Carbon Budget Order 2026

Lord Douglas-Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my farming and forestry interests as set out in the register and will speak in support of the amendment from my noble friend Lord Moynihan. I also associate myself with the comments made by my noble friends Lord Harlech and Lord Roborough.

There are a few challenges with the proposed Carbon Budget Order 2026. The issues I have are not so much ideological and technical as more practical. In the wider context, if passed, the Carbon Budget Order will increase the UK’s reliance on intermittent renewables, causing higher energy prices, further accelerating deindustrialisation and driving lower economic growth, as we have heard many times this evening. Even the Climate Change Committee has estimated that British industry would face net costs of up to £3 billion per year every year between 2025 and 2050. Clearly, this will make UK businesses uncompetitive and add to the general cost of living for the British public.

The area I would like to focus on is the impact it will have on British farming, particularly livestock farming, and the UK’s future food security. Two weeks ago in this Chamber, we debated the impact of Labour Party policy on the rural economy, and it was widely agreed that a number of policies that have been introduced—such as the family farm tax, national insurance increases and the hike in the minimum wage—have had a strong negative impact on sustainable farming and food production across the UK. With this in mind, further negative impacts should really be avoided, otherwise rural productivity will fall even further. This seems challenging given what is proposed in the Carbon Budget Order 2026.

As we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, this 2026 order means that by 2038, we will have to reduce annual emissions by more than two-thirds. What that translates to on the ground, according to the Climate Change Committee’s own report, is that household consumption of meat and dairy will have to fall by 25%. In farming speak, this means that the number of sheep and cattle will have to reduce by 50%, forcing farmers to diversify away from livestock farming and further reducing our national food security. I ask the Minister: is this sensible or even realistic? If we were to reduce livestock by 50%, it would render every livestock farm economically inoperable, threaten the future of many of our livestock breed varieties and collapse meat and dairy production and any domestic meat supply completely, leaving us wholly dependent on foreign imports. Why would we want to do this, particularly at a time when food security should be higher up the Government’s agenda, given what is going on in the wider world?

Suggesting that meat and dairy consumption is going to drop by 25% flies in the face of all current statistics. There is no indication that this is happening now or that it is likely or even desirable in the future. It just seems pie in the sky—excuse the pun—unless the Government are planning to restrict what the public want to eat. In essence, if this Carbon Budget Order proceeds, the most likely outcome will be that meat and dairy consumption will stay exactly the same and domestic production will collapse. Suggesting otherwise is simply ignoring the reality of living in the world as it is today.

We live in an era of global commodity prices and international trade, so if our domestic prices go sky high, the supermarkets and the public will switch to imports from other countries, which will increase to fill the void. As well as collapsing our domestic food security, it is just offshoring emissions to countries with more polluting energy systems, and that will negate any savings at home. This is a hopeless outcome and will ultimately make little or no difference to anything.

Rural communities are always at the sharp end of the climate change policy debate. In addition to the farming community, I also raise the issue of additional costs for those who live off grid. This might sound like a niche issue for a small number of hillbillies living in the outback, but it is not. There are 1.7 million oil-heated rural houses that are not connected to the gas grid. Can the Minister say what support he might offer to the 1.7 million households who, according to the Climate Change Committee’s own estimate, will consistently pay more to decarbonise through electrification?

As I said in my introduction, there are quite a few challenges with the Carbon Budget Order. The impact will be felt across many areas, although my comments have been largely focused on farming. Pursuing the Carbon Budget Order seems the wrong route for UK farming and the wrong choice for the British public. It will achieve little or nothing in the way of carbon savings.