Climate Change Assembly UK: The Path to Net Zero

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I am a member of the Treasury Committee, one of the commissioning Select Committees for this report. I also speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment and, indeed, as a member of the Environment Bill Committee, which has today finished legislating on many of the measures that were included in this great report.

I see stopping environmental destruction as the defining mission of our generation. For those who have not yet seen the film “A Life on Our Planet” by David Attenborough, I highly recommend it. It shows what has changed on our planet throughout the lifetime of that remarkable individual, including the destruction of habitats, species extinction and climate change. We have a lot of work to do. Tough action needs to be taken, but we are a democracy and we need to take the people with us. Too often, those at the more radical end of the environment movement take a coercive approach: they want to turn back the clock, stop people doing things, dismantle capitalism and tell people what they can and cannot do. The trouble with that is that it risks a backlash. If we do not take the people with us, it might give rise to the anti-environmental populists that we see in other countries.

This is why the Climate Assembly is so important, and I thoroughly welcome its report. These are members of the public considering the issues carefully and coming up with their own recommendations. It really shows just how sensible the British public are. They accept the need to tackle climate change. They know it is a real problem. They are not trying to resist it, and they support practical measures to do it, but they want to do it without sacrificing quality of life, because we do not need to. They do not want to stop going on holidays or living the lives they lead, and it is that pragmatism that is so essential.

There are 50 proposals in the report overall, and I have little disagreement with any of them. I am delighted to say, as my hon. Friends did earlier, that the Government are already implementing many of them. This could be one of the most quickly implemented reports of all time. On electric vehicles, the report recommends certain other vehicles being banned by between 2030 and 2035, and the Government have said that that will happen by 2030. I thoroughly support that. I have just been legislating on the deposit return scheme, which is also one of the report’s recommendations. I thoroughly support that, too. The report recommends more offshore wind, and the Government are committed to quadrupling it in the next 10 years to 40 GW.

The report recommends nature-based solutions such as planting more trees and increasing carbon capture in soil. Again, the Government are now fully supporting that. It talks about hydrogen solutions for heating in domestic housing, and that is part of the 10-point plan. The Government are fully supporting that with £500 million to start with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) noted, the Climate Assembly was less enthusiastic about some things, particularly carbon capture and storage, which I am rather enthusiastic about. It is a new technology, but it is being done elsewhere and it could form an important part of the mix, as most mainstream climate scientists agree.

I am glad that the Climate Assembly did not want to move the date for becoming carbon neutral forward from 2050, which is what some of the more radical environmental groups want. That 2050 date was set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN body said that it was necessary to do that to meet the Paris target of 1.5° warming. That was adopted in the UK by the Committee on Climate Change, which set out a programme of work that the Government and we as a country need to do to reach that target. Obviously we have now adopted 2050 as a legal target, and we are the first major country to do so. This shows the leadership that the UK has taken on this, and we can be thoroughly proud of that, but there is absolutely no room for complacency. The public support the strong measures we are taking. We are going to need to take a lot more strong measures in the future, but at least we know that the public are behind this. That is why I welcome the Climate Assembly, and I welcome this report.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am sure colleagues understand that there is pressure on time, so after the next speaker I will have to reduce the time limit to four minutes, so that we can get everybody in for this debate and the next one.

Alternative Fuelled Vehicles: Energy Provision

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Chair. I thank the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for securing a debate on this important issue. We are all committed to combating climate change and getting down to net zero. As chair of the all-party parliamentary environment group, I spend a lot of time pushing for that. When I was environment editor of The Observer and The Times more than a decade ago, electric cars were just a pipe dream. I drove some early models, but they are now a reality. I have long seen the internal combustion engine as a dirty, smelly and polluting Victorian technology. The sooner we see the back of it, the better.

I only have two and a half minutes, and there are eight things I think the Government should do. I will have to keep this brief. First, we should commit to 2035 rather than 2040. It is the minimum under the Committee on Climate Change recommendations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommendations for meeting net zero by 2050. Indeed, we should consider whether we can bring it even further forward. There is huge industry support for that, from a wide range of different people, and it will probably be cheaper for motorists in the long run.

Secondly, we should continue the subsidies for the schemes. They are not self-sufficient yet, and we definitely need to carry on providing the money to help people to buy them, install charging points and so on. I know the Government are doing that, but we should not turn off the taps just yet.

Thirdly, the Government should provide real clarity, certainty and absolute conviction to industry that this is the direction we are going in. For the big investment decisions from energy companies on charging points and so on, there has to be a real sense of national mission that we can all buy into.

Fourthly, we must make sure that charging is provided for all properties. Consultation is taking place about requiring charging points in new build, and that should be mandatory. Huge numbers of houses are being built in my constituency of South Cambridgeshire, and they should all have charging points, otherwise they will be outdated within a decade or so. How do people living in flats access charging points? Some 30% of homes do not have driveways. Are we saying that people in those homes should carry on driving petrol cars? Clearly not.

Fifthly, we need to get from 18,000 charging points to more than 200,000. That must be done in a way that is as consumer-friendly as possible; we must make sure that they are interoperable and put them in supermarket car parks, or in all car parks. Sixthly, we must unleash the private sector. That is happening already, but I have followed very closely the roll-out of cable, mobile and 4G. That was done by unleashing the dynamism and investment of the private sector, and we should carry on doing the same here.

Seventhly, do not make us an island that is incompatible with the rest of the world. We have different electrical sockets from everywhere else, which is an accident of history, but let us make sure that when drivers leave the UK and drive over to France, they can still use their electric cars.

Eighthly, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington said, smart charging is the way to go. I know that we are doing that but it should be key. It improves energy efficiency, reduces costs and is good for our energy resilience.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I thank all Members for their co-operation, including Anthony Browne. Over to the Front Benchers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I am happy to do so.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

My constituency of South Cambridgeshire is no less than the life sciences capital of the world. We have the global headquarters of AstraZeneca, 20,000 people working in the biomedical campus around Addenbrooke’s Hospital and dozens of industrial parks and small businesses developing new therapies, helping people to live longer and healthier. Many of those companies are dependent on research grants, some of which come from the EU. Will my hon. Friend tell me what work the Government are doing to ensure that South Cambridge remains the biomedical and life sciences capital of the world, and that companies have continuity of funding once we leave the EU?

[Chris Skidmore]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his place. He represents an area that is the life sciences crucible of Europe and, as science Minister, I am determined to ensure that that continues. I will meet the vice-chancellor, Stephen Toope, shortly to talk about Cambridge’s own plans for investment for the future.

On European investment, I want to make it perfectly clear to the House that when it comes to Horizon 2020, including European Research Council grants and Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, the withdrawal agreement ensures that we can continue within that framework. When it comes to looking at Horizon Europe, its successor scheme, we want to explore an association that is as full as possible. We may be leaving the EU, but we will not be leaving our European research partnerships.