COP 29

Debate between Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

Obviously, there are no guarantees, but that is why it is very important to move to Brazil and deal with mitigation, in a way that we were unable to do in the last COP negotiations. In relation to China, I understand entirely what the noble Lord is saying. I understand entirely his concerns. However, China was a player at the COP discussions. It did indicate the voluntary payments that it has made to developing countries and I believe we have to work very hard to keep China in the tent.

I repeat again that, although clearly China has overtaken the EU and is now the world’s largest emitter, it is also developing extensively in renewable energy. What alternative do we have? In the end, we must come back to climate change and the awful consequences, for us and globally, of not taking action. It would be a huge mistake to put the brakes on, say, “No, we’re going to rely on oil and gas”, and hope that nothing happens. We just cannot do that. We have to work with China and India. We have to try as hard as we can to bring them with us and that is what we are seeking to do.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, this is a complex issue and I am a layman in what is a complex world. One thing which we are in control of but which we do not seem to make much progress with is building regulations for new properties. This confuses me. They still seem to allow gas boilers to be put in. They do not seem to encourage solar panels or glass that converts sunlight into electricity. Yet we are already building new properties. This Government quite properly have a huge ambition to build far more properties. Is this not the time to embed the price of some of these changes in the price of the new property, perhaps with some kind of taxation encouragement? At the moment, we are building properties that we know will not be helpful in the future when it is within our gift, with existing technology, to do about something it. It is confusing. Every time I have asked about this, somebody has said that they are looking into it. Is it not time that somebody did something about it and encouraged builders—incentivised them—to help us to make some progress, in this area at least?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right about the complexity of this whole area of policy, but he makes a powerful point. On Monday, we had an Oral Question from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on solar panels on roofs, when essentially the same question was asked by a number of noble Lords. I recognise the force of his argument. We are having cross-government discussions at the moment looking at building regulations. I hope that within a fairly short period of time we will have a positive outcome.