Baroness Laing of Elderslie
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COP26
Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected the amendment in the name of Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2021, for expenditure by the Cabinet Office:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £975,392,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1227,
(2) further resources, not exceeding £76,060,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(3) a further sum, not exceeding £798,643,000, be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(David T. C. Davies.)
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
May I begin by congratulating you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your increasingly iconic videos on Twitter, which, with a lower budget, provide more charm than the Chancellor’s glitzy versions on Instagram?
Five years ago, the Paris agreement committed the world to limiting global warming to at least 2° C above pre-industrial levels but called on all of us to get as close to 1.5° C as possible. The recent announcements on net zero from the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, China and others mean that we are within striking distance of reaching that Paris target. According to the Climate Action Tracker, the net zero targets that have been pledged so far could limit global warming to 2.1° C above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100. That builds in the announcements from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, South Korea and others. But those welcome announcements need to be translated into updated nationally determined contributions—NDCs—that need to be submitted to the UN before COP26 and, crucially, into deliverable climate action plans.
Unfortunately, the UN’s NDC synthesis report last month raised concerns instead of hopes. As at 31 December, only 75 parties to the Paris agreement had submitted their NDCs, representing 30% of global emissions. Whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends that we cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels in order to limit temperature growth to 1.5° C, the NDCs submitted so far only get us to 1% of that 45% recommendation. Only two of the 18 largest emitters had submitted updated NDCs at the end of 2020, including the United Kingdom and the European Union. Of the NDCs that have been submitted, the UN notes a significant gap between longer-term carbon neutrality target announcements and commitments set out in the NDCs.
The crucial and urgent task for COP26 is therefore to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality and to bring every nation with us on the route to achieving our Paris targets. This highlights the urgent need for a full Government response, especially a diplomatic response. China, for example, has committed to achieving net zero by 2060—an important and welcome commitment—but its recent five-year plan pushed the difficult and expensive decisions into the long grass. We should not get to COP26 and just tell big emitters such as China, India or others that they are not moving away from coal quickly enough, for example, not least when we are planning our own new coalmine here in the UK. Instead, we should have British diplomats in Beijing, Delhi and other capitals asking, “What can the world do to help you move away from coal more quickly?”
Here in the United Kingdom, we have legislated for net zero by 2050. The trouble is that, increasingly, we seem to be going off track at home. Yes, we were world leaders in legislating for net zero by 2050, and we have submitted a bold and welcome NDC, but the Public Accounts Committee last week concluded that there is no credible Government plan for how we deliver on those pledges. Yes, we have the energy White Paper, but where is the net zero spending review or the net zero strategy? In the new plan for growth, which replaced the scrapped industrial strategy last week via a footnote in the Budget, the horizon scan of Government announcements on our net zero transition did not even include the net zero spending review. The Government, we understand, are planning to reduce air passenger duty on short flights within the United Kingdom. They have U-turned on the vital green homes grant initiative, withdrawing a billion pounds of funding. The Budget last week made little mention of the so-called green industrial revolution.
On heating, which we are considering on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, we have enormous challenges ahead of us. It is the second largest emitter of carbon in the UK after surface transport, yet we have not made sufficient progress in understanding how we insulate people’s homes and also heat them without burning gas in the future. As the citizens’ assembly on climate change concluded, as led by my Select Committee and five others in the House, the public expect us to be making sufficient progress and taking the difficult decisions to reach our net zero target.
The fact is—I believe we all know this—the longer we leave this, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. I do not know how long I will be in this House, but as a Member who is, dare I say, on the younger side of the bell curve, I will be quite frankly furious if Ministers around the world, let alone in my own country, delegate the difficult work to the next generation, not least because it will be too late. It is therefore vital that we make progress at home and abroad and that we get on with that important work now. That means we need more than just a letter from the Foreign Secretary and the permanent secretary asking diplomatic missions to prioritise this work. It needs dedicated climate diplomats working within each country—diplomats who can listen and report back on the concerns or obstacles faced by leaders in reaching their required contributions to limiting global temperature growth.
Only by doing that work well in advance of COP26 in November can we anticipate and respond adequately to the needs of each nation. If we fail to do so, and countries come to Glasgow in November with real concerns—whether on climate aid, the balance between wealthy and less wealthy nations or the commitments from big emitters—we risk repeating the mistakes of the Copenhagen summit, with unresolved tensions being managed during COP itself and ultimately ending in failure.
In our recent interim report on COP26 and net zero, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee expressed concerns about the lack of focus on the necessity of submitting these updated nationally determined contributions and climate action plans, and also on the potential lack of support from the machinery of government in delivering on COP26.
The CEO of the COP26 unit, Peter Hill, confirmed that there are around 160 staff within the COP26 unit, which sits in the Cabinet Office. This unit is funded to the tune of £216 million through departmental transfers from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Transport and others, and that is in addition to the £180 million allocated for security, representing the fact that the COP26 conference in Glasgow will be one of the largest police operations in British history. I am sure there must be more dedicated resources, especially in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for this important work, and I hope that the COP26 President will set that out for the House today.
Lastly, we need urgent clarity on how COP26 itself will work in practice. I support the COP26 President’s aim of having an in-person summit and agree that that is the best way of illustrating equality between all nations around the decision-making table, but COP26 is not just for Heads of State and Ministers and officials. Some countries bring very large delegations; others bring smaller delegations. Can the COP26 President update the House on what the UK delegation will be and who will be included in it? There is also a great deal of wider engagement at COP, from business leaders and parliamentarians to civil society and non-governmental organisations. That usually means a large conference-style event. Indeed, the Government have said that COP26 will be the largest summit the UK has ever hosted, with 30,000 delegates, but that statement was, I think, made before covid.
I have raised the issue in COP26 questions, but it is now urgent to get clarity for delegations and the wider group of COP26 attendees about how online engagement will work if they are unable to attend in person, and how it will be determined whether delegates or other visitors are able to attend in person. The COP26 President may wish to update the House today on how the Government intend to provide, if necessary, covid vaccinations, testing and quarantine services for those physically participating in Glasgow. Indeed, concerns have been expressed by many, including me, that many nations, especially developing nations, are further behind in the roll-out of their own covid vaccinations. What steps can either the UK or UNFCCC take to ensure that the delegates are vaccinated and able to take part physically during COP in Glasgow in November?
There is cross-party support for Britain’s leadership of COP26, because it is a crucial milestone. The world needs to step up. It needs to set up credible, costed and deliverable climate action plans that get us to the targets we all agreed in Paris five years ago. Those often difficult decisions cannot be pushed into the long grass and left for future generations of leaders to deal with. If that happens, it will be not just a failure of politics, but a failure of humanity, because our planet will be unrecognisable compared with today if we fail in this task.
Climate migration following huge swathes of land around the equator turning into desert will pose a challenge to countries in the northern hemisphere and other parts of the world like never before. Difficult issues, such as the future management of Antarctica, will become live issues as potentially habitable land becomes available, while other habitable land is lost. Shortages of food, water and energy in the face of dramatic geopolitical changes and new national security threats will make covid look like a minor problem. In that context, and with that sense of urgency, while I welcome the commitment to net zero that will get us near the Paris target, we have to see deliverable climate action plans lodged at COP26, with countries’ leaders taking the difficult decisions and bringing forward investment—including climate aid from wealthy nations—to show the world that we take this issue seriously not just in rhetoric but in reality.
We want the COP26 President and his team to be successful in delivering the required outcomes. All of us in this House, I am sure, support him in those endeavours, but we also want to be assured that the Prime Minister and his Government are fully getting behind the COP team so that, come November, we will be celebrating the success of COP26, not mourning its failure in the face of climate disaster.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for opening the debate and for his extremely unexpected but very kind remarks.
It will come as a great surprise to everyone that I am about to announce a time limit that has not been heard of for some time. The time limit in this debate will not be three minutes. It will initially be eight minutes. I should explain this unusual situation: the reason is that so many colleagues, at the last minute, withdrew not from this debate but from the previous debate, thereby leaving more time for this debate. We will therefore start with eight minutes, which is likely to reduce to about seven minutes, but I do not envisage its reducing to three minutes. I call Tom Tugendhat.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab) [V]
I echo the words of the last speaker, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), about how monumental the decisions will be that need to be taken this November, because November’s COP26 in Glasgow is a historic opportunity for Britain to provide leadership to the world on climate change.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and his colleagues on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, who have produced detailed reports that should be influencing the Cabinet Office and shaping the agenda in the run-up to COP26. Scientists and climate experts are urging the Government to lead the way in adopting ambitious deadlines for achieving net zero along with shorter-term interim targets, and it is those targets that are vital. The former Prime Minister committed the UK Government to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The BEIS Committee said last week that
“no details have yet been provided on how success will be measured”
for COP 26. We cannot achieve significant carbon reductions by empty words, good PR or grandiose declarations. It takes action.
I have to say, last week’s Budget does not give us much hope of demonstrating world leadership. In fact, for some of us, it is a cause of despair and shame. The decisions by the Government to freeze fuel duty and to dig a new coalmine, and the pathetic scale of the Government’s environmental policies are a dereliction of duty to the planet and to future generations. It is a failure of Government, who could have acted to create hundreds of thousands of climate jobs in areas from wind turbines to tidal lagoons, from electric car charge points to tree planting, but there was no evidence of the scale of investment and scale of ambition that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West called for. Instead of tying corporate tax breaks and investment write-offs to clear climate criteria, the giveaways announced in the Budget could hinder, rather than help our carbon reduction strategy.
The verdict of Richard Black from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit was that this was
“a Budget that didn’t even try to get the Conservatives on track to their net zero target”.
Today, there are reports that the Government will cut air passenger duty on domestic flights. Frankly, I would struggle to find a more regressive policy, and I speak as somebody who represents a constituency with Heathrow in it. I would struggle to find something that is more regressive than encouraging domestic aviation before we have had that debate and discussion and the development of the environmental aviation strategy.
It is crystal clear to me that this Government have no co-ordinated plan and no cross-departmental agenda to drive the decarbonisation that we seek. This is not just my view, but that of the Public Accounts Committee, which has been quoted. The PAC published a report on achieving net zero with the brutal conclusion, “Government lacks a plan”. Never have four words better summed up an Administration than that.
In terms of the modest 2050 target, the Committee said, damningly:
“there is little sign that it”—
the Government—
“understands how to get there”.
I will raise just one other point from the report, which said:
“Local authorities will also play a major role in the move to net zero, and Government will need to engage more with local authorities about how they can contribute”.
The irony is that today we learned that across the country more than two dozen councils are on the brink of bankruptcy, stripped of the funding to provide the statutory services their communities need, let alone the funding they need to take on the challenge of climate change.
The autumn statement is expected to be delivered on the eve of COP26. I just say to the Government that we hope for something better then. Otherwise, unless a serious plan is brought forward and unless there are significant resources attached to that plan, what leadership can the UK Government hope to offer the rest of the world? What authority can it possibly have in those vital discussions, when we are trying to bring together others, some more recalcitrant than others, who will be brought to the table to have a serious discussion only when they see others leading by example?
I believe that without drastic action COP26 risks exposing the UK Government as a laughing stock on climate change if we are not careful. I urge Ministers to change course and show some leadership. I urge them now to look at the reports our Select Committees have produced. They provide not just an agenda of issues to be addressed, but a direction that the Government could take. Otherwise, it is a betrayal of future generations. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West claimed the future for himself. Well, some of us older ones have an interest in the future as well, with our children and grandchildren. This November will ensure, hopefully, that they will have a planet that they can survive on and flourish on.
From the evidence I have seen so far—it is not just me; I think it is independent experts as well—the leadership the Government are showing is nowhere near the scale or commitment we need to demonstrate to the rest of the world what can be done, what needs to be done and what our country can contribute.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The time limit is now reduced, but it is only reduced to seven minutes.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your generosity in this debate.
Although it may have been a little hard to determine from the remarks by my immediate predecessor in this debate, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), he welcomed this debate and I join him in doing so. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on his opening remarks. He is right that there is a consensus across the House. We all want to see COP26 as a hugely successful conference, not just for the UK but for the whole world, to set us on a path to zero emissions by 2050, an ambition that was set out some time ago.
The objectives for the COP26 series of discussions, which of course were due to have taken place last year had it not been for covid, were actually set at Paris five years ago. It is worth reminding ourselves, at the outset of my remarks, of the four particular commitments that were set for the forthcoming conference. The first was to enhance Governments’ nationally determined contributions. This will be the first time since Paris that they will have been ratcheted up. The second was to invite each country to provide a long-term strategy, to give a pathway to decarbonisation by 2050. Where I agree with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is that it is beholden on the Government to set out clarity over the path to 2050, not just the target.
The third commitment was to do with finance. There was $100 billion per annum mobilised for the poorest countries to help them green their economies and adapt to the impact of climate change. We need to see how that is going to be delivered when we get to Glasgow.
Finally, there was the issue of the rulebook for a global carbon market to avoid double counting and to set the standards. Here, I think the UK has a great opportunity to show its famed global leadership. This conference will be the largest ever held in this country in terms of the number of countries participating, and I hope that most of them will be able to be here, in one form or another, in person. It is a real opportunity for the nation to lead the world and for the Prime Minister to put his stamp on the future.
As the UK is acting as host country—with Italy, as has been said—we will act as a neutral arbiter in these negotiations. We need to ensure that every country—every Paris signatory, at least—is supported in bringing forward its updated nationally determined contribution. At the beginning of the Paris conference, 186 of the 196 parties attending had presented their nationally determined contributions. I know that progress has been made, but we have a long way to go to match France’s performance when it hosted the last of this series of conferences.
The UK announced its contribution, a 68% reduction in emissions against the 1990 benchmark, last December. Several other countries have set out high-profile ambitions since, including China, Japan and South Korea looking to get to net zero by the mid-21st century, and some presenting nearer-term targets ahead of COP26. However, we still have to see progress from some major economies, including Russia, Brazil and Australia—and I know that the US will now be joining; we need to see where it gets to, too. Perhaps the COP26 President will update us on his discussions with President Biden’s special envoy, John Kerry, who was in the UK very recently.
I want to touch on two other aspects—first, how does Parliament engage in scrutinising progress? The Environmental Audit Committee—in common with other Committees, as we have heard—has undertaken various sessions in relation to COP26. The first was a year ago, when we engaged with stakeholders who were involved with previous COPs to establish what the Government’s preparations needed to focus on. We then had a session with Nigel Topping and Fiona Reynolds in May last year on the role of finance in leading the way for the upcoming COP, and we also questioned Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the UN convention, last year. We questioned my right hon. Friend the COP26 President, who was then President-designate, in September last year.
Nine Select Committees have locus in relation to this issue, and we have all agreed to work together in scrutinising the UK Government preparations. We, as the Environmental Audit Committee, will lead the first of those scrutiny sessions, on cross-Government arrangements and the machinery of government, tomorrow morning. I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the COP26 President will be attending, with two of his senior officials.
The eyes of the world will be on us to make a credible success of COP. The challenge is across many areas. We need to use the national events that we have to demonstrate UK leadership. The UK has met the first and second carbon budgets and has already reduced emissions below the level expected in the third carbon budget, up to 2022. However, as is widely acknowledged, we are not on track to meet either the fourth or fifth carbon budgets, which were legislated for on the basis of an 80% cut in emissions using the 1990 baseline by 2050, rather than the more ambitious net zero target that we now have in legislation.
A major ramp-up is needed, as is acknowledged by the Committee on Climate Change, to achieve that, and the UK will have to make more progress. Although it has been succeeding in the power sector, emissions are either not falling or not falling fast enough across transport, agriculture, housing and industry. Bringing forward the petrol and diesel car ban is welcome, but it is not the only measure that the Government have to take—[Inaudible.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The right hon. Gentleman has exceeded the time limit. I was trying to give him a little leeway, but the system will not allow me to let him finish his sentence. We therefore go to Kilmarnock, and to Alan Brown.