification it gave two years ago. It will also coincide with the result of the US presidential election. Many countries that have been earnestly engaging in the Paris process, seeking to reduce their own emissions, may come to question their engagement if America continues to be absent from the process.

  The pattern of global power is shifting dramatically and swiftly. It is turbocharged by big data, the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. Above all, geopolitics will be affected by the energy transformation as the world moves towards a net-zero carbon economy.

  Renewables, in many forms, are widely dispersed in most countries, promoting domestic self-sufficiency. They are not stocks that are used and then depleted; they are flows that are constantly recharged and so require less transportation and have no choke points. They lend themselves to decentralisation of production and consumption, and they can more easily be deployed at a local community scale. They also have marginal costs that approach to zero. So just as the geographic concentration of coal, oil and gas moulded our political landscape since the industrial revolution, the dispersed nature of renewable energy will erode those traditional patterns in a new global world. It is not clear that the Government have thought through the geopolitical implications of this energy transformation: which countries are likely to forge ahead and leapfrog the old technology; and which will fail to transform their subsoil assets of oil and gas into surface assets of human social and political capital quickly enough. It is often said that the stone age did not end because of a lack of stone, and nor will the fossil fuel age end because of a lack of oil, gas or coal. It will end with a lot of stranded assets that could pose severe financial risks that a global Britain must guard against.

  The Government have sought to congratulate themselves repeatedly on our domestic progress towards net zero, but this has been achieved through the systematic exporting of our carbon emissions and an explicit policy of supporting activities overseas that we no longer support at home. I therefore welcome what the Prime Minister said:

  UKEF has helped to finance oil and gas projects that, when complete, will emit 69 million tonnes of carbon a year. That is nearly a sixth of the total annual carbon emissions of the UK itself. Global Britain cannot be Janus-faced, with domestic virtue masking the international promotion of the very policies we say we want to prevent, freeing ourselves to embrace a net-zero future while locking other developing countries into fossil fuel dependency.

  [Source]

• 21 Jan 2020: Climate Change

  I am genuinely sorry that the Minister did not attend the International Renewable Energy Agency assembly earlier this month. Had he done so, he would have learned that solar auctions are now achieving 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour, which is less than £14 per megawatt hour. Is it time to consider making a global green grid alliance an objective of COP26, and seeing whether a feed-in tariff from the UK could incentivise the development of an interconnection with Morocco to deliver such low priced electric power in the UK?

  [Source]

• 26 Sep 2019: International Climate Action

  13:18

  The climate emergency is worse than we feared. Yesterday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its special report on oceans and the cryosphere, which set out the danger starkly. Sea levels threaten nearly 1 billion people who live in low-lying coastal regions, and tipping points in the permafrost could release hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon. The report makes it clear, yet again, that we must do everything to reduce emissions as fast as possible to limit global warming to 1.5°, beyond which climate breakdown will be catastrophic.

  The Government’s pledge to double international climate finance, while welcome, also raises questions. Will the Secretary of State confirm that that money will be disbursed predominantly through grants rather than loans, which unfairly saddle the poorest nations with debt to pay the costs of a problem they did little to cause? Climate change is already wreaking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage on those communities. Will she commit to devoting any of the resources to covering loss and damage caused by climate disasters? After all, the Government perpetuate the fossil fuel economy for the poorest nations abroad, completely undermining our international climate finance. From 2013 to 2018, UK Export Finance gave £2.6 billion in export support to the energy sector, of which 96% went to fossil fuel projects, overwhelmingly in low and middle-income countries. Will she therefore commit today to ending taxpayer support for fossil fuels abroad, as so many other countries have done?

  What we do abroad matters more than ever. The UK is hosting the UN climate conference, COP 26, in Glasgow next year. It is the most important climate summit since the Paris agreement. The right hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) is president of COP 26, but COP presidents are normally Ministers in their Governments, and she has indicated her intention to stand down at the next general election. I therefore ask the Government what staffing resources the office of the COP president will be provided with; how much funding the Government intend to provide for COP 26 preparations; what regular reports the COP president will be able to give to Cabinet; and what objectives the COP president has been set by the Cabinet.

  Those resources must be provided because at COP 26 we will need to use our diplomatic leverage to persuade other nations to bring forward much tougher NDCs. I am deeply concerned that staffing levels are inadequate. In 2009, under the Labour Government, the Foreign Office had an army of climate staff 277-strong. Seven subsequent years of austerity halved that. When the Prime Minister was Foreign Secretary, the number of officials working full-time on climate change fell to 55. Do the Government intend to restore the workforce to levels last seen a decade ago in recognition of the diplomatic resource that is now required to support the agenda of a UK-led COP 26?

  The failures of the UN climate action summit raise the stakes of COP 26 so much higher. We cannot afford for the talks, or those at COP 25 in Chile, to stumble. The issue of climate breakdown is far greater than the party-political divides that afflict this Parliament, and I urge all Members to find common ground in the pursuit of a healthy and stable climate. In that spirit, I make an offer to the Secretary of State: I and my colleagues in the Labour party are fully committed to doing everything we can in a cross-party manner to ensure that COP 26 delivers the highest possible ambition.

  [Source]

• 11 Jun 2019: Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Targets

  12:11

  Assuming the Government will do the right thing and legislate for net zero by 2050, in line with the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change, why has the Minister decided to weaken the third carbon budget by carrying over surplus emissions from the second carbon budget, against the committee’s specific advice?

  While the Minister is at the Dispatch Box, perhaps he will confirm that net zero can be achieved within the current cost envelope for an 80% reduction of 1% to 2% of GDP. The Chancellor’s claim of £1 trillion spuriously adds together all the costs over the next 21 years and fails to subtract any of the benefits or savings.

  [Source]

• 23 Apr 2019: Climate Change Policy

  19:59

  Mr Speaker has graciously allowed both an urgent question and statement on climate change today. That is unique in my remembrance, but it is uniquely appropriate, given the visit of Greta Thunberg to the House today. Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to thank Mr Speaker for that.

  In our earlier discussion, we focused almost exclusively on emissions reduction and energy policy, so I would like to start by asking the Minister to enlighten the House on the other aspects of our climate change policy that received less attention. Let us start with the national adaptation plan. The Minister will know that, of the 56 climate risks and opportunities identified by the Committee on Climate Change, 27 simply do not feature in the Government’s plan. Why is there no word on the transition for flood-affected areas ahead of the withdrawal of Flood Re? Why is there nothing on the dangers to elderly people’s health from overheating in summer?

  We naturally focus on the impacts on human communities, but the impact on our biodiversity is devastating. It is only through a coherent and comprehensive network of protected areas that our biodiversity will not suffer further loss. What does the Government’s climate strategy do to restore the 50% cut since 2010 to the income of Natural England, which is responsible for monitoring and maintaining that network?

  The Minister said in her response to the urgent question that she does not see the value of declaring a climate emergency. The value is this: it tells the truth. On emissions reduction, the truth is that we are making some progress. I acknowledge and welcome that, but the full, honest truth is that we are not making progress fast enough. The Government’s own statistics show that. The fourth carbon budget is set at a limit of 1,950 million tonnes of CO 2 equivalent, but current policies are off track, projecting an overshoot of 5.6%. To counteract that overshoot, we will have to reduce emissions even further during the fifth carbon budget period. Because of that overshoot, we will need to reduce emissions by 334 million tonnes. Current policies leave us only halfway between where we expect to be at the end of the fourth carbon budget and where we need to be by the end of the fifth.

  The Government have rightly asked the Committee on Climate Change for its advice on reaching net zero emissions, and I welcome the Minister’s assurance earlier that she will bring the Government’s response back to the House expeditiously. But I gently make the point to her that if we are already off track to meet our existing targets, we need urgent action to get anywhere close to meeting net zero.

  The Minister spoke earlier of cross-party support on climate change. It already exists: the Labour party, the Green party, the Lib Dems, the SNP and Plaid Cymru all agree that we need to declare a climate emergency. We would love it if the Conservatives joined us. Will they? If we are to stand any chance of winning the battle against climate change, we must work together over the decades ahead to ensure that we are cutting our greenhouse gas emissions at the scale and pace demanded by the science.

  Labour has already committed to enshrining a net zero emissions target in law, as have a number of other parties. Indeed, more than 190 Members joined together in a remarkable display of cross-party support for climate action in signing a letter championed by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) asking the Government to adopt a net zero target. Will the Minister commit today to taking whatever action the Committee on Climate Change recommends when it publishes its report and to enshrining the new net zero target in law? If the Minister were fully to accept the recommendations that the Committee on Climate Change report put forward, I give her this commitment: we on the Labour Benches will work as closely as possible with her and all colleagues across this House to ensure that we get a net zero climate target passed into law before the summer recess.

  As the climate protestors have told us, time is of the essence and we cannot afford to let this important piece of legislation be delayed any longer than strictly necessary. The clean growth strategy that is supposed to meet those budgets is simply not fit to do so, and once we have enshrined a net zero target, the clean growth strategy will be out of date. Does the Minister therefore agree that we need a new, more ambitious strategy? There is no shame in recognising that.

  [Source]

  20:00

  Earlier, the Minister spoke of the need to consider our international impacts: 97% of UK Export Finance support to energy in developing countries goes to fossil fuels, which is a subsidy to dirty, polluting energy worth nearly £5 billion. Will she look at that? We need even greater ambition and action if we are to inspire others in our bid to host next year’s UN climate change conference here in the UK, and my party will whole- heartedly give the Government its support to achieve that bid.

  [Source]

• 23 Apr 2019: Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion

  15:54

  Many of us listened to Greta Thunberg earlier today. She spoke about truth—the truth that we are in the midst of an ecological and climate emergency. She also spoke about our refusal—our fear—to acknowledge the truth that stopping this catastrophe requires a complete rethink in the way we run our economy, so that GDP growth is no longer the touchstone. We are on track for catastrophic levels of global warming, yet in the UK we pride ourselves on the 40% reduction in emissions that we say we have achieved on 1990 levels, while achieving a 72% increase in GDP. But the truth is out there. Schoolchildren are teaching it to us. Those figures do not include aviation or shipping emissions. They do not include our imports, our exports and they have largely come from the clean power directive in the European Union, which forced us to announce an end to coal-fired power stations. That is why thousands of our schoolchildren are on climate strike: they know that we are not acting with the speed and seriousness that the climate emergency demands.

  Therefore, I ask the Minister: will she listen to the voice of Extinction Rebellion and of our own children? I echo the call from my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North: will she join my party in declaring a national environmental and climate emergency and commit to bringing forward the Government’s response to the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations, which will be published shortly, to achieve net zero urgently? Will she do more to engage with the public in tackling the climate crisis, because it is clear that our citizens need to be in the driving seat for a sustainable future? Will she work with Treasury colleagues and the Bank of England to address what Mark Carney has identified as climate-related financial risks and make the emissions curve and natural capital the key elements of our future economic viability? We know that, however disruptive the climate demonstrations may have been in this past few weeks to businesses, they pale into insignificance against the capacity of climate disasters to wipe out human prosperity and human life itself.

  [Source]

• 19 Mar 2019: Marine Renewable Electricity Generation

  12:04

  Fifty per cent. of Europe’s tidal and 35% of its wave energy resource are in UK waters, but the Government have still not provided the marine renewables industry with a secure route from experimental phase through to demonstrator phase through to full commercial development. Recent research from the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult shows that revenue support could enable marine renewables to create up to 50,000 new jobs and dominate more than 30% of a global market estimated at £76 billion by 2050. Does the Minister accept that the contract for difference auctions are not an adequate mechanism to support emerging technologies such as marine renewables at this stage in their development, and will she take action to provide a competitive funding pool in the energy White Paper to support the UK’s innovative marine technologies and enable the UK to gain its rightful share of this exciting global market?

  [Source]

• 21 Feb 2019: Future Free Trade Agreements

  12:15

  My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) intervened on the Secretary of State to elicit a clear statement of his firm intention to safeguard our NHS. Perhaps the Secretary of State would confirm that he was not actually quoting from the CETA, but from its non-legally binding interpretive side document. What sacrifices is he prepared to make in the negotiations to secure his objectives? How do his objectives sit alongside the objectives of his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs? Do they compromise our food standards or producer capacity? In the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, do they fit alongside the plans for a low-carbon transition of our economy to net zero? A successful strategy is one that has thought through all these questions beforehand.

  [Source]

• 12 Feb 2019: Solar Power

  11:39

  On Friday children across the country will go on strike, saying they have lost confidence in the Government’s ability to tackle climate change. Does the Minister think these children are wrong, or can she explain to them why the UK is spending £10.5 billion to subsidise fossil fuels—more than any other country in Europe—at the same time as scrapping the solar export tariff and forcing some people to give their surplus solar energy back to the grid for free?

  [Source]

• 16 Jan 2019: UN Climate Change Conference: Government Response

  17:13

  The Minister and I have many political differences, but I say to her in all sincerity that if in a few minutes she were to rise and use the platform of this debate to pledge that the UK will reach net zero emissions before 2050, as Labour has committed to do, I would not play politics. I would welcome her announcement publicly, because it is the right thing to do. Of course, it is a pledge that must be backed by a coherent plan, but in my view it is necessary if we are to chart a way that is even remotely compatible with keeping below the 1.5°C threshold.

  I also suggest to the Minister that she may care to reflect that there is also a very good political reason for her to make such a pledge. Failing to do so would make a mockery of her bid to host next year’s conference of the parties. Labour wholeheartedly supports holding COP 26 here in 2020, but as things stand we have serious reservations about whether the Government are up to the task.

  Climate diplomacy matters now more than ever. At COP24, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait refused to welcome the IPCC’s report. Our climate diplomats should have known that in advance and taken active steps against it. When they finally made their position public, our Government should have offered criticism. They did not, just as they did not when President Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the United Nations framework convention on climate change.

  This year the Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage is up for review. It is the perfect moment for the Government to make us the first developed nation to provide additional financial contributions to address loss and damage. The latest figures show that climate aid reached $70 billion in 2016—still short of the 2020 target of $100 billion, which COP24 agreed would rise from 2025.

  Will the Minister provide an assurance that the UK will take on its fair share of that increase? Will she confirm that she has had discussions with the Chancellor or the Chief Secretary about how they will increase the UK’s contribution towards international climate finance in the next spending review? I am not asking for figures; I am simply asking whether those discussions have taken place in Government. If not, will she accept that they are a necessary precondition to any credible bid by the UK to hold the COP?

  Of course, the last thing I want is a trade-off that reduces still further Government finance for tackling climate breakdown here at home. As has been said, investment in our low-carbon economy is at its lowest level in a decade, down 57% in 2017. Will the Minister acknowledge publicly that, according to the independent assessment of the Committee on Climate Change, her clean growth strategy does not get us back on course to meeting the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, and will she explain why, for all her protestation about the effectiveness of energy policy not being simply about how much money the Government spends, she still thinks that the 75% capital allowances for the fracking industry are a sensible use of public money?

  I ask the Minister not whether she has read the IPCC report—for all our differences, I acknowledge that she is a diligent Minister and know that she will have done—but whether she will state publicly that she agrees with it. Will she explain to the House why, having read it, she can conclude that the Government’s current policies constitute a sensible response to the climate crisis that it outlines?

  [Source]

  14:39

  Denial comes in two packages. I do not accuse the Government of denial of the science, but there is another sort: denial of what it will take to stop climate change. Among the many speeches by world leaders at COP24, I was most affected by the words of the 15-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg:

  [Source]

• 20 Nov 2018: Hydraulic Fracturing

  12:17

  On 21 May this year the Minister met a number of renewable energy companies. That meeting was properly recorded on the ministerial register of meetings to ensure transparency. On the same day the Minister also met all the key fracking companies including Cuadrilla, INEOS, iGas and Third Energy. That meeting somehow failed to make it on to the transparency register. Would the Minister like to take this opportunity to apologise for the concealment of that information, and by way of penance would she like to confirm when she will finally visit local residents at Preston New Road to explain why the 36 earthquakes that have occurred since Caudrilla began fracking operations are simply the equivalent of dropping a bag of flour on their kitchen floors?

  [Source]

• 16 Oct 2018: Economic Growth and Emissions

  Yesterday, the Minister requested that the Committee on Climate Change update its advice on the action necessary to respond to the report on 1.5° by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For a brief moment, I thought she had done the right thing, but then I read her letter, which says:

  [Source]

• 28 Jun 2018: Topical Questions

  I want to focus on the damning report on carbon emissions released today by the Committee on Climate Change. The Conservative Committee Chair, Lord Deben, set out a stark demand:

  “Act now, climate change will not pause while we consider our options.”

  In response, will the Secretary of State explain why, on the latest figures, 99.4% of the support that UK Export Finance gives to the energy sector goes to fossil fuels? Will he tell the House what steps he is now taking to redress that imbalance, to promote and support renewable energy and respect the Equator Principles, which his Department signed up to, about sustainability in global trade last year?

  [Source]

• 1 May 2018: Offshore Wind Sector

  12:01

  Offshore wind is an integral part of the clean growth strategy, which the Government have submitted to the United Nations as their official mid-century decarbonisation plan. However, the independent Committee on Climate Change says that the strategy will fail to meet even our existing targets for 2030. Will the Minister tell us when “mid-century” shifted forward 20 years? Why do the Government think a plan that fails even to deliver a 57% reduction in emissions by 2030 is appropriate to meet the much tougher reduction of a more than 80% reduction by 2050?

  [Source]

• 27 Nov 2017: Budget Resolutions

  21:42

  Disaster relief is not the answer to climate change, which is one of the central challenges facing the international community. With the UN climate conference having just finished in Bonn, the opportunity provided by the Budget should have been used to make key policy announcements on policies that would mitigate climate change. Instead, we find that there will be no new low-carbon electricity levies until 2025, and there is nothing for renewables or investment in domestic energy efficiency, or for the necessary transformation of our grid structures to bring on new localised production, microgeneration and supply. Instead, there is a clean growth plan—six years late—that will not even meet the target set in the fourth carbon budget, never mind the fifth carbon budget.

  [Source]

• 7 Nov 2017: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

  11:41

  Germany has said 2030; Norway and Holland are aiming for 2025. The Chinese owners of Volvo say that all their new models will have an electric motor from 2019. As the climate conference in Bonn begins, does the Secretary of State consider that the UK Government’s plan to ban the sale of fossil fuel vehicles from only 2040 is somewhat lacking in ambition, failing to provide strong leadership, or downright pathetic and making the UK a laughing stock?

  [Source]

• 12 Sep 2017: Carbon Emissions

  11:37

  The Minister is right to say that we have an excellent method of calculating our emissions, but she might have pointed out that other countries do not, and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is currently preparing updated guidelines on how best to account for emissions. Will she confirm that, for that vital work to proceed, the UK Government will be one of those who increase their financial contribution to the IPCC to make good the shortfall left by President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement? Does she also agree, now that the cost of offshore wind energy has fallen by a half in just two years, that those are the easiest emissions to calculate, because they are zero?

  [Source]

• 14 Mar 2017: Low-carbon Economy

  11:39

  Last week, the Budget failed to stop the 800% rise in business rates for companies that have installed solar panels. This week, research published in the journal Nature Energy states that to achieve our targets set out in the Paris agreement we need to set out longer-term plans beyond 2050, yet the Government have now dithered for five years and still refuse to publish their own implementation plan, even up to 2030. How does the Minister propose to increase our low-carbon exports when he cannot even set out how we will achieve our medium-term climate targets?

  [Source]

• 7 Sep 2016: Paris Agreement on Climate Change

  14:28

  That this House notes that the USA and China have both ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change; regrets that the Government has not accepted the Opposition’s offer of support for immediate commencement of domestic procedures to ratify the Paris Agreement; further notes that if the UK lags behind its G20 partners in ratifying the Paris Agreement it risks losing diplomatic influence on this crucial future security issue; recognises, in light of the EU referendum vote, the need to maintain a strong international standing and the risk of rising investment costs in UK energy infrastructure; and calls on the Government to publish by the end of next week a Command Paper on domestic ratification and to set out in a statement to this House the timetable to complete the ratification process by the end of 2016.

  “My country has an unwavering commitment to pursue the path of sustainable development”: those were the words of President Xi last week when he and President Obama jointly—communist China and capitalist America—announced their ratification of the Paris climate treaty. In a quite extraordinary event, we saw the world’s two superpowers, who are also the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, locked in an embrace to try to save our species from itself—from so altering our atmosphere that we make it almost impossible for many of our fellow human beings to survive, and destroy countless other species and ecosystems in the process. A few days before they did so, I wrote to our Prime Minister urging her to begin the process of ratification of the treaty by the UK. I understand her office passed my letter to the Secretary of State. I also tabled today’s motion to discuss ratification and press for the UK to follow China and America’s lead and get on and ratify the Paris agreement. So now with the US and China making it highly likely that the agreement will formally come into force by the end of this year, I decided that if China and America can put aside their differences and ratify, surely we in Parliament could do the same and become founder parties to the agreement.

  “the need for the European Union and its Member States to be able to ratify the Paris Agreement as soon as possible and on time so as to be Parties as of its entry into force.”

  [Source]

  14:35

  I am delighted that the hon. Lady has referred to the Climate Change Act 2008 and to the fact that the commitments made under the Act are legally binding on us. Later in my speech, I shall examine exactly what the legislation stated and try to show precisely where the Government have deviated from it over the past couple of years. This is why we have been on a pathway of divergence rather than convergence in this House for the past two years. The bipartisan—indeed, cross-party—approach that used to obtain in the House on these matters has been severely tested by what has been seen as the Government’s backsliding on those legally binding commitments. I shall adumbrate that a little later.

  This is not the kind of thing that any normal member of the public would think sounds terribly important. If I were to explain that it is really important because it is supposed to set out precisely how the Government are going to meet their carbon budget, that same hypothetical member of the public might look blank, because people do not talk in these terms. They do not talk in terms of carbon plans and carbon budgets; they talk in terms of effects, not budgets. They know that climate change is causing disruption across the world, with more flooding in some places and more drought in others, with stronger hurricanes and typhoons and with the loss of crops and arable land. They know that that is related to the emissions polluting our air and our children’s lungs, and these things are important to them.

  That is precisely why we politicians agreed, back in 2008—under a Labour Government but very much on a cross-party basis—to limit the ways in which we were causing those problems. We agreed to reduce and limit those emissions that were changing the world with such devastating effect. That is why we created the Committee on Climate Change to set legally binding carbon budgets that would precisely limit the damage that we were doing, but we tasked it to ensure that we always adopted the most cost-efficient pathway, so that we could move towards the long-term target of at least an 80% reduction in admissions by 2050 at the lowest possible cost to the public, to industry and to business.

  [Source]

  14:39

  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When we talk about such matters in terms of carbon plans and carbon budgets, it can seem as though we are talking about a world separate from that understood by the people who listen to us. They understand when their homes are being flooded. They know that such things are the effects of climate change. What they need to know is that we are following what was the best legislative model in the world when it was set out in 2008 with cross-party agreement under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). We achieved that here and it has become a model across the world, but we must follow it and the tragedy is that this Government have been backsliding.

  The reason Ministers could not accept the cross-party olive branch that I extended was that, the night before, they knew that they were about to admit to the world that they still had not a single clue about how they were going to meet the promises and targets that they had already made to keep the UK safe from climate change. They knew that they were not even going to commit to a new deadline by when they might put such a plan together and that to come to this Chamber today—all smiles—in a cross-party endeavour to ratify the Paris agreement would have exposed them to the accusation of being arrogant hypocrites. They have avoided that charge, but they have opened themselves up to an infinite number more: incompetence, dithering, anti-business, anti-investment. They are a party divided between those who circle on the Back Benches saying that all these budgets and plans are just costly “green crap” and that we should get on with a future industrial strategy based on fossil fuels and the few sane heads, some of whom are in the Chamber today— [ Interruption. ]

  [Source]

  14:43

  This is interesting because the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) is one of those who believes that in meeting their climate change commitments the Government are wrongheaded and that man-made climate change is somewhat overblown as a hypothesis. He is, in effect, a climate change denier— [ Interruption . ]

  [Source]

  14:49

  I was of course referring to the hon. Gentleman being a denier of anthropogenic climate change, and he knows that.

  However, there are sane heads who understand that when the world’s largest superpowers ratify a climate change treaty that commits the world to a net carbon future by the second half of this century, it is time to do what President Obama said last week and

  CCS, commercial solar, business rates on rooftop solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, biomass, the levy control framework, the green deal—is there any part of our energy sector that I have not mentioned? Oh yes, nuclear. Hinkley—oh dear. Dithering, delay, incompetence and an overpriced contract have led to a contract for difference that will now cost the bill payer, not the Government, not the £6.1 billion originally calculated by the Government but the £30 billion as determined by the National Audit Office.

  [Source]

  14:54

  Instead of using our time today to take a bold step forward, seeking Commons approval for the UK to join the founder parties of the historic Paris climate deal, we have had to hold the Government to account for just how far the UK’s leadership on climate change has fallen on their watch. Leapfrogged by the world’s biggest polluters, we have gone from the world-leading Climate Change Act to where we now sit: with a 47% gap in meeting our target, which we simply do not know how to fill—we have not yet even given a date for the publication of the plan as to when we will fill it. I will rephrase that, because we do know how to fill it. It is by properly insulating millions of homes in the UK to increase energy-efficiency and, where that is not viable—with older, single-skin properties—by ensuring that they have access to low-carbon renewable community sources of energy, so that we are not burning fossil fuels to see the heat escape through draughty walls and windows. It is by transforming our transport system with electric vehicles whose battery capacity can double up as storage facility and fill that space that intermittent renewable technologies require.

  Later today, the leader of the Labour party will set out his ambitious vision for our environmental and energy policy, creating 300,000 jobs in low-carbon industries and using a new national investment bank to invest in public and community-owned renewable energy projects. The Paris agreement demands that we move to a net zero-carbon future in the second half of this century. That requires courage and imagination. It requires a coherent low-carbon investment plan. Today should have been a day when all parties came together to piece together that future in optimism and hope. By turning their back on that opportunity, the Government must explain when they will ratify the Paris agreement and when they will publish the carbon plan to show the British public how they will deliver on that promise.

  [Source]

  15:05

  “the need for the European Union and its Member States to be able to ratify the Paris Agreement as soon as possible and on time so as to be Parties as of its entry into force.”

  [Source]

  16:34

  My hon. Friend always speaks with such authority on these matters. In relation to CCS, is he as concerned as I am that the cross-Yorkshire and Humber pipeline has just had its planning deadline extended by the Secretary of State? It looks as if, yet again, these projects are being put into cold storage.

  [Source]

• 6 Sep 2016: Sellafield

  12:44

  In 2013, the manager of the site, Nuclear Management Partners, produced its somewhat ironically entitled excellence plan, cataloguing the safety problems and the critical nature of the infrastructure with respect to both electricity and water supply on the site. Why did the Government not insist that further resources—staffing and, of course, financial resources—be invested in the site to clean it up at that point? The Minister will know that expenditure in 2012-13 was £7,348 million, with £3,157 million from the Department of Energy and Climate Change itself. The year following that report, the figure had fallen to £5,345 million. Will he explain why, after such a damning report, the resources going into the site decreased? Will he also confirm that the cost estimates for the clean-up of the site have increased at an annual estimate from £25.2 million to £47.9 million?

  [Source]

• 19 Jul 2016: Draft Warm Home Discount (Miscellaneous amendments) Regulations 2016

  14:44

  As of 2014, the latest year for which we have official fuel poverty statistics, 2.38 million households in England were in fuel poverty, which is, of course, more than 10% of all households in England. The old Department, as we must now term it, of Energy and Climate Change estimated that across the UK, using the 10% methodology—whereby a household is in fuel poverty if it spends more than 10% of its income on fuel—an estimated 4.5 million low-income households could not adequately heat or power their homes, and that figure has grown by 500,000 over the last five years. The last recorded figures—also for 2014—show that there were 43,900 excess winter deaths in England and Wales. So the problem that we are discussing today materially affects millions of our fellow citizens and can be fatal for many, many thousands of them. I think the recent “Panorama” report on those 43,900 excess winter deaths said that 9,000 were directly related to a failure to heat homes adequately.

  [Source]

• 18 Jul 2016: Draft Climate Change Act 2008 (Credit Limit) Order 2016

  18:03

  There is really only one question that the Minister must answer, and he attempted to do so in his remarks. Why is this Committee being asked by the Government to go against the independent advice of the Committee on Climate Change on this matter? The Minister stated—I do not know whether this was justification or explanation—that the Government were following the precedent from last time. Indeed they were, but again on that occasion the Committee on Climate Change had recommended that they should not use the flexibility of these credits, and the committee was proven right because the credits were not needed—as indeed on this occasion the Minister believes, I think, and I believe that they will not be. They should not be required. We are already below the level that has been set, and unless the Minister knows of any reason why our energy policy should start to increase emissions dramatically, it is almost inconceivable that we will need the flexibility that the order allows.

  The chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change said to the Environmental Audit Committee earlier this month:

  The Minister needs to challenge his officials a little bit more strongly on the issue of domestic action. According to the Committee on Climate Change’s 2016 progress report to Parliament, our average annual emissions are already below the level needed to meet the second and third carbon budgets up to 2022. The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s impact assessment of this legislation notes that using credits

  The Opposition would prefer to go with the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change. We will therefore oppose the order.

  [Source]

• 18 Jul 2016: Draft Carbon Budget Order 2016

  16:37

  I think that the Minister must accept that it was a poor signal to remove the words “Climate Change” from the name of the Department. Many of the concerned parties were deeply antagonised by the fact that the Department of Energy and Climate Change had been taken away, lock, stock and barrel; then to drop the words “Climate Change” from the name was, I think, a tactical error. However, the Minister has reassured the Committee today that there is to be no slackening of effort, and that of course is to be welcomed.

  The Minister talked of investor confidence, which is indeed critical. He will know that the analysis not only of the financial industries and the investment banks but of the Select Committee was clear that the Government had damaged investor confidence across the whole of the clean energy sector, putting energy security and the costs of decarbonising under great pressure. They in fact said that after reversing their own manifesto commitment to develop CCS, removing all support for the cheapest form of clean energy and failing to provide any visibility on clean energy investment beyond 2021, the UK is facing an investment hiatus. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues in the new Department will put a particular focus on that, because if we lose investor confidence, the £100 billion of investment that this country needs in its energy infrastructure before 2020 will be extremely difficult to deliver.

  The Minister also mentioned the European Union, and I think he understands that that situation has exacerbated the uncertainty around investment in our energy future. The Government have insisted that they remain committed to delivering the secure, affordable, clean energy that families and business need. Of course, the Minister is right that I welcomed the proposal to set the fifth carbon budget at the level of an average 57% reduction in emissions. That is the most cost-effective pathway to our long-term 2050 goal, and for that reason we will not oppose the order; but he will appreciate that the Government are not judged on words alone. One thing that he and the new Department will have to explain is why the previous Ministers in the former Department failed to comply with their statutory obligation to set the fifth carbon budget by the deadline set out in section 4 of the Climate Change Act.

  The Government should also explain why they did not follow the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations to include shipping emissions in the fifth carbon budget. In 2012, the Government deferred a decision to include international aviation and shipping emissions in the net carbon account, but said:

  Certainty over the UK’s continued participation in the EU emissions trading scheme would also be helpful. The EU ETS has sectoral caps that are far too lax, but the scheme itself is designed to ensure that emissions reductions occur at the least cost. The downside is that, even if the ETS had more stringent caps, it could give a falsely optimistic reading of the success of our actual emissions reductions. Clarity is paramount. Will the Minister take this opportunity to end the unnecessary inclusion of ETS credits in our net carbon account beyond 2027? That would give more confidence to the power sector and industry in the UK’s commitment to decarbonisation. I believe that was a missed opportunity in the Energy Act 2016.

  When asked whether climate change had been downgraded, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson said,

  The Government must now press forward with the former Secretary of State’s promise to ratify the Paris agreement early, taking all necessary steps to do so this year.

  [Source]

  16:53

  The Minister may be aware of the Ernst & Young report on the index of the best countries in the world for renewable energy investment. We never used to be out of the top 10, but in the past two years we have fallen from eighth to 11th to 13th, so there is an independent scale showing that we are going in the wrong direction. He may also be aware that Vattenfall said that in the light of Brexit it was reviewing all its renewable energy investments in the UK, including its £5.5 billion array off the east coast of England. I am not accusing the Minister of complacency, but he must take this seriously.

  [Source]

• 14 Jul 2016: Energy Market Competition

  09:49

  I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and congratulate her on her appointment as Home Secretary. Under her charge, the Department of Energy and Climate Change played an important role in securing the Paris climate agreement, and she was a strong and enthusiastic champion for it. Only two weeks ago, some might have suspected that today she would be more likely to be standing at the Dispatch Box saying goodbye to me, but in this place we are beginning to learn to expect the unexpected. She was always courteous and often actually helpful in our exchanges, and we wish her well in her new role.

  [Source]

• 12 Jul 2016: EU Referendum: Energy and Environment

  12:59

  That this House recognises the uncertainty created by the result of the EU referendum for the protections currently in place for the UK’s energy security, climate change commitments and the natural environment; notes that the discussion leading up to the EU referendum made little mention of environmental protection or climate change and considers that regulations and ambitions in those areas should in no way be diminished as a result of the outcome of that referendum; has serious concerns about the signals being sent to investors in those sectors by continued uncertainty; and therefore urges the Government to identify and fill any legislative gaps in environmental protection that may arise from the removal of EU law.

  Before the referendum vote, the Government were already facing major problems securing the energy needs, emissions targets and environmental protections that the UK requires for the 21st century. These problems were mainly self-inflicted: an energy policy that left companies and investors confused, with feed-in tariffs for solar changed retrospectively; an effective moratorium on onshore wind power, despite its being the cheapest form of renewable energy; the subsidy for offshore wind cut; and the Government failing to indicate what would happen to the levy control framework beyond the cliff edge of 2020.

  Investors were told that the Government were simultaneously incentivising new unconventional gas and phasing out unabated coal by 2025, yet the £1 billion still remaining for the development of carbon capture and storage was cut just four weeks before the final bids were to be made, with the consequent announcement by Drax of the abandonment of the White Rose CCS project and the announcement by Shell that it no longer saw a future in the near term for the Peterhead project. The Secretary of State’s energy reset speech last November ended up leaving us the equivalent of 54 million tonnes of CO 2 further from achieving the fourth carbon budget.

  [Source]

  13:07

  The IIGCC—Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change—a group of institutional investors representing over €13 trillion in assets, said in the aftermath of the vote to leave that it had brought

  [Source]

  13:04

  I must say that for all the talk from the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), about the “sunlit uplands” of the post-Brexit world, there is really no use in the Secretary of State trying to pretend that she thinks the vote is anything but a disaster when she herself is on record quoting the analysis of Vivid Economics warning that the result of an exclusion from the EU’s internal energy market could cost the UK up to £500 million a year by the early 2020s. The stock response of the right hon. Lady that Labour Members should not “talk Britain down” will simply not serve, given that these quotations come from her own advisers, industry leaders and, indeed, her!

  “likely to cause project investors and banks to hesitate about committing new capital, and could cause a drop in renewable energy asset values”.

  [Source]

  13:12

  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is clear from what the Committee on Climate Change has said that the area in which the United Kingdom is falling behind most badly is not the power sector, but the transport and heating sectors. Of course, dealing with that does not rest solely with the Secretary of State; it also rests with her colleagues in the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

  The Committee on Climate Change, which has a statutory duty to advise the Government on the most cost-effective route to decarbonisation, has always made it clear that early action is cheaper action. As its chief executive warned us last week, leaving the EU calls the mechanism of how we reach our targets into question. The Government’s policy failure has created a 10% gap in emissions projections towards our legally binding climate target for the mid-2020s, and they are nearly 50% short of meeting their intended target for 2030—that is, if the Secretary of State ever gets round to actually complying with her statutory obligation to set the target. I believe that that is now due to happen on Monday, which would make it only 18 days beyond the legal statutory limit.

  Last year, the Environmental Audit Committee gave the Government a red card for their record on managing future climate change risks. The chair of the Infrastructure Operators Adaptation Forum concluded:

  The National Security Risk Assessment cites flood risk to the UK as a tier 1 priority risk, alongside terrorism and cyber-attacks, and, of course, it is our most deprived communities that face the greatest increases in flood risk. However, new evidence released today by the Committee on Climate Change renders starker than ever the threat to British households and businesses from a failure to manage climate change. Its published estimates show that, without increased Government action on climate adaptation, the number of homes at high risk from flooding will rise to well over 1 million even if we meet our current climate targets.

  [Source]

• 7 Jul 2016: Draft Petroleum (Transfer of Functions) Regulations 2016

  11:36

  I regret that the Government have abandoned their funding for the development of the CCS programme. I think that is a devastating shame. We have the finest repositories in the world and they are going to be there awaiting CCS technology. Although, in terms of our own emissions reduction capacity and our own climate commitments, CCS is not critical for our infrastructure in the immediate future, it could have been marketed across the world through the technology and skills that Britain could have exported. For that reason, I regret the loss of funding. However, it does not give me cause to detain the Committee longer or to press the matter to a vote.

  [Source]

• 6 Jul 2016: Electric and Hybrid Electric Cars

  17:15

  “ensuring almost every car and van is a zero emission vehicle by 2050.”

  The Committee on Climate Change’s progress report to Parliament last week showed that the UK is set to miss its legal climate commitments for the 2030s by 47%. That is a staggering shortfall. Boiled down, the reason is that outside the power sector there has been

  One of the principal reasons that the committee gives for that slow progress on decarbonising is the lack of progress on decarbonising transport. It says that

  [Source]

• 5 Jul 2016: Energy Network Charges

  15:35

  However, as we shift towards cleaner energy to deliver our legal climate targets—an issue on which the Minister has nailed her own colours to the mast—we must also overhaul the management of our energy networks to become smarter and more flexible.

  The Energy and Climate Change Committee remarked last month:

  It is also worth noting that transmission tariffs for generators are higher in Great Britain than in the rest of the EU. The UK is one of only three EU member states with locational transmission tariffs. The Minister recently wrote to the Energy and Climate Change Committee, stating that

  The Energy and Climate Change Committee reported on energy network charges in February 2015 and recommended that the Government and Ofgem should

  [Source]

• 4 Jul 2016: Energy Spending Priorities: Investors and Consumers

  21:38

  I thank the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) and his Committee for initiating this debate, for giving the House the opportunity to consider the direction of the Government’s energy and climate change policy, and for their excellent reports.

  Like the hon. Gentleman but, I suspect, unlike the Secretary of State, I look forward to the publication of the findings of the National Audit Office’s inquiry into whether the Government will have to pay compensation to carbon capture and storage project developers. That could result in a multimillion pound bill for the taxpayer. I hope that the Secretary of State will acknowledge that this might have been an extremely expensive decision indeed. One would be forgiven for imagining that DECC has received instruction from the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) when one looks at the way in which it led the industry on until the very last minute, before finally applying the knife to carbon capture and storage. Well, there we are. It is no wonder that the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) regretted the decline of the CCS projects. He was quite right to do so. He also spoke very powerfully about the green deal, calling its demise nothing short of a disaster.

  The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) quite rightly praised the Government for agreeing with the Committee on Climate Change on the fifth carbon budget. I agree with him. I just wish that they had actually set it by the statutory limit in accordance with the Climate Change Act 2008. It had to be set and voted on under the affirmative resolution procedure of this House by 30 June. That did not happen. I hope that the Secretary of State will clarify the legal status of the budget to the House. It is one thing to accept the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change, but simply accepting is not good enough. The Climate Change Act is very clear on that point: it has to be set. So far, it has not been.

  In its latest report, “Meeting carbon budgets”, which was published last Thursday, the Committee on Climate Change showed that there is a need for

  [Source]

  21:45

  “is likely to cause project investors and banks to hesitate about committing new capital, and could cause a drop in renewable energy asset values.”

  The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents more than €30 trillion of assets, said that the aftermath of the vote

  These are deeply worrying times, but the Government do not seem to recognise the urgency of quashing such uncertainty and instability. Will the Secretary of State’s Department push for access to the internal energy market as a negotiating priority, and how will the Government gain support from EU member states to accept that? SSE has said that collaboration with other European countries on energy matters is important for UK consumers. What calculations or estimates has the Department made of price premiums on loans that will be demanded by investors in UK energy infrastructure to cover the costs of political uncertainty? How much will that add to the cost of building new electricity generating capacity? To reduce that uncertainty, it is imperative that the UK provides a clear direction of travel on domestic policy. Why did the right hon. Lady fail to uphold her statutory obligation under the Climate Change Act 2008, and not take the necessary steps to ensure that the order was set by 30 June?

  Hundreds of thousands of families cannot afford their energy bills, and in 2014-15 that contributed to 43,900 excess winter deaths. However, Ministers are still letting energy companies off the hook and failing to ensure that the drop in wholesale prices is passed on to people’s bills. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the UK ratifies the Paris agreement before the Prime Minister leaves office?

  [Source]

• 30 Jun 2016: Points of Order

  11:36

  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today, Thursday 30 June 2016, is the final day for the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to set the fifth carbon budget. Meeting the deadline is a statutory duty under section 4 of the Climate Change Act 2008. Today the Government laid a draft statutory instrument publishing their intention to set a budget of 1,725 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, but as you will be aware, under section 8 of the Act, simply publishing the level of the budget will not suffice:

  Simply announcing the Government’s intended carbon budget today, therefore, is not adequate to fulfil the statutory duties placed upon the Secretary of State by the Act. The Act requires the order to be set, not just a draft order to be laid. Mr Speaker, you will be acutely aware of the importance of investors having confidence in the statutory undergirding of our country’s energy and climate change policies. Have you received any notification from the Secretary of State of her intention to come to the House to explain why she is in breach of her statutory duty and to confirm that she will take the steps, which the Clerks advise me could still be taken, necessary to set the fifth carbon budget today?

  [Source]

• 8 Jun 2016: Draft Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

  14:06

  I would love the Minister to stand up today and tell us how, where and precisely why that judgment is wrong. I do not believe that she will, nor do I believe that she can. The Government are certainly not oblivious to the fact that the failure to address energy efficiency in the private rented sector is wasteful of energy and a barrier to the UK’s aspirations to meet its climate change obligations. It is also a major contributor to fuel poverty, but the truth is that the Minister has no policy to present us with. The Government have already said that the energy action plan that, by statute, they should have published as soon as reasonably practicable after setting the fourth carbon budget in July 2011 will not actually be published until December this year—more than five years late. All I can say is that if that is “as soon as reasonably practicable”, the Secretary of State’s interpretation of the English language is a good deal more elastic than mine.

  [Source]

• 12 May 2016: Green Research and Development

  The Government’s emissions reduction plan has been promised by the end of this year, and the Secretary of State has said that it will address the current 10% shortfall for the fourth carbon budget, which was set back in June 2011. Section 14 of the Climate Change Act 2008 stipulates that the Government must lay before Parliament a report setting out how they will meet each carbon budget

  [Source]

• 24 Mar 2016: Low-carbon Economy

  10:03

  Last September, the independent Committee on Climate Change warned that the Government’s stop-start investment profile was undermining investor confidence and increasing the cost of low-carbon generation. The Secretary of State ignored it. Last month, the Energy and Climate Change Committee reported its concern that increased policy uncertainty was leading to increased risk premiums for investors, which will result in consumers paying more in the long run. Can the Secretary of State look me in the eye and explain exactly how she thinks this ties in with the Prime Minister’s insistence that his Government are safeguarding the interests of future generations?

  [Source]

• 10 Mar 2016: Business of the House

  11:03

  The Leader of the House will be aware that, three days ago, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents £13 trillion of assets under management, wrote to the Chancellor to press for regulation to ensure mandatory corporate disclosure of climate risks. May we have a debate in Government time on the mandatory reporting of climate risks, so that there is transparency about the financial health of our corporate sector, and so that the confidence of such an enormous body of investment funds can be increased?

  [Source]

• 8 Mar 2016: Enterprise Bill [Lords]

  13:03

  In 2012, the Green Investment Bank was set up for a purpose. It was stated quite clearly that its purpose was to address specific market failures and investment barriers in a way that would achieve emission reductions at the lowest cost to taxpayers and consumers. It was going to achieve that by working within the framework of the Climate Change Act 2008 and by risk-sharing between the public and private sectors, identifying and addressing market failures and limiting private investment in low carbon infrastructure, thereby accelerating and delivering green investment on a large scale and with significantly lower capital costs. That was the whole point. The bank was set up precisely because there was a market failure. The private sector was not able to achieve this. It is not just me, an Opposition Member of Parliament, who is saying that. Labour supported the bank. Indeed, it was our idea in the first place when we were in government, and we were delighted when the coalition put it into place.

  [Source]

• 11 Feb 2016: Climate Change: Adaptation Costs

  Surely one of the most important things that the Secretary of State can do to limit climate change is publicly to state how she will meet the shortfall in our legally binding renewable targets for 2020. She knows that beyond 2017, her Department projects a 25% shortfall across the heating, electricity and transport sectors. The Eurostat data released yesterday show the UK to be missing its target by the widest margin of any European country. What assessment has she made of the potential fines the UK may face as a result of that failure?

  [Source]

• 7 Jan 2016: Business of the House

  Driven grouse shoots damage wildlife sites, increase water pollution, increase greenhouse gas emissions, increase water bills, result in the illegal killing of hen harriers and shed water off hillsides, which causes millions of pounds of damage in floods—we have seen such floods in recent weeks—so may we have a debate and a vote on whether to abolish driven grouse shoots?

  [Source]

• 6 Jan 2016: Flooding

  Grouse moors and sheep farming lead water to run straight off hills into populated valleys. Burning back heather reduces areas of peat and the ground’s ability to retain water. Climate change affects how much rain falls and how much water ends up in our towns and cities. That is our problem. We need catchment management and we absolutely need to see what the Natural Capital Committee will do and what it will advise the Government, but we must take on board the fact that land can no longer ignore the public good that it must provide. The grouse moor economy brings £100 million a year into this country, but its cost is incalculable. The Minister must take note and sort this out.

  [Source]

• 15 Dec 2015: Climate Change and Flooding

  “I believe that CCS is going to play an important part in decarbonising in the future”. —[ Official Report , 14 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 1297.]

  [Source]

• 19 Nov 2015: Paris Climate Change Conference

  The Paris conference of the parties aims to replicate the successful method of the UK Climate Change Act 2008—a long-term goal that is specified under a legally binding agreement that achieves stability through a series of five-year reviews. The Secretary of State has abandoned long-term targets and destroyed the stability of the investment framework, and last night her Department’s emissions calculator showed that after her reset speech the shortfall against the fourth carbon budget has increased by 54 million tonnes of CO 2, which is 10% away from the legally binding fourth carbon budget. Does she now feel more shame showing her face in the city of Paris, or in the city of London?

  [Source]

• 15 Sep 2015: draft Flood Reinsurance (Scheme and Scheme Administrator designation) regulations 2015 DRAFT FLOOD REINSURANCE (SCHEME funding and administration) REGULATIONS 2015

  Flood risk is increasing because of climate change and new developments in flood-risk areas. Awareness of flood-risk households, where the risk is above one in 100, has declined. Government spending on flood defences fell over the past Parliament, although by setting a six-year framework the Government claimed to have spent more than the previous Government, though that was, of course, over a five-year period. It is set to fall further in this Parliament.

  The scheme does not address the rising cost of flood risk for affected households or the public purse. The Government voted against six amendments that we tabled in Committee on the Water Act 2014 that would have required Flood Re to reduce the cost of flood risk. Those amendments would have required the scheme administrator to take account of actual and projected future flood risk as set out by the Committee on Climate Change and the Environment Agency. The Government refused to do that.

  The Government declined to support those amendments. I was delighted to hear that the Minister had spoken to Lord Krebs earlier today; when we tabled those amendments, it was Lord Krebs, as chair of the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change, who provided the supporting evidence. I am keen to hear what Lord Krebs had to say to the Minister about those aspects of the scheme. Of course, that view was also supported by evidence from the London School of Economics at that time.

  As I said, our amendments were disregarded; the Government are using this publicly funded flood insurance scheme to insure against the cost of their own potential failure. As investment in flood defence is cut in line with the Government’s plans, thousands of families may find themselves stuck in homes that become more and more expensive to insure. Climate change has already increased the frequency and severity of flooding, and the costs are rising. This publicly funded scheme allows the Government to transfer these costs on to households across the country, pushing the cost of climate change on to the most vulnerable. That is what risk-reflective pricing means in practice.

  It was my view, and still is, that a Flood Re transition plan should be produced by the Government, in consultation with the scheme administrator, the industry and the Committee on Climate Change. The primary delivery body for the transition plan should be the Flood Re managing agent, the scheme administrator, and DEFRA should take responsibility for reviewing their performance against the time-bound goals of the transition plan. Transition needs to be planned within the context of the overall flood risk management strategy, including details of future investment levels.

  Everything depends on the amount of money that the Government are prepared to put in. This scheme is a way of avoiding the problem and any need to make the uncomfortable acknowledgment that the price that reflects increased risk will be greater where the risk of flood becomes greater as a result of lower Government investment in flood defences, increased building on the flood plain or adverse climate change. That is the fear. Quietly and stealthily, the Government have delivered a new flood tax.

  The adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change suggested an amendment to the levy arrangement, which I believe the Government should have considered. The amendment would reduce the cost and the opportunity cost of the Flood Re funding arrangements.

  [Source]

  I am really grateful to the Minister for engaging in this way. I understand what he says about affordability. On his definition, as long as the market is operating to have competition in place, the result is affordability. However, it is important to recognise that the risk of climate change is increasing and the severity of floods may also increase.

  [Source]

• 8 Jul 2015: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  17:50

  For 10 years, I ran my own business in the City of London. I focused on two things: first, manage your assets; secondly, manage your risks. The same is true for Government. One would not—should not—have any confidence in a management team that did not know the value of its asset base, and one would not have any confidence in a management team that either failed to properly quantify its strategic risks, or that, having quantified them, failed to take appropriate action to mitigate them. Yet we have a Government who have no proper account of their natural capital asset base, and although they have identified the risk of climate change and the linear economy as a real threat to growth, they are failing to take the necessary steps to mitigate those risks adequately.

  But what about managing the risks? This Government have identified the risk of climate change. With considerably less clarity they have identified the risk of a linear economy. However, as Peter Young, the chair of the Aldersgate Group, said only a few weeks ago:

  Just over a week ago the Government’s independent advisers on these matters, the Committee on Climate Change, set out the key actions that Government needed to take if they were to respond appropriately in managing and mitigating the risks. The committee criticised the fact that many low-carbon policies have no investment certainty beyond the next few years. That, it says, is preventing efficient investment in low-carbon technologies and their supply chains, which often have long lead times. To bring those investments on stream the Government should give policy certainty and clarify ongoing funding commitments beyond the cliff edge that is currently 2020.

  What did the Chancellor announce? He removed the exemption for renewables from having to pay the climate change levy. Instead of incentivising investment and stabilising the low-carbon industries, the Chancellor put a £3.9 billion tax on renewables. It was very softly spoken in the Budget, but at a stroke he killed off our chances of developing this growing green economy. The jobs, the growth and the international exports that could have come from it have just been thrown away to raise £3.9 billion for the Exchequer. It is a dereliction of duty as a manager of risk.

  The Committee on Climate Change says that the Government must do much more to support private innovation to develop the future technologies that still need research, development and demonstration. These are technologies such as electric vehicles, carbon capture and storage, and offshore wind turbine technology, that can help us meet our 2050 targets. They are also the new green industries that can bring growth and high-skilled jobs.

  [Source]

• 7 Jul 2015: Coastal Flood Risk

  10:28

  “The MOD estate will be exposed to greater risk as a consequence of climate change…Many sites, both inland and coastal, are vulnerable to flooding...Climate change and sea level rise means that defending coastlines is becoming more costly and technically difficult. The increasing cost of maintenance means that existing defences may be abandoned in areas with low population or fewer tangible assets.”

  Sea level rises and the increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather in the UK show that climate change is an issue not just of national wellbeing but of national and global security. The threat that climate change poses to our ability to live well is growing in many parts of the UK, particularly on our coasts. The risk has risen because of human activity, but until recently people acted in ignorance, and therefore innocence, of the effects of their action on future generations. However, our failure to act today, with the full knowledge of the cost of our inaction, is, in the words of the Pope, “a sin against ourselves”, a sin against the world.

  That other fine Catholic in another place, Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change, has pointed out that it is unnatural for us to act like ostriches, but it is also irresponsible and immoral. The committee’s first statutory report to Parliament on the Government’s progress in preparing the UK for the impacts of climate change was published last week. It shows that the Government have taken the ostrich approach.

  I will get to the committee’s findings in a moment, but first I want to raise two points that appear to me to show the Government’s disregard for their responsibility to protect our economy and wellbeing from the impacts of climate change. First, the Government were asked to put up a Minister to speak at the launch of the committee’s two progress reports. They chose not to. Secondly, no Minister currently has responsibility for climate change adaptation. The role has been handed to a part-time Lord and DEFRA “spokesperson”, whatever that means. It certainly does not mean a Minister of the Crown.

  The Conservative-led coalition removed climate change adaptation from DEFRA’s priorities, and this Government have removed ministerial oversight. That is serious. Tens of thousands of homes, critical energy and transport infrastructure and many towns and cities in England are located on the coastal floodplain. The Government’s failure to take adaptation seriously is an insult to all of them.

  The Committee on Climate Change addressed a couple of simple questions on climate change adaptation. First, is there a plan? The answer that the committee gave was yes, but that it is inadequate. Secondly, are actions taking place? The answer was yes, but they are not time-bound and most are not being measured. Thirdly, are those actions reducing the risk of failure of our critical infrastructure and loss of life? Answer: no. That is the view of the Government’s independent Committee on Climate Change, set up to advise the Government on these matters.

  Over the past four years there has been under-investment in flood and coastal risk management. I am sorry that the former Minister, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), is no longer in his place, because I want to rebut his words specifically. He said that there had been an increase in investment under the last Government. There was not. Over the past four years there has been under-investment totalling more than £200 million. The graphs are there for all to see in the report by the Committee on Climate Change. I counsel the Minister to have a look at those graphs; the graphs and the bar charts showing what was spent are all there.

  That is a direct quote from the Committee on Climate Change. Against that evidence, can the Minister please justify his insistence and that of ministerial colleagues that flood risk has been reduced over the past five years? He will know that the only way in which that claim can in any way be substantiated is through the fact that those at low risk and very low risk of flood damage have been taken out of the equation, but those at significant, high or very high risk of flooding have seen that risk increase.

  The Committee on Climate Change has identified that the Government have no plan to reduce flood risk to properties already protected by coastal defences. That means that as sea levels rise because of climate change, the chance that those defences will be overtopped or fail is increasing. However, the Government are focusing only on improved emergency evacuation planning. Why have the Government not informed coastal communities that they should be prepared for increasingly frequent evacuations as flood risk increases because of climate change?

  It is the duty of Government to provide strong leadership and the investment that is required to ensure that all parts of the country and all sectors of the economy adapt effectively to climate change. Coastal flooding is not a stand-alone risk; combined with fluvial and surface water flood risk, the effect can be devastating. The Government have not risen to the challenge of matching the risk that we face.

  [Source]

  10:51

  I will try to be brief, but I want to enlighten the Minister on the question of funding. Simply, the projections are based on the peak year of 2010, after which there was an initial cut of some £200 million in the following two years. The Government then amended that figure for restoration, which was emergency funding. The bar charts and graphs produced by the Committee on Climate Change show that that funding bumped the figures above the original projected gain line. The Environment Agency has put in two new lines below that level, but those lines are deemed to be “best possible” and “rather optimistic” scenarios by the Committee on Climate Change. I recommend that the Minister looks at the reports and graphs by the Committee on Climate Change because they explain the situation in some detail and show exactly what the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) said.

  [Source]

• 1 Jul 2015: Davies Commission Report

  The increase in carbon emissions from any airport expansion will have to be contained within the overall carbon budget set by the Committee on Climate Change. What discussions is the Secretary of State having in Cabinet about offsetting from other areas of his portfolio to ensure that those emissions caps are not breached; and what discussions is he having at European level to ensure that a European emissions cap is put in place, as this country has unsuccessfully argued for previously?

  [Source]

• 9 Jun 2015: Air Pollution (London)

  Low-emission zones have already dramatically reduced air pollution here, but the truth is that London’s proposed ultra-low emission zone will not come into effect until 2020, and even then it will apply only in the central congestion charging zone and cover only 7% of the main roads in London that suffer from the worst nitrogen dioxide pollution. It will also exempt buses from meeting the highest Euro 6 standard and require only that all new taxis are zero-emission-capable by 2030. The other 93% of the most polluted roads in London will be outside the zone and may in fact experience greater pollution as more vehicles circumvent the zone and come into more residential and poorer parts of the city. If ever there was a perfect example for the phrase “Too little, too late”, that is surely it.

  [Source]

  Enough, already. With cities across Europe adopting low and ultra-low emissions zones, there is a huge prize for manufacturers of low and zero-emission vehicles and there are significant risks for manufacturers that choose to bet against that trend. A responsible Government would reduce risk by adopting the highest standards here today. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made to establish long-term goals and timescales for a step-by-step rebalancing of fuel duty and vehicle excise duty, consistent with reducing not just CO 2 emissions, but NO 2 and particulate matter impacts? Emissions-based pricing must be the way forward. To achieve that, I ask the Minister to initiate a strategic assessment of the relative benefits of the different options to encourage the manufacture and purchase of low and ultra-low emissions vehicles.

  On one point the Mayor’s document is certainly correct: the Government and the EU need to take complementary action and work with local authorities such as TfL to create a national framework of low emission zones, accelerate the uptake of zero-emissions vehicles and ensure that the Euro 6 standard does not reproduce the mistakes of Euro 4 and Euro 5, where the actual performance under road conditions is vastly inferior to that under test conditions.

  [Source]

• 1 Jun 2015: Britain in the World

  “I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act and we need to act now.”

  He said that climate change posed risks to national security, resulting in humanitarian crises and

  The International Institute for Strategic Studies is clear about the impact of resource shortages. In 2011, it published a report claiming that climate change

  and the Ministry of Defence has said that climate change will shift the tipping point at which conflict occurs.

  It has been a feature of recent debate to talk of the need for the UK, as a member of NATO, to meet the target of 2% of GDP on military spending. Our military do a superb job, but at the moment it is a job carried out within the limits of a very limited political vision. As politicians, we have to understand that the greatest threats to our security are no longer conventional military ones; nor do they come from fundamentalist terrorists. We cannot “nuke” a famine; we cannot send battleships to stop the destruction of a rain forest, but we can spend money on clean technology transfer that enables countries to bring their people out of poverty without polluting their future, and we can invest in adaptation measures that will protect communities from the effects of climate change that are already putting societies under stress.

  [Source]

• 19 Mar 2015: Wholesale Energy Prices

  The drop in wholesale energy prices has allowed Governments around the world—including India, Indonesia and Egypt—to reduce the subsidies to fossil fuels in a way that is commensurate with the proposals of the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, in yesterday’s Budget the Chancellor gave a £1.3 billion subsidy to our fossil fuel industries. What does the Minister make of that paradox?

  [Source]

• 18 Mar 2015: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  16:46

  A Budget is not an exercise in economic theory; it is a practical attempt to manipulate the levers of the financial system, both fiscal and monetary, to maximise public goods and public benefit. It used to be assumed in British politics that uncertain inviolable public goods would always be defended by Government, but that assumption has fallen apart over the past five years. From the quality of our air and water to the threat of catastrophic flooding and climate change, many now see that the role of Government has been hopelessly diminished. Over the past five years, the Government have stepped back from so many of the key risks facing our country that in the eyes of many people they are no longer fit to govern.

  I want to focus on climate change and resource insecurity—two issues on which the Government promised significant progress and on which the Chancellor himself once made significant promises, but which show the true face of this Government and their significant failure.

  In 2013 the chief economists of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office proposed a cross-departmental review of resource security, climate change and growth. They had been planning it for more than a year. The Chancellor, however, cancelled the review on the grounds that neither resource security nor climate change posed a threat to growth. One has to wonder whether he ever read those letters that the Governor of the Bank of England is obliged to send to him every time inflation misses its target, because all 14 of them specifically cited resource price spikes and resource insecurity as key factors in missing those economic targets.

  One has to wonder whether the Chancellor ever listens to the speeches of the Governor of the Bank of England, because Mark Carney has spoken powerfully about a “tragedy of horizons”, whereby new challenges to our long-term prosperity and economic resilience, such as climate change, manifest themselves beyond the standard regulatory and market outlook, which is two to three years. Speaking only last year at the World Bank-International Monetary Fund meeting, Mr Carney highlighted the fact that the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves could become unburnable in the transition to a low-carbon economy, resulting in a problem of “stranded assets”.

  One of the desperately short-sighted measures the Government took was to scrap the adaptation reporting power. That means that the companies that own and run our critical infrastructure no longer have an obligation to monitor and report but are free to ignore the risks of climate change, leaving us more exposed to the impacts of extreme weather events and flooding. Ironically, the Chancellor claims that that was done as part of reducing the burden on business of unnecessary regulation.

  Another short-sighted but devastating decision that undermined the investment capacity and future productivity of UK business was the Government's decision to downgrade the UK climate change risk assessment. I say downgrade, but that is really a euphemism: the Government slashed the number of staff working on climate change impacts from 38 to six in 2012. I do not know how much those 32 officials were being paid, but I am absolutely confident that the cost to British business from the lack of capacity to make a proper future assessment of climate risks and how to adapt to them will be infinitely more.

  This Chancellor has failed to understand that distinction. Under him, we have seen increasing financialisation of the economy and the increasing importance of financial markets. My point is that the local economy has abundant stocks of financial assets but insufficient flows of investment into the areas where they are required for long-term sustainable development. The World Economic Forum estimates that there is a $1 trillion gap in investment infrastructure each year, but why is that gap important and why is it so important this year? In September, Ban Ki-moon will convene the leaders of the world to agree the sustainable development goals and in December the world will look to Paris and the UN framework convention on climate change to deal definitively with the risks to all our economies posed by climate change.

  [Source]

• 12 Mar 2015: Key Performance Indicators

  09:53

  The Select Committee on Environmental Audit has used a traffic light system to assess the Government’s performance over the past five years. On air pollution, it has given the Government a red light; on biodiversity and wildlife, it has given the Government a red light; and on climate change adaptation, flooding and coastal protection, it has also given the Government a red light. This Government were supposed to be the greenest Government ever, so why are they ending their time in office without being awarded a single green light?

  [Source]

• 26 Feb 2015: Business of the House

  10:51

  Later this year, the world will turn its attention to the conference of the parties in Paris in December and, before that, to the conference on sustainable development goals in September. In July, the conference on the financing of development, which is perhaps more important, will take place in Addis. Does the Leader of the House agree that it is important that we have a major debate on that conference in this Chamber in Government time, and that the Treasury should be represented at such a debate to explain to the House precisely what it will be doing to ensure the success of the sustainable development goals and of the United Nations framework convention on climate change in December?

  [Source]

• 8 Jan 2015: Winter Floods 2013-14

  14:55

  The risk of flooding has increased and is increasing. The Government abandoned our focus on reducing flood risk, and they abandoned the commitment they made before the 2010 election to deliver on the findings of the Pitt review, which would have reduced the cost of flooding to well-being and the economy. In that, the Government failed the country last winter. In addition to gradual changes in patterns of rainfall and a rise in sea level, climate change is likely to result in an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as the floods and storms of last winter. The risk of catastrophic flooding happening in England within the next two decades, causing in excess of £10 billion in damage, now stands at one in 10—a 10% risk. That is the risk of a flood 10 times more damaging than the 2013-14 floods and three to four times more damaging than the widespread flooding of 2007. The Minister will know better than anyone that we are completely unprepared for such a flood, which would be four times greater than the largest civil emergency since the end of the second world war.

  [Source]

  15:02

  I am happy to advise the hon. Lady that I am basing my conclusion on the reports and work of the adaptation sub-committee and the Committee on Climate Change. If she is interested, I will happily send her the references.

  The Government not only cut the budget for new defences; they decided to stop maintaining existing defences properly, and they cut the budget by 20%. Why? Because they cannot cut a ribbon on an essential maintenance project—they need new projects for that. The decision to remove flooding from the Department’s list of priorities was never just about the previous Secretary of State’s illiterate theories on climate change; the larger issue is the Government’s rejection of the responsibility to protect people from risks that are beyond their control. It was interesting to hear comments earlier in the debate about the need for the Government to step in and about Flood Re, which I echo. Both coalition parties supported the Pitt review strategy that the previous Labour Government were delivering before 2010, but both parties abandoned it straight after the election because they felt they could get away with it. They crossed their fingers and hoped that no one would notice the unbuilt defences, the collapsing sea walls, the eroded riverbanks and the clogged up culverts. Forty-six of the Pitt review’s 92 recommendations have not been implemented.

  [Source]

  15:06

  We all remember the Prime Minister’s cruelly disingenuous promise that money is no object, and it is difficult to decide whether the original statement or the retraction of it in November marked a lower point. Will the Minister confirm how much of the flood support package for home owners and businesses has been received by those affected? Thankfully, many people were protected because, as the Committee on Climate Change has pointed out, the previous Government implemented 46 of the Pitt review’s key findings to increase our resilience to flood emergencies. We established the flood forecasting centre in 2008 as a joint venture between the Environment Agency and the Met Office. As the December 2013 tidal surge hit, the Environment Agency issued 160,000 flood warnings, and an estimated 18,000 people were evacuated from homes in coastal areas. At one stage during the surge, 64 areas had the highest warning level in place, reflecting a danger to life.

  What lessons were learned? What has changed since the floods of last year? Many thousands of people were forced to leave their homes last winter. Transport was disrupted for weeks, in some cases months. Businesses were wrecked, and many closed and never reopened. After the flood, the Government promised that they had reviewed their approach to flooding and that the autumn statement would contain a proper long-term flood risk strategy. Well, the National Audit Office and the Committee on Climate Change reviewed that investment programme and found that nothing has changed. Three quarters of flood defences in England have not been maintained according to their identified needs in 2014-15. The Government’s investment plans will see the number of properties at significant risk rise by 80,000 every five years.

  The budget for the ongoing maintenance of flood defences was cut by 20% in the 2010 spending review and has not been restored. The failure to maintain flood defences to the required standard has increased the risk of high-consequence flood defences, such as sea walls, failing. The failure of such defences would put lives as well as livelihoods at risk. I need to impress on the Minister that that is not simply my view but that of the National Audit Office and the Committee on Climate Change, and he really needs to take notice of it.

  Does the Minister agree with the Committee on Climate Change and the National Audit Office that the number of properties at risk of flooding is increasing? If not, will he give us his figure for the predicted net change in the number of properties at high and medium risk over the next five to 10 years? Will he confirm that although his 5% net reduction figure is true, it is also true that the number of properties at high and medium risk has increased? Will he have the good grace at least to blush when he acknowledges that?

  Will the Minister confirm that the long-term investment strategy assumes, against the evidence, that development on the floodplain will stop after 2014-15? The Committee on Climate Change says that 20,000 new properties are built on the floodplain each year, including 4,000 a year in areas of significant flood risk. Does the Minister disagree?

  “We have tested our findings against a range of possible climate change projections using the latest scenarios.”

  However, if we read further, we find that the strategy assumes minimal climate change. The assumptions section on page 18—I challenge the Minister to read it—states:

  [Source]

  15:15

  The Chair of the Select Committee asks what the Labour alternative is. The Government scrapped our approach to flooding and climate change, which was based on the findings of the Pitt review into the 2007 floods. They abandoned our focus on reducing flood risk. They abandoned our commitment to invest to protect the most vulnerable and to reduce the cost of flooding to well-being and the economy. We will deliver on the findings of the Pitt review—the other 46 recommendations, which have still not been implemented. However, a Labour Government will go further. We will introduce a new national adaptation plan based on the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations, because that is the only way to ensure that all sectors of the economy and all communities are prepared for climate change. We will end the confusion and chaos in flood investment by establishing a national infrastructure commission to identify our long-term infrastructure needs and get cross-party support to meet them.

  [Source]

  The point I am making is a good deal simpler than that, and it does not involve partnership funding. It is simply that the Committee on Climate Change says that 20,000 new properties are being built on flood plains each year, 4,000 of which are being built in areas of significant flood risk, and yet the long-term investment strategy that the Government have in place assumes that there will be no further building on flood plains. Why?

  [Source]

• 27 Nov 2014: Business of the House

  12:35

  The Royal Society’s report on resilience to extreme weather has just been published. As the Leader of the House will know, it has highlighted that by 2030, 800,000 properties—over 300,000 more than currently—will be subject to extreme flood risk as a result of climate change, even with the additional spending the Government are trying to make available up to 2020. May we have a debate on this important matter and report?

  [Source]

• 16 Oct 2014: National Pollinator Strategy

  16:47

  In 2010, the country did not vote for continuity, except in one thing: Labour’s approach to our environment. The coalition said that it was signed up to Labour’s Climate Change Act 2008. The Tories and the Liberal Democrats committed themselves to delivering on the Lawton report and the national ecosystems assessment that we commissioned on the back of it. They even said that they were committed to the Pitt review that Labour had commissioned after the 2007 floods. Well, we saw last winter what had happened to that.

  [Source]

• 1 Jul 2014: Humber Flood Risk Management Strategy

  10:36

  I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), in particular because the topic is not something that he has simply taken up for this debate. His parliamentary questions and previous contributions have focused clearly and repeatedly on moving the debate about flood risk away from rhetoric and on to the simple facts, and that set the debate off on exactly the right tone. I want to pick up on some of those facts: the Government’s capital spending plans up to 2020-21, which will result in a significant increase in the number of properties at risk of flooding; the fact that flood risk is increasing due to climate change; and the fact that the Government’s maintenance spending plans for tidal defences will result in the deterioration of existing flood assets. The issues are serious and it is right that they have been debated so thoroughly this morning. I want to focus primarily on the first two points: increased flood risk and capital investment.

  The Government have set out their forward projections for capital investment in flood defences, which say that they will spend £370 million a year in 2015-16 and in every year through to 2020-21. What percentage of that money will be for new-build flood defences, and what will be for major capital repairs and maintenance? The truth is that we do not know. The Government have chosen to use capital spend as a proxy for spending on new flood defences. As a result, many people will think that they are building more defences and defending more properties when in fact, because of climate change and storm damage, they will simply be spending more on major repairs to existing defences. In other words, there may be no increase in the number of defences, or indeed the number of properties and homes defended.

  The Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change has analysed the claim made by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, that 165,000 properties would be “better protected” in the current spending period. It warns that only a proportion of the 165,000 will actually see their flood risk reduce. Many capital schemes are simply replacing or refurbishing existing defences on a like-for-like basis, and to the same crest height. That is not good enough, for all the reasons that hon. Members have outlined this morning. With climate change, many of the houses will be less well protected than they were when the defences were built. Defences may have been repaired, but the risk that they will be overtopped as a result of changing climate has now increased. Too many homes and properties are still at risk, because the defences that we have are less effective than they once were as a result of the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather.

  [Source]

• 3 Apr 2014: Topical Questions

  10:28

  The Secretary of State rightly spoke of the importance of last week’s IPCC report on climate change. Will he tell the House of any new policy he is considering in the light of that report as a way of advancing progress from the UK on these matters?

  [Source]

• 27 Mar 2014: Business of the House

  11:02

  This weekend, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its fifth assessment report on the impacts of climate change. Given that the final draft of the report covers disruption to the economy, disruption to water availability, changes to the food supply and adverse health impacts, I am not quite sure which Secretary of State it would be best to get the Leader of the House to ask to make a statement: it could equally be the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, for Health, for Energy and Climate Change, for International Development or for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If there could be a conscious uncoupling between the Deputy Prime Minister and Mr Farage next week, the Deputy Prime Minister might come to the House to give a statement on the impact report.

  [Source]

• 26 Mar 2014: Energy Markets (Competition)

  Why has that been possible? Why has it been allowed to happen? The answer is limited competition and weak regulation by Ofgem. Evidence presented to the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change showed that the big six were engaged in inconsistent accounting. The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) asked for evidence—thank God he left his speech at the pub, because he managed to take twice as long as your recommended time limit without the speech, Sir Roger; goodness knows what would have happened had he brought it with him. He said that if anyone knows about such things, they should report it, so let us look at what evidence there is and at what has been presented.

  [Source]

• 3 Mar 2014: Managing Flood Risk

  The hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) made some excellent points about land management and, as is his wont, spoke powerfully about dredging. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) who spoke powerfully about climate change and the recent report, the launch of which he had attended.

  [Source]

  I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that the figures belie that. In 2011-12, there was a budget of £573 million; in 2012-13, £576 million; and in 2013-14, £577 million. The budget for 2014-15 is £615 million. Over the four-year spending period, the Government have allocated just £2.34 billion to flood defences, compared with £2.37 billion over the previous spending period. Those figures are not the ones that the Prime Minister used two weeks ago at Prime Minister’s questions, but they are the ones set out clearly by the independent Committee on Climate Change in its policy note on 21 January, used by the House of Commons Library in its briefing on flood defence spending and set out by the UK Statistics Authority just six days ago. They can even be corroborated on the website of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the correction it had to put out after the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister both “mis-spoke”. As the UK Statistics Authority reported last week, the flood defence budget has seen a real-terms cut of £247 million in this spending period. The Committee was absolutely clear about the risk from the reduction of flood defence funds. Last October, in their official response to the report, the Government said:

  [Source]

  I want to make two points in that connection. First, it is not sensible to increase the new build flood defences without a corresponding increase in the budget for major repairs. In the interests of transparency, the Government need to disaggregate the element of their capital spend budget that is for new defences and the part that is for the major repair and maintenance of assets. Secondly, as the Government have used the capital spend as a proxy for spending on flood defences, they might confuse people who think that they are building more defences when, in fact, because of climate change and storm damage, they are simply spending more on major repairs to existing defences. In other words, there may be no increase in the number of defences or, indeed, the number of properties and homes defended, just an ever-increasing capital repair bill to maintain them. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion made that point earlier.

  It is therefore important that we examine the fine detail of the EA’s budget in this respect. In a policy note of 21 January, the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change did precisely that. All its figures are based on real terms, according to 2010 prices. The capital is lower in every year of this Government than when they started with £360 million in 2010-11. The figure falls to £261 million in 2011-12 and to £269 million in 2012-13, before rising slightly to £294 million in 2013-14, and finally, at £344 million, falling £16 million short of where it started in 2014-15. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) noted in her speech to the House last week, those spreadsheet figures translate into real projects. The loss of £274 million has resulted in 290 shovel-ready projects being cancelled and 996 being delayed.

  [Source]

  Now the Government have set out their forward projects for capital, by saying that they will spend £370 million a year in 2015-16 and every year through to 2021. The Minister needs to be open with the House today about what percentage of that money in each year will be used for new build flood defences and what will be used for major capital repairs and maintenance. The Committee on Climate Change has been astute in analysing the figure of 165,000 properties that the Secretary of State told our Select Committee were “better protected” in the current spending period when he gave evidence to us last year. It warns that flood risk will actually reduce only for a proportion of the 165,000 properties. Many capital schemes are simply replacing or refurbishing existing defences on a like-for-like basis and to the same crest height. With climate change, many of those homes will be less well protected than when the defences were originally built. The defence may have been repaired, but the risk that it will be overtopped as a result of climate change has increased. Far too many homes and properties are still at risk because the defences that we have are less effective than they once were because of the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather.

  That is the sort of commitment that people get when they have a Chancellor who understands the science of climate change, rather than one whose guru is the chief climate change denier in the other place.

  As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said on Wednesday last week, the assessment of how much to invest in flood defence depends significantly on an assessment of the risks posed by man-made climate change. If we are properly to protect the British people against the threat of flooding, we cannot have doubt and confusion within the Government on climate change. But doubt and confusion are what we have from the two Secretaries of State in charge of protecting our homes, infrastructure and industry. The Environment Secretary’s unscientific opinions on climate change and his refusal to be briefed by his chief scientist on the subject are a matter of public record, as is his decision to downgrade flood defence as a priority. The link is clear.

  Is the Environment Secretary still refusing to entertain a briefing from his chief scientist on climate science? Will the Minister at least put his own opinion on the record? Does he accept the climate change risk analysis prepared by his officials, which estimates that 1 million properties may be at serious risk of flooding by 2020? Up from the current figure of 370,000, that 1 million estimate includes 800,000 homes. If so, will he tell us whether his Department’s flood insurance proposal—Flood Re—takes account of those additional properties? The Committee on Climate Change adaptation sub-committee has warned that it does not.

  The Minister will know that Lord Krebs, as chair of the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change, wrote to the Secretary of State in January and made it clear that the committee was available to the Department to ensure that sound science was the basis for all the Government’s long-term funding decisions on flood defences. Will the Secretary of State accept that offer?

  [Source]

• 26 Feb 2014: Weather Events (South West England)

  10:40

  Those figures are not the ones that the Prime Minister used two weeks ago at Prime Minister’s Question Time, but they are the ones set out clearly by the independent Committee on Climate Change in its policy note. They are also the ones used by the House of Commons Library in its briefing on flood defence spending in England, and the ones set out just yesterday by the UK Statistics Authority, which says that the Government have cut £247 million in real terms from the floods budget. Those figures can be corroborated on the Department’s website in the correction that it had to put out under the Minister’s guidance after the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister both misspoke.

  Will the Minister, who is, I know, very good on such matters, at least put his own views on the record? Does he accept the climate change risk analysis prepared by his own officials, which estimates that 1 million properties may be at serious risk of flooding by 2020? That is an increase on the current figure of 370,000. The 1 million estimate includes 800,000 homes. If he accepts it, will he tell us whether his Department’s flood insurance proposals under Flood Re take account of the additional properties? The Committee on Climate Change adaptation sub-committee has warned that they do not.

  [Source]

• 13 Feb 2014: Flooding

  Does the Minister accept his Department’s climate change risk assessment that up to 1 million more properties, including 825,000 homes, are likely to be at risk of flooding by 2020? If he does, why is funding for flood protection £63.5 million less in the current year than in 2010, even after last week’s budget changes? What is the implication for the Government’s Flood Re insurance scheme, which the Committee on Climate Change has warned him does not factor in the impact of climate change at all?

  [Source]

• 5 Dec 2013: Autumn Statement

  While the Chancellor was speaking, 30-year-high storm surges have been battering the coast of Britain. If he looks at the national infrastructure plan, he will find that the rate of coastal realignment is happening, in the view of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, at only one fifth of the pace necessary to avoid wholesale flooding that will cost billions of pounds to the economy. Will he look at that issue again, and at the funding for flood defences that this year has been reduced from £633 million to £527 million?

  [Source]

• 21 Nov 2013: Flood Protection Schemes

  09:58

  DEFRA’s own figures show that climate change could see the number of homes at risk of flooding more than double to more than 800,000 by the mid-2020s, yet the Committee on Climate Change’s report on adaptation makes it clear that even these figures underestimate the risk and that up to 500,000 homes might be left without protection. Why is the Secretary of State ignoring the science?

  [Source]

• 21 Oct 2013: Natural Capital (England and Wales)

  21:30

  I am also delighted that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the work of GLOBE International and its excellent natural capital initiative. I had the honour of chairing the national capital legislation summit that he mentioned which took place in the Bundestag this summer. I agree with the importance that he placed on incorporating natural capital into the first 2015 sustainable development goals. I should like to put on record my thanks and appreciation for the support of the German Government, who have consistently, and with great vision, understood the importance of this work in tackling global poverty as well as in addressing issues of climate change and biodiversity.

  [Source]

• 10 Sep 2013: Climate Change Act

  14:58

  On 27 September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its fifth assessment report on the physical science basis for climate change. It is a piece of global collaboration between 259 authors from 39 countries. It will provide the most authoritative scientific understanding of what climate change is and why it is happening. It has been through an exhaustive multi-stage peer review process involving experts and Governments and, critically from the hon. Gentleman’s perspective, has been open to review by proclaimed sceptics. Already, however, the climate change deniers are lining up to rubbish it. This debate has been good humoured and there has been a lot of laughter at what the hon. Gentleman said. It has been clubbable, but we must begin to pay attention to the science.

  I have read the draft summary of the report that has been made available to policy makers. Its 31 pages leave me in no doubt that the window of opportunity to limit global warming above pre-industrial levels to 2° C is about to close. The figure is important, because beyond that 2° threshold, the effects of climate change clearly begin to degrade the ability of our existing social and ecological systems to support human life. Indeed, the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change are now carrying out an urgent review of whether it might be necessary to limit the rise to just 1.5° C. That report will be concluded in 2015

  [Source]

  15:01

  As significant as the 2° threshold is the report’s conclusions about a budget of future greenhouse gas emissions. It concludes that to reduce the chance of breaching that 2° limit to just 1:3, the total cumulative amount of carbon that is emitted in the atmosphere as a result of human activity must be less than l,000 billion tonnes. Some people would say that a 1:3 chance of our planet going wrong is still far too high, but let us work out the implications of the numbers.

  [Source]

  No, because we are debating the Climate Change Act 2008, which specifically deals with anthropogenic global warming.

  The scientists tell us that since the industrial revolution we have emitted between 460 billion and 630 billion of that l,000 billion tonnes. That means that we have parking space in the atmosphere for a maximum of only 540 billion tonnes of carbon if we are to stand a two-thirds chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Annual global carbon emissions are approximately 32 billion tonnes. The maths is simple. We have less than 17 years left before we bust our carbon budget, and that is on the rather optimistic assumption that annual global emissions do not rise before 2030.

  [Source]

  The report considers four different models under different greenhouse gas concentrations over the rest of this century. It specifically states that even on the lowest concentration model it is likely—the probability is 66%—that in the 20 years to 2100 the sea level will be between 26 and 54 cm higher than during the same period to 2005. The report does not point out, but I will, that it is estimated that more than 1 billion people live in low-lying coastal regions around the globe. The effect on those populations of even a 1 metre rise would be wholesale dislocation of refugees. Besides the human tragedy, the estimated cost of the breaching the levees in New Orleans in 2005 is $250 billion. The hon. Member for Monmouth will therefore see that costs are involved in breaching that 2° threshold.

  The cost of inaction in the face of climate change is enormous, and the benefits of taking it seriously are that we will create new jobs and technologies that can drive our economy forward. In 2011, just 6% of our economy—the green economy—provided 25% of all growth in the UK. The idea that we can ignore climate change because the costs are too high can be suggested only by a man who is prepared to put his wallet on one side of the scales and his children on the other.

  [Source]

• 4 Sep 2013: Energy Prices and Profits

  17:27

  The Secretary of State knows full well that what he is saying is disingenuous. When Labour created the new electricity trading arrangements, we were moving from two major companies to six. When it created the British electricity trading and transmission arrangements, it expanded the transmission arrangements as well. When it introduced Ofgem, it was introducing a regulator into a competitive situation. He knows full well that in 2007 and 2008, when the Leader of the Opposition was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, energy prices were going down. It is in the last few years that they have rocketed by 41%. All the accusations that he has just made are phoney and he knows the reality.

  [Source]

• 11 Jul 2013: Business of the House

  10:53

  Yesterday the Committee on Climate Change published a report on adaption, which said that by the 2020s the gap between water demand and water supply could be 120 billion litres—the amount that our farmers extract each year. This is an incredible strain on our resources and farmers. May we have a debate on water extraction and the potential effect on the irrigation of crops?

  [Source]

  10:54

  It was not the Select Committee; it was the Committee on Climate Change.

  [Source]

• 26 Jun 2013: Spending Review

  14:13

  Because 67% of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s budget is ring-fenced for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the Chancellor’s 8% cut actually equates to a 35% cut when the Department has to deliver an infrastructure plan which, at £200 billion, is the largest this country has ever seen. How is it going to be able to do that?

  [Source]

• 18 Jun 2013: Financial Transaction Tax and Economic and Monetary Union

  15:20

  I want to introduce another note into the debate before sitting down. Our Government, along with many other participants in the United Nations framework convention on climate change, have stated that there will be a green climate fund. That fund will have to raise $100 billion each year by 2020—that is the minimum that the UK and our European negotiating partners think will be necessary to help developing countries increase their own economies, reduce poverty and offset the impact of dangerous climate change. The FTT would be an extraordinarily adept mechanism for raising those funds, which are vital to real growth in our economy. If we look at the UK economy, we will find that only 6% relates to the green economy, yet that 6% provided 30% of our economic growth in 2011. I would like to see the funds from the FTT predicated to use in the green climate fund.

  [Source]

• 4 Jun 2013: Energy Bill

  The Secretary of State is in a bind. His party believes in a 2030 decarbonisation target—it is Lib Dem party policy, after all. His party put the issue in its manifesto. Many of his MPs went further and actually signed a separate pledge in support of a decarbonisation target. Have they not learned the Lady Bracknell rule of politics: to break one pledge may be regarded as a misfortune; to break two looks like contempt for the electorate? The Secretary of State is, however, a decent fellow and he has told me from that Dispatch Box that he favours a 2030 decarbonisation target and would be happy to implement one were it not for the fact that he struck an agreement with the Chancellor. I understand that he refers to this agreement as “the grand bargain”. Hardly: it is more of a Faustian pact.

  Just 10 days ago, the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change produced its report on the electricity market reform. The report compared and analysed the relative benefits of investing in a portfolio of low-carbon technologies through the 2020s rather than investing in gas-fired generation. The report finds that investment in low carbon would save consumers between £25 billion and £45 billion. If, however, one uses the higher-end estimates of gas and carbon prices, the Climate Change Committee’s estimate then rises to £100 billion.

  [Source]

  Of course. The hon. Gentleman must be forgiven for not having a memory retention of more than 10 seconds. I did, in fact, say that the lower-end figures were £25 billion to £45 billion, and that the higher end of the spectrum led to the estimate of £100 billion. There we have it. If we compare the £7.6 billion that the Secretary of State has negotiated with the lower-end range of £25 billion to £45 billion, we see what the Climate Change Committee has said the gas strategy might cost us in comparison with a low-carbon investment strategy.

  Critically, the Climate Change Committee says:

  “Only if the world abandons attempts to limit risks of dangerous climate change would a strategy of investment in gas-fired generation through the 2020s offer significant savings.”

  [Source]

  Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that the climate has been changing over billions of years. If, however, he cared to read the report from the Met Office and from meteorologists around the world, he would find that the fluctuation over the past 10 years, to which he referred, relates to the context and background diminishing rather than the effect of emissions reducing. Again, if he bothered to read the report, he would find that it says that once the background comes back to normal or back to the average, the effect of the increased emissions would then produce a correspondingly sharp rise in climate change. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there have always been changes in the climate and there are risks that we must factor in, but when we do so, we must take full account of the scientific data. Failing to do so is the mistake he made in his intervention.

  So here we have the United Kingdom Government, who proclaim themselves to be a leader in the international climate negotiations in the run-up to the United Nations framework convention on climate change agreement in 2015, adopting a national strategy that their own independent expert advisers have told them will make economic sense only if the world abandons its attempt to avoid dangerous climate change. If it were on “Mock the Week”, we should all be in hysterics.

  This is not the advice of some partisan body funded by industry. It is the advice of the independent committee that we established and expressly charged with the task of advising Parliament on the most cost-effective measures that can be taken in order to deliver on the UK’s legally binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050. What that committee is telling the Secretary of State is that the £7.6 billion that he has negotiated needs to be set against at least £25 billion to £45 billion of increased costs to the UK public. The House should not wilfully choose to disregard the advice of the Committee on Climate Change unless it hears very specific evidence from Ministers that refutes its conclusions. To disagree with the Committee without such evidence would be wilfully to embrace higher energy prices than are necessary to our emissions objectives, and to accept lower economic growth and the likelihood that this policy will fail.

  Amendments 11 to 20, which we will press to a vote this afternoon, require the Secretary of State to set a 2030 decarbonisation target for the electricity sector by 1 April 2014, at a level that

  “must not exceed the level deemed consistent with a low-carbon trajectory as advised by the Committee on Climate Change”.

  I am most grateful to the 43 Members on both sides of the House who have chosen to add their names to the amendments. They, like the hon. Member for South Suffolk and me, believe that a 2030 decarbonisation target is essential to the success of the Bill. Let me repeat those words: “the success of the Bill”. We are not trying to wreck the Bill, for it is too important to play politics with. Ministers should distinguish between those who bring a spade to bury their endeavours and those who, like the hon. Member for South Suffolk and me, bring a spade to shore them up. I am conscious that the Government Whips have been given a good deal of extra work by the amendments, and I will happily buy a refreshment for any of them who feel aggrieved by having to argue with their colleagues against both common sense and principle.

  So far, we have identified a number of arguments that have been adduced in the Government’s defence. Front Benchers have been keen to tell their troops not to worry, because they have introduced a provision to set a decarbonisation target in 2016. Well, that is not strictly accurate. The Secretary of State did not need to give himself the power to set a decarbonisation target in the Bill, because he already had that power under the Climate Change Act 2008. What the Government actually do in the Bill is make it illegal for him to set a 2030 decarbonisation target before 2016. There is no compulsion for him to set it even after that date; there is only a permission and an acknowledgement that he may do so.

  The Government specifically claim that the enforced delay makes sense, because by that time the Committee on Climate Change will have published its fifth carbon budget, which covers the year 2030. They say that it is best to consider the committee’s budget recommendation along with any decarbonisation target. Interestingly, the committee itself does not agree with that view. In fact, it has repeatedly disagreed with it. In its recent report on electricity market reform, it is quite explicit in saying:

  Neither is it necessary to wait for the fourth carbon budget review in 2014 to set a carbon-intensity target. Although the Government has linked its approach to EMR implementation with the review of the fourth carbon budget, it will remain economically desirable to invest in a portfolio of low-carbon technologies whatever the outcome of the review, given the 2050 target in the Climate Change Act.

  [Source]

  I agree that it is important to address the question of what the costs to British industry and British consumers will be. As the hon. Gentleman will accept, the independent Committee on Climate Change has already addressed that question, and, indeed, its remarks and recommendations were based precisely on its assessment of the likely costs and benefits and the signals that currently exist in the market; but he has made a fair point. We certainly need to ask what signals exist, and what effect either costs or benefits are likely to have on our national well-being.

  It is heartening to know that the Government want to hear what the Committee on Climate Change wants to say in three years’ time. Perhaps they will now extend that courtesy further by not just hearing but listening to what the committee is saying today.

  The other argument that the Government Whips have deployed against the amendments is that sector-specific targets without road maps are meaningless. That is, to a degree, relevant to the point made by the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). This is not only about the targets; it is also about the road maps relating to the implementation of those targets, and that, of course, is precisely why we have a levy control framework. It is also why the EMR report of the Committee on Climate Change calls on the Government to extend to 2030 funding allocated to support the development of less mature technologies under the framework, to present

  [Source]

  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the great mistakes this Government have made on energy policy is to confine it simply to energy itself, and not to consider it in the wider context of British industry. That is why I am delighted that the new Minister for Energy, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), has a spanning brief over the two Departments. I hope he will be able to bring that to bear, because we must see how our energy policy is related to our exports. Unfortunately, last night the Government did not accept the amendments on carbon capture and storage, but we must understand that the growth of CCS as a new technology in this country will impact not only on our own energy policy here in the UK, but much more widely in terms of the exports and the impact we can make on climate change across the globe and in countries such as China and India, which will be using coal for the next 30 or 40 years. That is the true prize. Our own energy consumption and our own emissions are small compared with those of the rest of the world, but the impact that our industrial policy can make is enormous. That is why we have to integrate energy and business, as my hon. Friend says.

  Potential investors in the UK have a policy risk concern; they are concerned about what the future shape of our energy policy might be. Siemens told us if we wait until 2016 to set a decarbonisation target for 2030, it and many of its competitors are likely to delay or cancel planned investment in the UK. The Energy Secretary is shaking his head. I know he is not shaking his head to indicate he disagrees that that is what Siemens said, as he has read the Hansard Committee reports and he knows that is precisely what it said. He may disagree with those comments, but that is what industry is telling us, and we ignore what it is saying at our peril.

  [Source]

  Had the hon. Gentleman paid attention, he would have noticed that I mentioned the basis on which the Committee on Climate Change made its assessment. The Committee concluded that we could assume that the price of carbon will not continue to rise only if the rest of the world gives up its aspiration to avoid dangerous climate change. Only in that scenario could it make economic sense for the Government to pursue the strategy he suggests.

  [Source]

  The hon. Gentleman has made an important point, so I want to respond to it. He will, I trust, have read the Committee on Climate Change report on EMR, in which it states:

  [Source]

• 3 Jun 2013: Energy Bill

  18:54

  Amendment 148 would ensure that where substantial pollution abatement equipment properly dealing with the oxides of sulphur, nitrogen, heavy metals or particles is fitted to the generating station in such a way that makes it compliant with the EU IED while still emitting above 450 grams per kWh, the plant would then be brought under the EPS framework. Without the amendment, many plants will succeed in circumventing the EPS, which would undermine the EMR, the UK’s carbon budgets, the incentive to invest in CCS and the coalition agreement, which committed the Department of Energy and Climate Change to introducing an EPS as a backstop to unabated coal. Remember, these old coal plants have already recouped their capital costs. Allowing them to avoid the EPS cannot therefore be justified, and I dispute what the Minister said about the importance of not accepting the amendment in order to allow new coal to recoup its costs.

  [Source]

  18:57

  I am in 100% agreement with my hon. Friend. I am happy to put on the record that coal is the energy of the future for the next 40 years; not necessarily in this country, but around the world. Unless we develop CCS and export it to such countries as China and India, which are going to be using coal, the future will be bleak for all of us. It is imperative to incentivise CCS, which is why amendment 179, in conjunction with amendments 148 and 150, is so important.

  The central purpose of the grandfathering provision in the EPS is to enable investors in newly consented plant to recover their costs prior to being forced to fit CCS and/or limit their running hours. The grandfathering date in the Bill as it stands is simply not credible. The EPS currently allows unabated gas to operate as base load until 2045. This is not plausible in a carbon-constrained world in which international commitments to reduce carbon are more likely to increase than otherwise. More to the point, grandfathering to 2045 reduces the policy levers available to government, and is likely to reduce the demand for CCS for coal and seriously undermine the credibility of CCS for gas. The EPS is the backstop; it is a very different policy lever from the decarbonisation target. As such, it should retain flexibility to account for policy failure. I have not sought, therefore, to amend the level of the EPS, because in a situation of extreme policy failure, we might need to continue to use some of the unabated gas into the late 2020s. The inclusion of a 2030 decarbonisation target should reduce that risk significantly, but it would remain a risk, and one for which the EPS would have to account.

  Amendment 150 proposes a 15-year window up to 2029 providing an adequate commercial time frame and aligning itself with the 2030 power sector decarbonisation trajectory. It would provide increased investor confidence by being more credible than the current 2045, and by setting a shorter grandfathering period, new gas plant would be incentivised to begin operation sooner, assisting efforts to address energy security concerns in this decade.

  Amendment 179 would remedy the problem of the Energy Bill’s requiring CCS projects to operate under the EPS regime from day one. The amendment would apply the EPS to CCS projects only once an agreed and clearly defined commissioning and proving window had passed. That approach would remove an unnecessary regulatory burden for project developers and lower the cost for consumers, as the EPS risk would not need to be factored into the CFD strike price, and would achieve the Government’s aim—

  [Source]

• 9 May 2013: Home Affairs

  13:07

  The Government have made a classic mistake when it comes to energy policy. They have looked at energy policy in the way that a phlebotomist looks at an organism, concerned only with the blood supply. Energy is the blood supply that keeps an economy working, but they should look at it like a general practitioner would, by looking that the health of the whole organism. The Government have singularly failed to do that. It is essential that we see our energy policy as part of our economic policy and industrial strategy. That is why the Government have failed to introduce proposals for the second phase of carbon capture and storage. That is why their legislation to ensure that no decarbonisation target for 2030 can be brought into law before at least 2016, and maybe not after that, is a catastrophic failure. It fails to ensure that the relevant investment in low-carbon generation is incentivised. That is locking us, as the Chancellor would have it, into high carbon, fossil fuel growth well into the future. It is ensuring that our industry, and the jobs and growth dependent on it, is not being invested in at the moment.

  There are many others who wish to participate in the debate and for that reason I will conclude my remarks. It would have been of great benefit to see a food strategy Bill. It would also be nice to think that the throwaway line at the end of the Queen’s Speech, which said that climate change would be on the agenda of the G8 summit after all, had some substance, but we will have to wait and see.

  [Source]

• 18 Apr 2013: UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

  14:32

  I will focus my remarks more clearly on the UNFCCC itself and the process of the UNFCCC. I begin by outlining why a change in climate should matter at all. The UNFCCC is the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the world has occupied itself with this problem of climate change for a very long time now; why should we? It is certainly the most complex and intractable question of justice that the world has ever seen, in that it is not simply about justice between peoples separated by geography and wealth, but about justice between peoples separated in time, across the generations. It has proved a singularly intractable problem to reconcile those competing interests.

  Why does a change in climate matter? In and of itself it should not, were it not for the fact that species—biodiversity—find it difficult to keep pace with the rate of climate change. What we have seen is a change in the rate of extinctions in the modern era that has gathered pace to such an extent that we now have, in comparison with the fossil record, a 1,000% increase in the rate of extinctions. That is higher than in any other period in the whole of the fossil record. We are living in the midst of that, and sometimes when living in the midst of things it is difficult to see the wood for the trees; but that is what is going on. The rate of extinctions that we are experiencing is really quite remarkable.

  [Source]

  15:19

  I think that the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden will not dispute the fact that we are living through the greatest period of extinctions that has been known in the fossil record; he has not disputed that. What he has sought to dispute is whether it is in any way linked to a change in climate, and therefore whether it is in any way linked to the rise in the use of fossil fuels. He should look at the way in which species are migrating—he talked about a loss of habitat, but the reason why there is a loss of habitat in many parts of the world is, of course, because of the change in climate, which has actually destroyed the habitat that used to be there. I do not think that he can separate out, in the way that he seeks to, the effects of climate change from the effects of habitat destruction. To do so is precisely to ignore what is going on.

  We have to understand that 50% of the GDP of the poorest people in the world is dependent on their immediate environment, and it is that immediate environment that is under such significant threat. In parts of Africa, we have seen whole habitats destroyed. I sometimes wonder why we spend millions of pounds protecting our vessels as they pass the coasts of Ethiopia and Somalia but never give a thought as to why the pirates that we are protecting them from are there in the first place. Of course, they are there in large part because of the desertification that has taken place in that part of Africa—because of the loss of agriculture and of economic opportunities there. Not to link what is happening with climate change to the sustainable development goals would be a serious error indeed.

  [Source]

  14:47

  The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I do point out that he has conceded that climate change is real, and that it will have a differential effect in different parts of the globe. It is difficult to predict what that differential effect will be, but one of the core predictions is that there is every expectation that parts of Russia that are now tundra and unfarmable will gradually be released as good agricultural land. Therefore, from the Russian point of view, climate change, if and when it happens, will not be a significant problem. However, the problem is that with the release of that land into farmable condition, a lot of methane will be released into the atmosphere, which will turbo-charge the process. But the hon. Gentleman is right to mention that.

  The international negotiations must take on board the fact that although there are real downsides for some economies—indeed, small island states are in danger not just of their economy, but of their whole territory going down the pan—countries such as Canada and Russia may make substantial economic gains through this process. That is why we cannot simply go into the negotiations with the viewpoint that climate change is a universal disaster and we must stop it at all costs. We have to understand that some people expect to gain and some expect to lose. That makes these negotiations all the more intractable, and makes it more difficult to get a just resolution. I absolutely endorse the hon. Gentleman’s point.

  [Source]

• 18 Apr 2013: Low-carbon Growth Links (China)

  16:24

  I address my remarks to the Minister in particular, as this is an area in which the Government need to do more. The Government now have a strong link and positive engagement with India, and they need to step up to the mark in the same way in China, reinforcing their commitment there. That would prove tremendously positive, not just for climate change and climate change negotiations, but for our own productive economy, including our exports.

  The International Energy Agency estimates that China will account for half the growth in energy-related emissions to 2030. For almost a decade, that is the sort of fact that has been used to vilify China, painting it as the villain of the piece, and politicians have sometimes used it as an excuse for inaction. Indeed, the fact that China produces so many emissions is one of the most trenchant arguments used, as we heard earlier, in the US Senate for taking no action on climate change. The Chinese economy will, of course, remain one of the most powerful engines of climate change for the next two decades, but at the same time the scale of its own ambition for decarbonisation will, I think, be a turning point in global efforts to halt the pace of climate change. China’s approach, although much of it based on domestic political reasons, because of the problems with pollution in its own cities, is driving China to take really positive steps to increase not the decarbonisation but the carbon productivity of its economy, at the same time as making great advances on renewables.

  In October 2011, Minister Xie came to London as part of a delegation hosted by GLOBE. He met senior political figures from all three major UK parties—including Cabinet Office Ministers, the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Leader of the Opposition—as well as senior Members of the European Parliament, and it was agreed that a regular second track to negotiations should be established.

  In Venice in September 2012, that second track took off when the Chinese delegation—led by Su Wei, the director general of the Department of Climate Change in the National Development and Reform Commission—agreed the approach now being carried forward by China and GLOBE in Europe. As we speak, the unlikely team of Lord Prescott and Lord Deben is in China with a delegation of legislators from France and other parts of Europe to negotiate with the Chinese on an initiative about how the UK and China can work together to reduce carbon emissions through product standards.

  [Source]

• 17 Apr 2013: Energy Generation

  17:09

  I pay tribute to the Government—and to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change for his interlocutions and iterations with the Treasury—for their commitment of £7.6 billion under the levy control framework up to 2020. That is a significant achievement, which will be important for low-carbon generation in this country. It is £7.6 billion from people’s energy bills to pay for new low-carbon energy generation that will increase energy security, reduce the cost of energy bills in the long term and ensure that we meet our moral and legal obligations to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So far, so good; I am with the Minister and with the Government.

  [Source]

  If the hon. Gentleman reads the record of the written evidence that was given to the Energy Bill Committee, he will see that no less a figure than David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, which independently advises the Government, said that the context in Germany is different. A low-carbon trajectory has already been established there, precisely for the reasons the hon. Gentleman suggests—four times as many renewables are already in place. People in Germany are not in doubt about what their Government are going to do or about the direction of travel.

  [Source]

  17:17

  The Committee on Climate Change estimates that in the absence of a 2030 target, offshore wind might cost as much as £140 per megawatt-hour. With such a target, the cost, under the committee’s scenario, drops to £100. The difference between the two costs is about the presence of a competitive supply chain in the UK. We do not have one, but what we do have is at risk.

  [Source]

  17:19

  My hon. Friend is, as ever, thoroughly astute on these matters. He was a tremendous champion of the decarbonisation target when the Bill was in Committee, and he speaks with great knowledge on the subject. He is absolutely right. Only last night at a dinner, I heard the Secretary of State talking as if this was a great leap forward, that this would be the only Government who had legislated for a decarbonisation target. At that point I almost spluttered into my chicken, because we have not legislated for a decarbonisation target. [ Interruption. ] And it was beef anyway, says my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead). What we have done is make provision so that, at the appropriate moment, it would not be impossible to legislate.

  Let me return to the key point that I wish to address, because I know that other Members want to enter the debate. Although it is good to have a debate and a real exchange of views through interventions, I fear that I must press on if other Members are to be able to speak. Siemens told us that if we wait till 2016 to set a decarbonisation target for 2030, it and many of its competitors are likely to delay or cancel planned investments in the UK.

  In March, six of the largest supply chain investors wrote to the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to register their strong support for the decarbonisation amendment tabled by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) and me, which to date is supported by 41 Members from—I am pleased to say—all parties in the House. They wrote:

  The amendment would require a 2030 decarbonisation target for the energy sector to be set by the Secretary of State, on the advice of the Committee on Climate Change, by next spring, which would ensure that the Energy Bill sent a coherent signal to investors. By securing investment in a competitive UK supply chain, the amendment would not only reduce the cost of decarbonising our energy infrastructure, but ensure that the investments that we are committed to make produced a significant growth multiplier and contributed to the essential rebalancing of the British economy.

  [Source]

  00:00

  I am not a gambling man, but I understand the position of seeking to look at climate change policy as a balance of risks, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to make that point. In truth, whatever the UK does will not make a global difference to whether we reach 2°, as I am sure she would acknowledge. The aspiration required of the UK and the global leadership that it possesses, which the hon. Member for St Ives mentioned, mean that we have to drive this if we are to play our part in achieving the global reduction. I understand the percentage figures she gave, but it is perhaps illegitimate to conclude that if we hit the 2030 target we will have only a 36% chance of achieving the 2° target. The UK cannot achieve that on its own; it demands a similar effort across the globe.

  The Government’s approach has not taken enough cognisance of how the energy sector fits in with powering our economy as a whole. A good example is the ramping down of funds available for carbon capture and storage. Coal and CCS will be vital for us. There will be significant jobs, and if we invest in and develop CCS, it will become a major part of our exports in skills and technology around the world, from which we can benefit. It is part of our wider economy, and the same is true of the renewables industry the more we invest in it and adopt the position, as the hon. Gentleman said, of being the global leader.

  I am afraid that we have already lost that position, because other countries have invested far more, including what we are prepared to do in CCS. Unless we invest, we will not develop the export capacity that we need to drive our economy as a whole. We cannot simply be what Gary Smith of the GMB often refers to as the Meccano men of Europe, who simply fit together a product made elsewhere. We must have supply chains in the UK, create the jobs and invest in companies here.

  [Source]

  17:27

  I do not dispute what the Minister says about the two projects that are on line, but I do not think that he will dispute what I have said about the reduction in funds available for CCS.

  If we build a competitive supply chain fast enough, we can expect significant investment in the UK almost immediately, which will mean that British companies are well placed to export to a renewable energy market that the International Energy Agency predicts will be worth at least $6.4 trillion by 2035. If we do not lay the foundations for a competitive supply chain, we will see the cost of decarbonisation rise, along with our trade deficit, as we hand over the growth benefits from public investment to countries that have already taken steps to remove the policy risk from low-carbon infrastructure investment. Businesses are calling for demand security beyond 2020, which the Energy Bill could provide at no cost.

  The Committee on Climate Change is the body trusted by the industry to set the right target. The Minister will know only too well the letter written by the newly appointed chair of the CCC to the Secretary of State on 25 February. He described how the Government’s plans entail a

  specifically the “dash for gas” and the danger that it presents to low-carbon generation. I trust that the Minister will reconsider the proposals on the decarbonisation target in the Department and that we may yet see some progress.

  [Source]

• 20 Mar 2013: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  18:30

  This Chancellor’s old mantra was cut, tax and grow, so what if he has changed it for Heseltine’s grow, tax and spend? If he has not learned that growth must be sustainable, it will all end up in the same mess. In a world of 7 billion people, growth can be sustainable only if it is predicated on advances that bring increased productivity and greater efficiency in the use of resource. For the world to continue to achieve a 3% per annum growth target and to maintain a trajectory that keeps carbon emissions below the 2° threshold, we must increase our productivity per tonne of carbon emitted 15 times over, yet this is the Chancellor who has fought tooth and nail to stop us having a decarbonisation target in the Energy Bill.

  The Chancellor is oblivious to the argument, regardless of who makes it—friend or foe, politician or industry. Two weeks ago, six of the largest multinational investors in the UK infrastructure wrote to him. Mitsubishi, Alstom, Doosan, Gamesa, Vestas and Areva have interests that span gas, clean coal, carbon capture and storage, nuclear and renewables. They told the Chancellor of their strong support for the early introduction of the 2030 decarbonisation target and warned:

  [Source]

• 14 Mar 2013: Topical Questions

  10:22

  T7. What could be more topical than a challenge to the recently announced infallibility of the Minister of State, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). Indeed, there has been such a challenge—from Mitsubishi, Vestas, Alstom, Areva, Doosan and Gamesa. The Minister maintains that there should be no decarbonisation target until 2016; they have said that postponing the 2030 target decision until 2016 creates entirely avoidable political risks and slow growth in the low-carbon sector, handicaps the UK supply chain, reduces UK research and development and produces fewer jobs.

  [Source]

• 7 Mar 2013: Business of the House

  11:21

  The announcement earlier today about the permanent closure of Daw Mill colliery will have far-reaching consequences not only for the 650 people working there, E.ON, Ratcliffe power station and the 1.5 million tonnes of coal the colliery generated each year, but for the whole future of UK Coal, the British coal industry and the country’s energy supply. Why has the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change not seen fit to come to the House today to make a statement on the matter?

  [Source]

• 12 Feb 2013: Topical Questions

  12:09

  There is a rumour that the Deputy Prime Minister let slip to the Liaison Committee last week his support for having a 2030 decarbonisation target in the Energy Bill. Will he therefore be so kind as to encourage his party to support the cross-party amendments tabled by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) and myself to ensure that precisely what he wants is put in place as quickly as possible?

  [Source]

• 22 Jan 2013: Topical Questions

  T2. At the global conference that the Foreign Secretary was good enough to host last week in the Locarno rooms, Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, made it clear that a settlement in 2015 would as much reflect national legislation as define it. What steps is his Department taking in bilateral arrangements with other countries to promote that national legislation?

  [Source]

• 20 Dec 2012: Christmas Adjournment

  15:18

  The Committee on Climate Change was established to act as an adviser to Government to present coherent proposals about future energy policy that meet our need for sustainable growth, while respecting the cross-party commitment to reduce CO 2 emissions. That was intended to depoliticise energy policy as far as is possible. Earlier this year, the Committee on Climate Change recommended three things in its report to Parliament. It said that

  The Chancellor has given what amounts to a clear statement to the contrary and the Department of Energy and Climate Change is banking on 27 GW of new gas capacity. The Energy Bill is an unprecedented and wholesale rejection of the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change. Politics has been given primacy over evidence.

  This year, hopes ran high that we would see the go-ahead for the Don Valley carbon capture and storage for coal scheme. The European Commission had rated it one of the top 10 most attractive schemes in Europe. Even though £3 billion of the original £4 billion budget was cut, the Government still had £1 billion earmarked for a coal-fired CCS pilot. The other day, when the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) was asked why his project had been ditched by the Government, he replied that what the UK really needs is CCS for gas, because it fits better with our future power mix. Insanity! The International Energy Agency projects that at current rates, the world will be burning 59% more coal in 2035 than it is today. Even if every country were to fulfil its mitigation pledges, the rise in coal burning would still take it to 21% above current levels. Gas CCS might help the UK to reduce its emissions during the dash for gas that the Chancellor wants to foist upon us, but the future of the UK economy lies in developing the technology for coal CCS that we can export around the world.

  I am an environmentalist. I believe that the world must move to decouple growth from carbon emissions. However, I understand that coal is the major world fuel and will continue to be so for many decades to come. To have a sustainable future, therefore, we must sequester the emissions from coal in the medium term. It must be part of our integrated energy, climate and industrial strategy to develop CCS for coal. Was the £1 billion ever really there? I do not know. Was this a project that we should have prioritised? The answer is clear: yes it was.

  The recommendation by the Committee on Climate Change to include carbon targets in the Bill is important because this is about the long-term certainty and stability that business and investors need. The Government argue that the legally binding targets for 2050 are still in place, but few of us in Parliament or business will be in our current positions in 2050. Business needs not just a 40-year aspiration, but clear staging points and standards in 2020, 2030 and beyond, to ensure that our energy infrastructure is invested in and properly structured so that it can deliver our emissions reduction targets by 2050.

  [Source]

• 12 Nov 2012: Ash Dieback Disease

  18:04

  All those questions will no doubt eventually be answered, and no doubt not all of them without embarrassment to politicians, officials and the industry. My focus today, however, is on examining the response that the Government must make to the increasing threat that our landscape and biodiversity face from climate change and the new vectors of disease that climate change has brought with it. In its excellent report published earlier this year, the Independent Panel on Forestry specifically addressed the need

  “to see our wooded landscapes, in both rural and urban settings, being better protected from, and more resilient to future risks such as climate change, pests and diseases.”

  Perhaps one of the more foolish cutbacks imposed by the Government has been the freeze on public information spending. I ask the Minister how on earth the Government propose to combat infectious diseases in plant health if they constrain their own ability to communicate directly with growers and the industry, and rely on the passive mechanism of their own website. It has been estimated that the changing risks arising from climate change and the new vectors of disease will result in a decline in timber yield in England of up to 35% by 2080, according to the Forestry Commission’s report “Climate Change Risk Assessment”, published in February.

  [Source]

• 24 Oct 2012: Energy Market Reform

  13:12

  Does my right hon. Friend recall that when the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change discussed vertical integration, one energy company chief executive was asked why a company such as EDF, which generates most of its electricity from nuclear power, should benefit from the high price of gas, which sets the market rate for the sale of the wholesale supply into the retail market. The answer, of course, was that Ofgem would not allow cross-subsidising from one side of that barrier to the other. Is that not why the tough new regulatory powers that we have called for are exactly what the Secretary of State should introduce?

  [Source]

  15:36

  The first objective is on carbon targets. We have our 2020 targets and our 2030 targets, and the Committee on Climate Change has been clear that we should look to set a target of 40 grams to 60 grams of carbon dioxide per kWh and move towards achieving our renewables targets. If we are to reconfigure the market, let us do it to achieve that objective.

  Security of supply includes the investment of £200 billion over the next decade in our energy network and of £110 billion in our electricity infrastructure. That is to replace the 30% of generation that will go off stream by 2024. We need base load, yet today’s rumour is that the EU new entrants reserve carbon capture and storage project in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) will not now proceed because of the Government’s failure either to match fund or to submit the appropriate information to secure the bid. CCS is vital because coal is vital—vital to India and to China—and whatever we do with renewables in this country, unless we come up with a CCS solution for coal-fired generation around the world, any paltry reduction in emissions achieved by the UK will not stop climate change. That is why we need a global perspective on our own energy policy. The CCS technology that we can put in place could drive the entire green economy to which both sides of the House claim to have signed up, but of which we see very little evidence.

  Nuclear base load is an essential part of the mix, but the Government are set to negotiate a strike price for the nuclear feed-in tariff in the region of £100 per megawatt-hour. The cost of the two EDF reactors at Hinkley Point has risen by £14 billion and is tied in with the strike price. That is madness for a 40-year lifecycle project when onshore wind is already performing at as low as £94 per megawatt-hour, and figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change suggest that offshore wind will achieve £100 per megawatt-hour by 2020.

  [Source]

• 6 Sep 2012: Energy Supply

  15:09

  I want to focus on subsidy and the importance of getting subsidy right. Earlier this summer, there was a contretemps between the Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change on the subsidy for onshore wind. The debate was not phrased in that way; it was phrased, “How much can we cut from that subsidy?” Should the subsidy be cut by 10%, which is the Department’s public position? Or should it be the far more severe cut of 25% proposed by the Treasury? Interestingly, the Department won the day in that political debate. In a straight fight between the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, most people in most circumstances would back the Chancellor, but in this case the Department won.

  [Source]

  15:16

  The real market failure is that the environmental, economic and social costs of greenhouse gas emissions are not properly factored into our fossil fuel price. The Government recognise that and have tried to attribute a price to carbon emissions through the EU emissions trading scheme. Unfortunately, the carbon price has neither been stable enough, as the Chairman of the Select Committee mentioned earlier, nor high enough to redress that market failure, even for the 40% of UK carbon emissions covered by the ETS. Fossil fuels are operating in a market tilted distinctly in their favour. Those who support renewables such as onshore wind that do not produce polluting carbon emissions are perhaps entitled to claim that there is clear justification for that level—albeit a very low level, as I have shown—of subsidy.

  [Source]

  15:48

  The Committee said, in its recent report on climate change, that only 60,000 of the 330,000 solid wall insulations, which the Government indicated were necessary, had been installed. That is an important indication of how serious the situation is.

  [Source]

• 24 May 2012: Feed-in Tariffs Scheme

  Feed-in tariffs are a means of ensuring that investors’ risk relating to future prices is resolved. The Minister has talked about listening to the industry and about long-term certainty. Will he speak to his fellow Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who is responsible for energy policy, to make it clear that the proposals on feed-in tariffs published earlier this week in the draft Energy Bill do not address any of the other four risks that investors in the industry face when looking at long-term renewables? In particular, investors are not satisfied that they do anything to address construction risks. If they do not, there will be no new build and the lights will go out.

  [Source]

• 14 May 2012: Business and the Economy

  20:39

  The director general of the CBI identified a different test by which to judge this Queen’s Speech: whether it will help business to grow. He mentioned the energy Bill and the regulatory reform Bill. While he said he did not have much confidence in the regulatory reform Bill, he said he thought there was a chance that the energy Bill might help in this regard. I wish that were the case, but I fear Mr Cridland has let his optimism get the better of his customary forensic analysis. We have been promised sight of a draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny on 22 May —or, to be more precise, we were promised it for 20 minutes on the Department of Energy and Climate Change website on the afternoon of the Queen’s Speech, but then the commitment to the 22 May was taken down. Will the Minister responding to the debate tell the House whether, and when, that Bill will be published in draft form?

  [Source]

• 21 Mar 2012: Amendment of the Law

  18:30

  In a world of 7 billion people, growth can be sustainable only if it is predicated on advances that bring increased productivity and greater efficiency in the use of resources. That is what Hayek would have called a sound capital structure and proper allocation of capital. For the world to continue to achieve a 3% per annum growth target, and to maintain a trajectory that keeps carbon emissions below the 2°C threshold of dangerous climate change, we must increase our productivity per tonne of carbon emitted 15 times over.

  The Budget simply does not address that technological challenge. It was extraordinary to see the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change join forces with the Treasury last Friday evening and issue a press release at 6 pm, embargoed until midnight, to exempt gas-fired power stations from the emissions controls set out in the fourth carbon budget by the Committee on Climate Change. Those emissions reductions were, in the Committee’s view, part of the necessary regulatory framework for achieving our target of at least 80% emissions reductions by 2050.

  [Source]

• 8 Mar 2012: Common Agricultural Policy

  In the interests of fair trade and the long term, the EU should argue more strongly for a recognition of standards of production in trade agreements, including animal welfare, the use of water and greenhouse gas emissions. That is essential to achieve the global shift towards sustainable intensification that “The Future of Food and Farming” report recommended.

  [Source]

• 21 Feb 2012: London Olympics

  13:25

  Since then, earlier this month, Dow Chemical lost its bid to overturn anti-trust fines totalling in excess of €25 million imposed by the European Union for its part in colluding to fix prices of chloroprene rubber. Just last week, Dow was penalised and heavily fined for underestimating the greenhouse gas emissions from its Grangemouth plant in Scotland.

  [Source]

• 11 Jan 2012: Energy Prices

  The point that I most wish to make is that the costs of environmental and social measures, such as CERT and the renewables obligation, now account for about 4% and 10% of gas and electricity bills respectively. This is an unpopular thing to say—and certainly unfashionable, coming from me—but it is the truth and we have to face up to it: developing a low-carbon energy infrastructure will require long-term planning and significant investment. Whereas 84% of recent energy price rises were unrelated to low-carbon measures, the remaining 16% were and the Committee on Climate Change estimates that policies to achieve a low-carbon economy will add about £110 to bills over the next decade. That is because it expects electricity consumption to drop by 50%, meaning that per unit costs of electricity will skyrocket. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is achieve energy efficiency.

  [Source]

• 10 Jan 2012: High-speed Rail

  The Secretary of State has rightly spoken of the need to offset biodiversity loss and mitigate environmental impacts on wildlife, but will she go one stage further and take this unique opportunity to look at developing migratory corridors that will give species that need to migrate northwards as a result of climate change the connectivity in the landscape to enable them to do so?

  [Source]

• 1 Dec 2011: Topical Questions

  The Department says, “It’s the Treasury,” the Treasury says, “It’s the Office for National Statistics,” and the ONS says, “It’s not us.” So will the Secretary of State please publish the definitive advice on why the climate change levy fund for feed-in tariffs for solar has to be counted on the Government balance sheet? Is he aware that the European courts have recently ruled that a similar scheme in Germany need not do so?

  [Source]

• 3 Nov 2011: Electricity Market Reform

  16:36

  We need to replace 25% of our existing generating plant by 2020 merely to keep the lights on—that is one side of the Rubik’s cube. We are obliged by the European Union to have 30% of our electricity come from renewable sources by 2020—currently it is only 7%—and that is another side of the cube, as is energy consumption in the UK being set to double by 2050 if we continue with business as usual. We also need to tackle fuel poverty and to keep prices low, and that is a big side of the Rubik’s cube. We need to decarbonise our economy to combat climate change—yet another side. The sixth side is that we need to incentivise £200 billion of investment in new capacity and infrastructure in the space of only nine years. The puzzle is intractable indeed.

  Let us pick another two sides of the cube: what of delivering £200 billion-worth of infrastructure and of decarbonising our economy? Investment analyst Peter Atherton told the Committee that

  Carbon price support is like a tax on carbon, as the Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee said. It simply makes the cost of generating electricity from fossil fuels more expensive, and that means that carbon-free generation like wind becomes relatively more attractive the higher the Government set the carbon price.

  Emissions performance standards is the fourth of the pillars: the final tool in the Government’s incentives box. In reality, the EPS is more a disincentive, because it simply proposes a ban on any generator emitting more than a certain level of CO 2 per kWh. The Government want to set that limit at 600 grams of CO 2 per kWh. In practice, this would stop only unabated coal—the coal-fired power stations that did not have CCS fitted to reduce their emissions. It would still be enough to allow gas-fired stations. That is not good enough, given the Committee Chairman’s earlier remarks about adopting the Committee’s fourth carbon budget with targets of between 40 grams and 60 grams per kWh.

  The EMR set out three high-level objectives: decarbonisation of the electricity sector, energy security and affordability. I wish to focus for a moment on affordability, because it is becoming—certainly for my colleagues—one of the biggest issues that we find on the doorstep. One in every four households in the UK is now classed as fuel-poor. A fuel-poor household is defined as one where the expenditure required to maintain adequate warmth exceeds 10% of household income. It is a measure of the number of households needing to make impossible decisions on expenditure just to meet their basic human needs.

  [Source]

• 14 Sep 2011: Energy Bill [Lords]

  13:51

  It is estimated that the green deal will reach more than 40 million homes by 2020 and a further 12 million by 2030. That amounts to the retrofitting of 1.7 million homes a year—that is 4,800 a day—between 2012, when the green deal starts, and 2020. The Committee on Climate Change has estimated that, between 2012 and 2022, we would need to insulate 8.3 million lofts, 5.7 million cavity walls and more than 2 million solid walls to meet the UK’s carbon budget. The Government’s expected take-up of those measures, through the green deal and the extension of the carbon emissions reduction target, misses those requirements by 3.8 million lofts and 2.7 million cavity walls.

  Although I support the aspiration behind the green deal, it is difficult to see how it can be achieved under the proposals. Indeed, the Committee on Climate Change’s third progress report to Parliament concluded that the Government proposals should help to strengthen incentives for the take-up of energy efficiency measures. However, there is a significant risk that they will not adequately address the range of financial and non-financial barriers. I do not want to talk the measures down because Members on both sides want them to work, but it is important that we are realistic about their likelihood of success.

  Let me give an example. The annual energy bill for an average household is calculated at £1,029 a year. A good whole-house retrofit would be expected to save approximately 50% on the average energy bill—in this case, just over £500 a year. Solid wall insulation was identified by the Committee on Climate Change as the main energy efficiency measure that could usefully be financed by the green deal, but according to DECC’s own analysis, the capital cost of solid wall insulation ranges between £7,600 and £12,600. Let us take the cost of £12,600 and the maximum saving of £500 a year; in fact, DECC’s analysis estimates that solid wall insulation would save only £400 a year, but I give it the extra £100. Through the green deal, if we pay back £500 a year, through the savings on the energy bill for that average house, against the £12,600 loan over 25 years, we still do not pay back the full amount. That deal fails the golden rule.

  An energy company obligation is being introduced to subsidise the difference, reducing up-front costs to the point that they are less than the energy savings. The Committee on Climate Change estimates that up to £17 billion of support will be required through the ECO to insulate 2.3 million solid walls by 2022, but the Government estimate that the total ECO support will be only £1 billion. The fact that the golden rule cannot be met even before the cost of finance is factored in is a matter of huge concern.

  [Source]

  The shadow Minister is absolutely right that there has yet to be clarity on the issue, and clarity is vital. If we are to meet the targets that the Committee on Climate Change has set and the budgets, we must know that sufficient funds are available for the ECO to meet those targets. At present, my analysis and other analyses are quite clear that up to £22 billion is required, although an absolute cap of £1 billion might be provided under the ECO. As my hon. Friend suggests, that £1 billion might prove not to be a full £1 billion after all.

  On new clause 9, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has estimated that the green deal will lead to employment in the sector increasing from 27,000 jobs currently to something approaching 250,000 jobs by 2020. That involves the creation of 27,875 jobs every year from the start of the green deal until 2020. Double the number of jobs that currently exist must be created every year. We heard earlier at Prime Minister’s Question Time about the latest unemployment figures and particularly the problems of youth unemployment. Of course, if those jobs were created, we would all welcome them, but there must be a doubt about these provisions.

  [Source]

  14:15

  The Minister has said that in his view the green deal is market driven—that is a fundamental difference from the German scheme—so investment by commercial companies will propel the scheme forward. He is telling the House that, in a sense, it is driven principally by the profits that those companies will make. It is not driven by the imperative of increased energy efficiency, or by the need to meet the carbon budgets set by the Committee on Climate Change, or by the need to address fuel poverty. It is driven by the profit motive. I am willing to capture the drive that the market can bring, but the focus of the scheme, as set out by the Minister, is fundamentally wrong.

  [Source]

• 8 Sep 2011: Flood and Water Management

  15:25

  The water sector faces a period of huge challenge in coping with the implications of climate change, and in reducing its own carbon emissions. It can ill afford to be locked into a short-term investment cycle that stifles and inhibits innovation. The White Paper must set out how the Government will restructure the water industry properly to incentivise and encourage companies to invest in innovation, particularly in treatment processing, energy efficiency, leakage prevention, and water efficiency.

  [Source]

  15:40

  Water saving through greater efficiency will become increasingly important, especially in parts of the country where climate change and population growth will lead to significant constraints in supply. The Building Regulations 2010 introduced a new minimum water efficiency standard for new homes. The potential consumption of potable water by persons occupying a dwelling should not exceed 125 litres per person per day. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government have plans to increase the minimum water efficiency standard in future revisions of the Building Regulations 2010?

  [Source]

• 12 Jul 2011: Electricity Market Reform

  Four million families heading for fuel poverty does not constitute affordability; a £200 billion shortfall in infrastructure does not constitute security of supply; and a new dash for gas does not constitute low carbon. The Secretary of State knows, as the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) certainly does, that vertical integration in the big six is the biggest single problem. Why did the Secretary of State not address that in his statement, and when will he do so to break up the monopoly of the big six?

  [Source]

• 19 May 2011: Business of the House

  If the Government are to help to make substantial progress at the United Nations framework convention on climate change in December, they will have to get their submissions in before the summer recess. May we have a debate in Government time on the Floor of the House before the recess to discuss the UK’s contribution to Durban?

  [Source]

• 12 May 2011: Forests and Woodlands

  10:57

  Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the best ways of getting local people further involved in woodland management would be by progressing the wood fuel strategy? Responsibility for that now lies with her colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change of course. Several months ago I had a meeting with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), at which it was agreed that the programme could be doubled, but that it was important that both Departments work together on this because it is important that both demand and supply are matched up and incentivised.

  [Source]

• 10 May 2011: Energy Bill [Lords]

  While the Secretary of State is talking about the targets, will he expand on the dispute that appears to be taking place between Cabinet colleagues on whether the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change should be met or abandoned?

  [Source]

  Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Department of Energy and Climate Change has predicted that the interest rate would be 11%, which has to be factored in, particularly when dealing with the fuel-poor?

  [Source]

  18:45

  Does the hon. Gentleman believe that his party should reaffirm the statement by the Committee on Climate Change that there should be a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025?

  [Source]

  20:31

  The Bill is debated under the shadow of the report published this Monday by the independent Committee on Climate Change. The committee has been clear and it is authoritative: in order to achieve our 2050 target of at least 80% carbon reductions, we must adopt a 2025 target of at least 50% emissions reductions. That is the shadow that hangs over the debate today. The Business Secretary has clearly rejected that advice and his Liberal colleague, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, would, one hopes, wish to accept it. That is the split at the heart of the Government’s decision making on where to go with energy policy.

  [Source]

  20:38

  The hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, made the point forcefully when he talked about the changes to the solar PV scheme. The important thing is not the changes themselves. It is understandable why those changes were made. The Government did not wish to see businesses profiting from the scheme that was intended primarily to be a domestic or small-scale scheme. That is not the issue. The issue is that they changed the goalposts and destroyed the confidence that business investors had in that area. That is what the Government are doing.

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• 17 Feb 2011: Forestry (England)

  13:01

  I welcome the Secretary of State’s apology to the House for this debacle, and the spirit in which it was given. Will she explain the situation in respect of the receipts that were anticipated from the sale of up to 15% of the land? Will she also reassure the House that in considering how to proceed with the English forest estate, she will pay particular attention to the green infrastructure of land around cities and the climate change connectivity necessary to extend forests into such areas so that the effects of climate change are mitigated?

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• 10 Feb 2011: Business of the House

  12:07

  Yesterday, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, launched the Foresight project’s report on global food and farming futures. May we have a debate in Government time to consider the implications of the report and its effects on climate change, biodiversity, poverty, hunger and water shortages throughout the world?

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• 16 Dec 2010: Nuclear Power Stations

  11:16

  Achieving 16 GW of supply from nuclear, as the Secretary of State has demanded, would require one new reactor coming on stream every nine months from about 2018 onwards. The industry told the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change the other day that that simply would not happen because there was neither the investment capacity in the City to deliver it nor, indeed, the skills available to build what is required. How will he ensure the continuity of supply that he seeks?

  [Source]

• 18 Nov 2010: Climate Change Conference

  15:30

  Setting out a realistic ambition for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Cancun must begin with a clear understanding of what happened at the fifteenth session of the conference of the parties in Copenhagen in December. It also demands humility on the part of the UK and the EU. In the UK we often behave as if we are the acknowledged global leaders on climate change, and as if we believe we punch above our weight. Indeed, that has already been suggested in this debate. It may be worth reminding ourselves that the final negotiations in Denmark took place between the leaders of China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa. The meeting itself may have been in Europe but Europe was not in the meeting.

  There is no common narrative about Copenhagen. The western media proclaimed COP 15 a failure because it did not deliver a legally binding agreement. Cancun will not deliver a legally binding agreement either. The truth is somewhat more complicated. As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the USA is a critical player, but it has refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol because of the concern that it might damage US economic growth. Given the fact that Kyoto places no binding commitment to emission reductions on major developing countries such as China and India, the USA has made it clear that it is unlikely to join any post-2012 framework based on Kyoto. By contrast, developing countries are concerned that annexe 1 countries have failed to live up to the commitment that they took on at Kyoto. They want a second commitment period under the protocol, as that guarantees the important—in their view vital—principle of common but differentiated responsibility, which reflects the greater historic responsibility of the developed nations as well as their greater wealth and capacity to act.

  Another group of countries, which includes Japan, Australia, Canada and the EU, believes that it is essential to bind in the United States to any future agreement, and wants the major developing nations to take on commitments of their own. The first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol will conclude in 2012, and most parties are conscious that we must establish a post-2012 settlement that is comprehensive and preferably legally binding. Copenhagen failed to do that. So will Cancun.

  In the mean time the Copenhagen accord created a loose, open-architecture structure, which is very much a coalition of the willing. Under the accord, countries put on the table the national actions that they are prepared to take to reduce their emissions—nationally appropriate mitigation actions. They monitor their success in achieving their own targets. Interestingly, although the western press accused China of spiking an agreement at the time, that is precisely the sort of structure that China had already proposed two months before Copenhagen. It has the benefit of preserving sovereignty while maximising commitment. Obama’s insistence on international monitoring of China’s voluntary actions within the Kyoto process, when the USA had not even ratified the Kyoto protocol, was less informed diplomacy than strategic media grandstanding. The world’s press fell for it, but we should not.

  President Obama’s political capital has now been expended on a weak health care Act. The cost is his inability to get a climate change Bill through what was the most amenable Congress in decades. The mid-terms have configured a very different Congress, and we in the UK must now consider where future progress on climate change can best be pressed to advantage. One thing is clear: that place is not America.

  It is time for the UK and Europe to refocus our efforts away from the United States to form a more strategic alliance with China. Last week I participated in a Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment forum on climate change in Tianjin—I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—along with 70 legislators from countries ranging from South Africa to Brazil. Sixteen of the G20 countries were represented, including the US. It is clear to me that a radical programme for climate change would mean the EU joining forces with China, ultimately to create common standards in products, and a joint carbon market establishing an international price for carbon around the globe. That would be a game changer. More than that: it could be a game changer that market makers in the US would suddenly find extremely threatening. America can resist any opposition to its policies. What it cannot take is being sidelined or ignored. Let us imagine that the biggest pressure on President Obama to sort out climate change came not from the liberal left or even from some “blue dog” Democrats in the Senate, but from American industry and Wall Street itself. What if Wall Street were saying to Obama: “Climate change? It’s all about the economy, stupid!”

  As we approach Cancun we need to be clear about why the accord is not sufficient and what is required to take the negotiations on a trajectory that may be able to deliver a legally binding agreement. The total emissions reductions pledged so far under the accord by the US, Japan, Europe and the major developing economies fail to match the scientific calculations on targets for stopping dangerous climate change: the accord agreed on a rise of no more than 2º C. The accord makes no enforceable provision for funding of capacity building in developing countries. It creates no binding obligation on developed countries to finance adaptation, or to effect technology transfer. It creates no structure to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation. I will try to deal with each of those aspects of the matter.

  First, as to emissions reductions, currently almost 50% of global emissions come from the developed world, which represents just 20% of the global population. The World Resources Institute estimates that the developed country commitments at Copenhagen would reduce those countries’ emissions by no more than between 13% and 19% below 1990 levels. The IPCC has called for between 25% and 40% reductions. Therefore, the commitments from the developed world fall well below the minimum that the IPCC believes is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change of more than 2° C. Among the major countries, the USA has offered to reduce its emissions by 17% by 2020, but only below 2005 levels, which equates to a reduction of just 3% below 1990 levels.

  How can we break that stalemate? The proposed wording mentioning the Copenhagen accord’s figure of $100 billion has made it into the negotiating text for Cancun, albeit as one of hundreds of phrases and options that are currently in brackets. Some parties have suggested referring to the $100 billion that is otherwise mentioned only in the Copenhagen accord, but not all parties have yet agreed to do so. Potentially, a critical bulldozer to remove the roadblocks is the high-level advisory group on climate change financing, which has already been mentioned, which was created by the UN Secretary-General after Copenhagen. Heads of state and Ministers have been studying sources of revenue for the promised $100 billion a year by 2020. That group has completed a report that will be released just before the negotiations in Cancun, and the sight of money on the table might be what is needed to restore the lost trust between the parties.

  [Source]

  15:42

  Based on those discussions over the past two years with more than 100 legislators in different countries, we believe that certain elements could be part of a politically acceptable deal: first, agreement on the overall level of ambition that has already been stated in the Copenhagen Accord to hold the increase in global temperatures below 2 o C; secondly, a decision under the Kyoto track that commits annexe I Kyoto parties—the developed countries—to a second commitment period, 2013-17, and involves quantified, economy-wide emissions reductions targets and the associated commitments of finance and technology, subject to addressing satisfactorily the issues of hot air and the rules for accounting for forestry emissions; and, thirdly, either a new parallel treaty under the convention track or a set of COP decisions under the convention track that place comparable commitments on the US without its having to join the Kyoto protocol. Such commitments could include an economy-wide emissions reduction target and a commitment to provide financial and technological assistance to developing countries, and formalising the actions of the major developing countries—for example, on carbon or energy intensity targets, renewables targets, efficiency targets, sustainable forestry targets and other central policies—with a commitment to increased transparency through national communications under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We believe that that could be achieved through the recognition of national legislation and the role of Parliaments in monitoring, reporting and verification.

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• 16 Sep 2010: Tianjin Conference

  8. What representations he plans to make at the October 2010 Tianjin climate change conference for amendment of the UN proposals governing emissions from land use, land use change and forestry to ensure that the managed forest emissions of developed countries are properly accounted for.

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• 16 Sep 2010: Biodiversity

  14:48

  I, too, am pleased to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. Last year, the UN climate change convention met in Copenhagen. It attracted the most incredible media frenzy, and something of a political frenzy as well, as Prime Ministers, Ministers and politicians from all over the globe made sure that they had a suitable photo opportunity.

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  15:00

  In October 2010, I will chair the GLOBE legislators session at the United Nations convention on biodiversity in Nagoya—the conference of the parties. One hundred legislators will press to have natural capital incorporated into national accounts. They will establish legislators’ role as that of providing a vital monitor and audit function, overseeing their respective Executives. Many scientists regard success at the Nagoya convention as even more important than success at the convention on climate change. After all, what would a change in climate matter if species could keep pace with the rate of change? The fact that they cannot, and the demise of the ecosystem services that are lost with them, is the greatest threat to human well-being on this planet.

  [Source]

  Given what the Minister has just said, he will perhaps reflect on the fact that, in the horn of Africa, we have seen what are often referred to as the first climate change wars. The desertification that has gone on there has seen the collapse of civil society and spawned the lawlessness that has given rise to piracy on the high seas around the horn of Africa. From that perspective, we see countries such as our own and the US, and international shipping generally, spending millions of pounds in that region on insuring ships and providing navies to escort and safeguard ships in that region. Yet we spend nothing, relatively, on sorting out the ecological and environmental problem of the desertification that has caused that piracy in the first place. Does he not agree that that is the case?

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• 15 Jul 2010: Topical Questions

  What discussions has the Secretary of State had with his counterpart at the Department of Energy and Climate Change on who would trump whom when we fail to meet our renewables target over the reintroduction of fast-track planning?

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• 1 Jul 2010: Global Poverty

  I welcome the Secretary of State to his new position, and I know that he understands the close relationship between development and the environment. Will he add to the list of the issues that he has just mentioned the importance of ensuring that environmental issues are taken into account as part of the development process? Will he also commit to ensuring that, on the climate change promise that the previous Government made, there will be no more than a 10% overlap between environmental projects to combat climate change and development aid—that his Government, too, are willing to continue with that commitment?

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• 30 Jun 2010: Energy Efficiency

  “environment plans as a real step in the right direction in the task of arresting climate change and reducing the UK’s carbon emissions.

  The Mark Group agrees with Gordon Brown’s assertion that the UK can take a global lead in tackling climate change and in doing so generating thousands of jobs.”

  The second point is that it makes no sense to ask householders to improve the energy efficiency of their homes at the same time as increasing the cost of doing so by 2.5%. I challenge the Secretary of State to show that deep inside his new Teflon Tory exterior there is still a limp Liberal longing to get out—to show us that the Liberal pledge before the election not to raise VAT was more than just the point scoring that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has claimed it was. I ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to speak to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The latter is another Liberal, and is, I think, the Member with the longest constituency name—Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. After yesterday’s oration to the House, he is also the Member with the shortest political credibility. They should agree to reduce VAT on the materials and labour used for increasing the energy efficiency of domestic properties. That would make a real difference. If the VAT on such work was 5% instead of 20%, that would go a tremendous way towards incentivising householders and other property owners to make sure that they do the necessary work.

  If the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change will not do that, rolling out smart meters in every home; piloting pay-as-you-save and ways to make homes greener; introducing clean energy cashback schemes; and making the UK a centre of green industry—all that—is just so much recycling of the stated policy of the last Government, as set out in the “The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan”, published in July last year. The truth is that approximately 90% of what Ministers have announced in their green deal comes from that document. No wonder earlier this month the Department issued a YouTube video entitled “Chris Huhne launches Wind Week”.

  Today, the Committee on Climate Change released its second annual report on progress towards a low-carbon economy. The committee makes it clear that we can deliver on our commitment to reduce emissions by at least 34% by 2020, but only if we accelerate our roll-out of renewables and effect a step change in domestic energy efficiency. So let me welcome the Secretary of State’s remarks today, in which he said:

  [Source]

  If we are to make real progress on energy efficiency, public transport must become a priority for the new Government, which currently it is not. To put it simply, public transport must be the easiest, most accessible, most affordable and most reliable service available to the public. I was disappointed that the Minister said not one word about public transport as an instrument for delivering energy efficiency. Transport represents a fifth of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions; it did not represent so much as one fiftieth of his speech.

  However, I welcome the new Government’s proposal to introduce a minimum price for carbon. The second progress report from the independent Committee on Climate Change, which was published today, states:

  I hope the new Government will live up to their undoubted enthusiasm and undoubted good intentions on energy efficiency and climate change, but I warn them that we on the Opposition Benches will hold them to account where they backslide, and for the areas in which they fail to make the progress that we all need.

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• 30 Jun 2010: Speaker’s Statement

  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. At 11.24 this morning I went to the Vote Office to ask for a copy of the second report by the independent Committee on Climate Change, on energy. I thought that appropriate, as this afternoon’s debate is about energy efficiency. Unfortunately, the Vote Office informed me that the report had not yet been made available to it, and that this followed a pattern from last year. Can we ensure that in future the reports from the independent Committee on Climate Change are made available to the Vote Office promptly?

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• 24 Jun 2010: Business of the House

  When will the Leader of the House announce measures to make good his party’s excellent manifesto commitment based on the Illegally Logged Timber (Prohibition of Sale and Distribution) Bill, which I presented as a ten-minute Bill? The party made that commitment in opposition. Will he also tell us whether the rumour that responsibility for it has been passed from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to the Department of Energy and Climate Change is correct?

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• 22 Jun 2010: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  I am happy to give an answer to the hon. Gentleman. We introduced the first legislation on climate change anywhere in the world. We put in place carbon budgets and feed-in tariffs. We ensured that we set a reduction target for 2050 of not just 50% but at least 80%, with interim budgets that can be examined every year, so that Parliament can hold the Government to account. The Labour Government achieved substantial things on the environment, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we did not do enough. I often spoke from the Government Benches to ask my own Ministers to go further. In addition, the system of renewables obligation certificates is a good deal more generous in Scotland than in England. However, does the Budget address the environment? Not one whit; we heard only a mention of an investigation into duty for planes rather than passengers.

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• 2 Feb 2010: Topical Questions

  T2. Is my right hon. Friend aware that more than a year ago, the European Council took a decision to raise funds for carbon capture and storage projects by exceptionally permitting the Commission to auction new entrants reserve allowances for the emissions trading scheme—a decision that has resulted in a proposal to comitology today. Will the Chancellor confirm whether the UK Treasury has dropped its demand that it, rather than the Commission, control the auction of the UK share of these allowances, and that the entire CCS strategy of the Commission will now be able to proceed unhindered?

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• 5 Jan 2010: Treasury Accounting (Natural Capital)

  Recognising that many of those services are predominantly public goods, however, presents a considerable problem for Government accounting and effective policy making. Classical economics treats such benefits and ecosystem services as externalities—free goods with no market price. Given that they have no market price, their destruction does not show up as a cost in the balance of costs and benefits. As a result, natural ecosystems become depleted and the services that they provide become degraded, and human society suffers the consequences of that loss of natural capital. We lose clean air and suffer asthma. The fish in our seas disappear and we lose a vital source of food. We destroy our forests and suffer climate change; we build a cement factory and lose a beautiful view.

  Finally, on greenhouse gas emissions, it records:

  “Current methodologies for assessment of the effects of policies and measures on greenhouse gas emissions are policy specific with no standard guidance available…In cases where quantification of the climate change effect is impractical, an assessment of whether the policy is likely to increase or decrease emissions, combined with a qualitative assessment of the significance of this change, should be included in the appraisal.”

  Only last month, in Copenhagen, the world spectacularly failed to agree a pathway to reduce emission levels to 450 ppm by 2050. The current saturation level stands at 370 ppm. Coral is doubly vulnerable to climate change because it cannot survive where CO 2 concentrations make the pH balance of the sea water too acidic and it dies if the water becomes too warm.

  I ask my hon. Friend specifically to task her officials to use tropical coral reefs as an appropriate study to refine their methods of ecosystem valuation. We have a superb opportunity to do that in relation to the current Foreign Office consultation on the future of the British Indian Ocean Territory. The Chagos archipelago in the Indian ocean comprises 55 tiny islands set in 250,000 square miles of what are some of the world’s cleanest seas. It is one of the largest and healthiest coral atolls on the planet. The Foreign Office is consulting on whether that pristine coral reef should be established as a full, no-take marine protection area for the whole of the territorial waters. It is officially an environmental preservation and protection zone, and a fisheries conservation and management zone, and evidence suggests that if that action were to be taken, the British Indian Ocean Territory might be one of the coral reefs to hold out the longest against climate change, and could act as a potential seed bank for the reintroduction of coral to areas where the indigenous tropical reefs had been degraded and bleached. That could enable coral reefs to be re-established, once anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were brought down to more manageable levels.

  This year, 2010, is the international year of biodiversity. In Nagoya this year, the parties to the United Nations convention on biological diversity will meet. It is often seen as a poor relation to the United Nations framework convention on climate change, the parties to which have just met in Copenhagen. It is my belief that the CBD is every bit as important as its more glamorous sibling.

  A change in climate on its own would not matter were it not for the fact that species and ecosystems will not be able to keep pace with the rate of climate change. It is the inability of species to adapt and maintain biodiversity that will cause the ecosystem services upon which human life depends to break down.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate