COP 27: Commitments

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, it is an enormous pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Leong, and to congratulate him on what I think everyone will agree was an outstanding maiden speech. The noble Lord is very modest in his summary of his own career. He has been a hugely successful and entrepreneurial businessperson and has had great and creative success in many organisations, but what came over loud and clear from his speech is his commitment to making a difference. That thread has gone through all his achievements, not just in publishing and business but in all areas of his work within the Commonwealth and beyond. He has made a commitment nationally—in this country, of which he has become such a loyal citizen—and internationally.

He has had great achievements, and he will understand that I was particularly delighted to hear of his passion for making progress on climate change. No one in this Chamber begrudges the emissions caused by his mother’s flight to be here. I am sure that the quality of his contribution today makes us all certain that he will more than offset those emissions in his future contributions to the House. I first heard of the noble Lord because he was vice-chairman of Future First, an organisation which my own son was involved in setting up. At the time, I asked my son about his vice-chairman, and he said, “He’s one of the good guys”. I think that is an assessment we would all make after having heard him speak today.

I declare my interest as co-chair of Peers for the Planet. I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for the way he introduced this debate and his success in securing it in such a timely slot. I thank him, too, for what he said about that organisation.

I think all three of the speakers before me used the word “hope”. I am always interested in the distinction people make between optimism and hope—optimism being a fairly passive belief that things will be all right or turn out okay; hope being much less certain about whether things will turn out well, but believing that if things are done properly, they can turn out well. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, mentioned earlier, we heard Alok Sharma’s view of COP 27:

“Emissions peaking before 2025 … Not in this text. Clear follow-through on the phase down of coal. Not in this text. A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels. Not in this text. And the energy text, weakened, in the final minutes. Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 degrees was weak. Unfortunately, it remains on life support.”


That is not an optimistic view of COP 27.

However, there is reason to have hope. The Prime Minister went to COP 27, which was important in terms of UK leadership—an issue that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, spoke about and that I will come back to later. The Prime Minister said—I think this is very important for those of us in this House—that in playing our part,

“Keeping the 1.5 degrees commitment alive is vital to the future of our planet … More must be done.”


He went on to say:

“It is not the work of any one Department or any one Minister; if we are going to make this commitment work, we are all going to have to play our part.”—[Official Report, 9/11/22; col. 263.]


That is absolutely right.

We made important commitments at COP 26, and we made a historic breakthrough at COP 27 in agreeing to set up a fund to assist vulnerable nations hit by climate disasters. But much more difficult will be delivering on commitments and getting agreement on how the world can come together to fund this and, crucially, how we can resurrect global ambitions for reducing the emissions that cause the damage in the first place.

The other thing that discussions at Sharm el-Sheikh brought into sharp focus was that while the destination we are all aiming for may be the same, the challenges we face as individual countries in responding to the climate crisis are not. In the UK, legislators focus on the potential of a green economy, the opportunities for better health, air quality and jobs, and all sorts of opportunities for our entrepreneurs and innovators in the new industries that the noble Lord, Lord Leong, spoke about. But for legislators in other countries, their focus is on survival, and on managing the devastating impacts of climate change they are facing immediately. Every country will have its own unique climate challenges and will have to plot its own pathways out of the crisis.

There is much we can do nationally, but there are many issues where we do not have that pipeline or attention in every department in every way. The Minister will not be surprised that I raise the issue of onshore wind with him; it is a perennial favourite, and one I would be very happy to ditch by getting a good result on it. In this country, if we cannot even agree that we should have a normal planning process for onshore wind development and the replacement of existing onshore wind, I will lose the will to live on how we will achieve all the much bigger things that we need to do. It is one example, but there are many others. The Procurement Bill, which reaches Report in your Lordships’ House next week, still has no reference to climate change, despite the enormous potential in it for both good and bad in terms of climate. So there is much that we can do to put our own house in order.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, talked about our contribution as a country and whether other countries looked to our example. He is absolutely right that we will not be judged by the quantity of the emissions that we reduce as a country compared to everywhere else in the world; we will be judged by the quality of the leadership we give and the innovation we nurture and showcase, which can be used in other countries. I believe that we will not have the credibility to do that unless we put our own house in order. That is why the ongoing work of achieving our own goals and creating the green economic future that we talk about are so important, and why I feel hopeful—if not optimistic—that we can build on what came out of COP 27.