Climate Change Act

Debate between Lord Barker of Battle and David T C Davies

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies]

I appreciate that. I am picking on the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) because she intervened last. Perhaps somebody, somewhere—maybe the Minister—will be able to tell me why there has been no warming since 1997.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

I do not want to enter into a ping-pong match, so I will try to hold myself in until the end. I have brought a helpful graphic with me, which I will pass to my hon. Friend. The graphic might answer some of his questions so that we can have some cool analysis in this debate.

[David T. C. Davies]

I also have a typical graph, and very worrying it is, too, because we see that over the past 150 years there has been a huge spike in temperatures, which would be enough to worry anyone—it got me going in 2008. The problem with it is that it does not take into account the fact that if one goes back 1,000 years, 2,000 years or 1 million years, one will see large increases and decreases in temperature and in the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

I was thinking the other day that we would need a graph going back at least 1 million years to get any idea of what is really going on. If we had one—1 million years is still only a fraction of the earth’s 4.5 billion-year history—we would see that most of the time, ice covered the northern part of the earth. We have been in an ice age for roughly 90,000 out of every 100,000 years. For 10,000 years, it would warm up, and then it would go back to being cold. We seem at the moment to be coming to the end of 10,000 or so years of relative warmth. It is an ice age that we should be worried about.

If we want to make policy based on graphs like this, we need to look at what is really going on. We need to go back 1 million years, and based on the scale of the graph that I have, we would need a graph 10 km long to get an idea. I did a 10 km race for charity on Sunday in Cardiff. It took me 42 minutes, which—I am not trying to brag—I am told is not bad for a 42-year-old. What has happened is as though I had run for every one of those 42 minutes past a graph showing peaks and troughs in temperature, and then looked at the last 3 cm and decided, based on that, to embark on a Government policy that would cost my country billions of pounds and thousands of jobs. That is absolute madness.

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[David T. C. Davies]

I am not going to answer an intervention made from a sedentary position, but I have made my point. It is absolutely disgraceful that Government-funded bodies have tried to withhold evidence from people who want to examine it independently. I have tabled written questions to the Met Office while this Minister has been in office. I have had to table and re-table them, because I have asked for graphs showing what the temperature increases will be, and the Met Office has hidden them as well as it can on its website, because it does not want to make it plain that there has been no increase in temperature since 1997.

Maybe the Met Office should start explaining why its predictions are so wrong and why there has been no increase, despite the enormous amount of CO₂ produced since then. Maybe it should tell us how much of the increase that has taken place resulted from natural warming as a consequence of leaving the little ice age.

[Gregory Barker]

Is my hon. Friend genuinely saying that he thinks the Met Office is a part of some conspiracy or has some hidden agenda? I have been to the Met Office and met the professionals there. They are distinguished people with excellent records. There is no uniform view on any single element of science; it deals with probabilities, and it changes. Is he genuinely saying that all those learned people are in on some conspiracy?

[David T. C. Davies]

What I am saying is that they are unable to answer basic questions. I am sure that the Minister will have put this question to them; he is a highly intelligent man. It must have occurred to him that it is a bit strange that there has been no increase in temperature since 1997, despite the predictions in the ’90s that it would rise every year. He must have asked about that, and I am sure that in his speech he will tell us what the Met Office said.

At the same time, I am sure the Minister will have asked the Met Office how much of that temperature increase was due to man-made global warming and how much was due to natural factors. I am sure that he will have concluded, based on the facts alone, that some of that increase in temperature must have been due to other, natural factors, and that he will want to tell us how much.

My problem with the Met Office is that its entire model seems to be based on the following premises: x amount of CO₂ has entered the atmosphere; there has been an increase of nought-point-something degrees in temperature; therefore, that increase has been caused by the x amount of CO₂. The Met Office has then gone on to conclude that a similar amount of CO₂ put into the atmosphere will create a similar increase in temperature, which is absolutely unproven. There is no reason to assume that just because a certain amount of CO₂ has caused a certain increase in temperature, a similar amount will cause a similar further increase. The Met Office has also assumed that the increases in temperature will cause all sorts of feedbacks that will create further increases. Its models are based on that theory, and it is unsound science.

[Gregory Barker]

Nobody suggests that the definitive evidence for climate change rests on incremental year-on-year temperature increases. One must look at trends when looking at the science. We are dealing with long-term trends. We are not dealing with weather; we are dealing with climate. Although my hon. Friend is right that there has been no substantial absolute year-on-year increase since the beginning of the century, the fact of the matter is that in terms of average global temperatures, the 1980s were significantly warmer than the 1970s, the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s and the years 2001 to 2010 were by far the warmest 10-year period on instrumental record since 1850. It was not the same year-on-year incremental, but taken across the decade, it was by far the warmest, and I have here the graph to prove it.

[David T. C. Davies]

The Minister is going back 150 years and showing me a graph. The point that I made earlier is that the graph would need to be 10 km long to give any real sense of what is going on with the climate. He himself said that we are not talking about weather; we are talking about climate. Climate is not something that goes on over a decade, or even 150 years. It takes place over millennia.

[Gregory Barker]

It dates from 1850 because that is when reliable instrument records date from. Obviously, there are data much further back, but I was dealing with instrumental scientific records.

[David T. C. Davies]

Absolutely, but one of the problems with the calculations made by the Met Office is that they use tree rings, ice samples and all sorts of other things to calculate what went on before 1850, but the Met Office is not prepared to use similar methods to calculate what has gone on since then. It has married up temperatures from weather stations with data predating them, and then tried to make similar comparisons. It does not work.

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[David T. C. Davies]

I hope that a certain other Australian who works closely with our leader is taking note.

I have tabled a lot of questions to the Minister on the issue. In reply to one, he has said that by 2020 around 23% of household electricity bills will be as a result of climate change policy. I have also tabled questions to find out, thus far without success, how much of the NHS electricity bill goes to support wind and solar farms. Another of his answers, which I do not have to hand, suggests that every person in the country will be paying between £4,700 and £5,300 a year towards the Government’s climate change policies. We have embarked on a hugely expensive course of action, which no other country in the world shows any signs of following.

I am anxious about what those policies will do to manufacturing jobs. I spoke recently to people at Tata, which is a huge employer in Wales, and they said that the costs of electricity and labour in this country mean that they are thinking of relocating abroad. When they do, they will be taking the factories with them, which will still emit the same amount of CO₂ globally, but the jobs will be elsewhere and the foreign exchange will be going out of the country instead of coming in.

[Gregory Barker]

Of course we have to be careful about the costs levied on industry, wherever those costs come from. My hon. Friend’s argument would hold more water, however, were it not for the fact that Germany, Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse, has increased its share of the global market in manufactured goods every single year since the beginning of the century—it has massively increased its global market share—and is at the same time the largest European producer of renewable energy. Germany produces far more renewable energy than the UK, and has paid more for it, because it was an early adopter.

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[Gregory Barker]

Well put.

The other key suggestion is that we are acting in isolation. If that were the case, I would have some sympathy for the arguments made. We may have been a leader in climate change legislation, but 32 countries, from China to Ethiopia and Vietnam, now have some sort of climate change framework. Mexico and South Korea have modelled their climate change Acts and legislation on those from Westminster. India’s 12th five-year plan incorporates a range of recommendations from its low-carbon expert group. Indonesia has just passed a ministerial regulation, based on climate science, to expand thermal energy. We may be at the forefront, but we are not totally alone. We must make more progress. The world has a last chance in 2015 to get its act together and come together with effective, concerted international action if we are to have any chance of keeping the rise below 2°.

[David T. C. Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Gregory Barker]

I have little time left, so I am afraid I will not give way.

We will ensure that we drive the negotiations to the most successful possible outcome in 2015. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) alluded to the 2008 Act. She can be proud of the leadership shown by the previous Government on that Act. I was involved as a Front Bench spokesperson and served on the Committee that considered the measure. She mounted a sensible defence of the strong weight of science behind the arguments and pointed out the massive trend in global investment. China anticipates spending $450 billion on renewable energy, dwarfing our expenditure.

I must take issue with one figure; the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said that climate change policy would add one-quarter of a trillion pounds to our projected energy spend. The widely accepted figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that, taking everything into account, we will have to spend something in the region of £110 billion in total over the next decade on energy measures. I do not recognise that quarter of a trillion figure. We must bear in mind the fact that the £110 billion investment will not only help us to prepare for a low-carbon energy economy, but pay for energy efficiency measures, which I hope hon. Members support whatever their views on global warning. Energy efficiency is the surest way to help the fuel poor. There is no good excuse for wasting energy, however it is generated. We should be ever mindful of the need to drive energy efficiency as a way not only of reducing carbon emissions or helping people to cut their fuel bills, but increasing the economic competitiveness of UK plc. The Government have put a greater emphasis on energy efficiency than any of their predecessors.

It is not true to say that it is climate costs that are driving up energy bills. In the past three years, the biggest single rising cost on energy bills for consumers, who are worried about the cost of living, has been the rising price of wholesale gas. We are committed to ensuring that we have a resilient energy economy, helping consumers and—

Energy Bill

Debate between Lord Barker of Battle and David T C Davies

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

I am normally a loyal Back Bencher. I sometimes skip merrily through the Division Lobbies behind my leaders, and at other times go through those Lobbies with a slightly heavier heart. I am afraid that this will be one of the occasions on which I back the Government, but do so with a certain amount of trepidation.

I listened with great interest to the Minister’s explanation of how he would reduce electricity demand, but one of the most important questions that can be asked from these Benches is not “how”, but “why”. Why is it necessary to do this in the first place? The Minister gave us a bit of an explanation by referring to climate change, which he described as a clear and present danger. Of course it is a clear and present danger. No one whom I know of has denied the reality of climate change, and I have certainly never done so. The point is that the climate has always been changing. That has been a clear and present danger for the last 4.5 billion years. The new clause, and indeed the entire Bill, was tabled on the basis that the 0.8° rise that we have seen over the last 300 years is somehow more of a danger than any of the other rises and falls that we have seen over the last 4.5 billion years.

I did a bit of scribbling as I was sitting here and listening with interest, and I worked something out. I have seen many graphs in the documents backing up these claims, and if we had a graph that showed every 100 years as 1 cm, in order to show how long the earth had been in existence, the graph would have to be 280 miles long, which is twice the length of the High Speed 2 rail route. If we really did have a graph that was that long and we were going to look at just 3 cm of it, would it be wise to put forward such far-reaching amendments and Bills based on changes that are not that far out of the ordinary over the course of the 280 miles that my imaginary graph stretches?

[Gregory Barker]

Despite my hon. Friend’s eloquence, I fear that he and I are never going to agree on his interpretation of the science of climate change or on the need to act. I will just say to him about energy efficiency measures, however, that even if there were not man-made climate change, there would still be a compelling reason to act, because saving money is always a good thing to do, and that is what these energy efficiency measures will deliver for hard-pressed consumers.

[David T. C. Davies]

The Minister is right. He did not, however, mention the other reason that is sometimes put forward—that we are about to run out of carbon-based fuels and uranium—and as he did not mention it, I will not knock that argument back. Instead, let us address the point he made: that this may well lead in the longer term to cheaper energy.

I have no objection at all to many of the things the Government are doing: the smart meters, the decentralisation—which the Minister talked about—and the insulation, which was not mentioned, but which I assume is part of the same package. I get slightly more nervous when I hear him talking about negawatts rather than megawatts, however, as that suggests people will be paid for not producing things.

We have already had that situation in farming, where people have been paid not to produce food. I sometimes wonder whether the Minister—or, indeed, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—would like to pay me for not making speeches. I see much nodding of heads. I ask myself, however, whether this proposal is economically sensible. I am a keen student of economics, and it is my understanding that there are only two ways to reduce demand for anything. One way is to ration the goods that are in demand, and to some extent the Government are making provision for that, as they know there is a danger that we could run out of electricity over the next 10 to 15 years. My understanding is that there have been discussions as to how, if that were to happen, demand might be rationed in respect of certain high users of energy. The second way to reduce demand for any commodity is to increase prices.

Whatever the Minister says about negawatts and insulation and smart meters, the reality is that prices are going up partly in response to the policies this Government are putting forward. We have a system that now subsidises production of electricity that would otherwise be economic, in order to make it harder for people to get hold of it.

At the moment, the clear and present danger to all of us is the economy. The one thing the coalition was elected to do was sort the economy out.

[David T. C. Davies]

Well, I am going to have to think about that one for a few minutes before coming back with a substantive response. I will say, however, that it is not wise to talk about reducing people’s access to electricity at a time when we want to be saying to businesses across the world, “Come to the United Kingdom and invest.” We are not going to be able to compete with anyone on the basis of labour costs; indeed, we do not want to compete on that basis. We do, however, want to be able to say to business, “If you come here, you’re going to get a large and reliable source of electricity.”

[Gregory Barker]

Let us just be clear that we are not talking about reducing businesses’ access to electricity; we are talking about seeing energy as part of being in a resource-efficient, competitive, global economy, where businesses that can use less energy in creating their products or delivering their services will have a competitive edge.

[David T. C. Davies]

I fear that within 20 or 30 years those who are now talking about the temperature changes we are seeing will find that they are not that out of the ordinary in the context of the past 8,000 years or 4.5 billion years. We may look back and ask, “Why did we suddenly decide to make it more expensive to generate electricity in this country? Why did we suddenly decide to decarbonise at a time when other nations, such as China and other places in south-east Asia, were doing quite the opposite?” We may look back from a point in the future when not only the GDPs of those countries, but their GDPs per head are much larger. Carbon emissions will not have stopped, temperatures will not have risen that much and those rises that do take place will be as much to do with things such as the Pacific decade, oscillation and the natural changes that go on in the Earth, and we will wonder whether we were right to go down this path.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Barker of Battle and David T C Davies

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Barker]

The hon. Lady makes some valid points in a sensible way. She is right to say that we need to do a lot more to help the poorest. There is a debate about rising block tariffs, but they, too, can have perverse consequences. We are determined to simplify the tariffs system, and I would like to do that on the basis of consensus. If she would like to contribute to the thinking, I invite her to meet me and share her ideas.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

8. What progress he has made on the feed-in tariff review; and if he will make a statement.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

14. What recent progress he has made on the feed-in tariff review; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

The first comprehensive evidence-based review of the feed-in tariff scheme has started. It will consider all aspects of the scheme, but we will fast-track consideration of large-scale solar projects with a capacity of more than 50 kW and farm-scale anaerobic digestion projects. Above all, we want to provide a sustainable platform for ambitious growth across the range of renewable technologies, and to work collaboratively with industry to achieve that.

[David T. C. Davies]

I welcome the Minister’s answer. Will he assure the House that the review will ensure that there are no perverse incentives to build smaller schemes operating at a higher capacity? If he has time in his ministerial diary, he is welcome to visit Monmouthshire, where we have three excellent hydroelectric schemes up and running.