Net-zero Emissions Target: Affordability

Lord Rees of Easton Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Easton (Lab)]

Thank you, my Lords. I begin by extending my thanks to Black Rod and her officers for their support and guidance during my first few weeks. Their warmth and efficiency are a real testament to the high standards of this House, and I am grateful for how welcome they made me, my family and my guests feel.

I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Boateng and Lord Woolley, who introduced me. They have long been an inspiration. There are those who have supported me on my journey as well, including the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I also thank my noble friends, the Leader and the Chief Whip, for the leadership they have provided since my arrival.

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks very publicly to His Majesty the King. I have been told that I may be the first person who has benefited from the Prince’s Trust to be raised to the House of Lords—unless anyone knows anything different. At two very important junctions in my life journey I had financial support from the Prince’s Trust. I was able to say to the King that they were not large sums of money, but they were the right sums at the right time. They got me through a door that gave me access to a whole new set of opportunities. That support is one of the factors that made my journey from there to here possible.

When I share who I am, I have to speak of those who went before me. It is a privilege to be able to honour them in this place today. My Jamaican great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Richardson, was hanged by the British in 1865 for participating in the Morant Bay rebellion. I have often wondered what he would have thought or felt as he stood on the gallows and whether my standing here today would have brought him any peace in that moment.

Then there is my Welsh grandfather, John Rees, who was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1914 to my great-grandfather, a miner known as Tali Essin, and my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Barry, an Irish migrant to south Wales. My grandad was too poor to go to university. He was a brilliant man who never managed to live out the fullness of his potential. At my graduation from Swansea University, my nan told me that he lived his dreams through me. That was a moment of great sadness, but also great joy for me.

I was born the mixed-race child of an unmarried, working-class white woman. I use that blunt language to communicate the various social factors and categories I have lived across. As a young man, I wrestled with identity and belonging. I grew up in the race and class fractures of 1970s and 1980s Britain. I was chased down the street by grown men telling me to go back to my own country. I would return home to my primary caring family, who were white. At the same time, some of my black peers in school would question my blackness and my loyalty. I was illegitimate, we were poor and I wondered where I fit.

That is one of the reasons why, when I speak about identity and belonging, I stress complexity, interdependence and dynamism. I reject simplistic binary options, particularly when we are talking about who is in and who is out. I have often wished that the insights of those of us who have lived across identity frontiers—national, racial, ethnic, cultural or religious identities—could be scaled up to inform and frame the way we have national conversations around identity, belonging and, dare I say, migration. I put it like this: being English does not make me less Jamaican. Being Jamaican does not make me less Welsh. When I found out my great-grandmother was from Ireland, it just made me more me. I wonder if that kind of dynamism can make us, as a country, more us.

I have had a varied—you might say chaotic—career, but I am probably best known for serving as Mayor of Bristol from 2016 to 2024. When I was elected, the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, told me that I was probably—highly likely—the first person of black African heritage to be elected mayor of any major European city.

It was an interesting time to be in local government. We had five Prime Ministers, eight Secretaries of State, Brexit, austerity, the cost of living crisis, the pandemic, social upheaval accelerated by social media, a growing awareness of the climate and ecological crises, and the rise of influencers and authoritarian predatory politicians. During this time I held numerous national and international leadership positions, including with Core Cities UK, the LGA’s city regions board, the Global Parliament of Mayors, the Mayors Migration Council and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum.

It is from these experiences as a city leader that I will share two reflections. First, it is impossible to lead a city and work for its good without shaping the national and international context within which it exists. Secondly, the national and the international challenges we face—climate, migration, health and inequality—cannot be met without the leadership of local government in general and cities in particular. These two are inseparable, and I hope, while I am in this place, to be a voice and an advocate for local and regional government and cities, and to advocate for a maturing of the relationship between the centre and our cities and regions.

It is from that perspective that I come to this debate on net zero, as one of a number of ex and current city leaders who have been incredibly frustrated with the national and international mechanisms through which we have tried to deliver the change the world so desperately needs. Noble Lords may remember the open letter written in November last year off the back of COP, which pointed to a process that was fantastic at getting policy frameworks and declarations but not good at getting delivery—and, ultimately, change will come through delivery.

Noble Lords have made some excellent points on the cost of inaction, so I will not go over those numbers, but suffice it to say that, during the middle of Covid, one of the reflections we shared in Bristol was that we have had a taste of what happens when the natural world asserts its ultimate authority over our human systems. We were able to get out of that, but there is the potential for crossing a line, after which there is no end in sight to the chaos—and the closure of our economy—that is visited upon us.

The second reflection is that there are solutions, and I declare an interest here because I have an ongoing relationship with one of the companies we worked with in Bristol. We did a deal in Bristol called Bristol City Leap, which has unlocked £1 billion of inward investment to decarbonise our energy system over the next 20 years, involving local supply chains and £60 million of social value. Look at London EDGE, a £100 million fund for the decarbonisation of buildings, energy systems and transport networks.

My point here is that it is not all about the national level. So many of the conversations are about what nations are doing, but, at the sub-national level, leadership is happening. Even in the United States, US cities are still looking to do the deals to get the decarbonisation done—for both national and international goals, but for the benefit of their own citizens. In Bristol, we started getting ready for a hotter city. We have warm banks in Bristol at the moment, and we will be looking for cool banks in the future because the city is so hot for its residents. If we solve that, it is a social solution as well as an environmental one, tackling the cost-of-living crisis, improving population health and reducing the demand on public services.

I want to focus our minds on some immediate opportunities coming up. London Climate Action Week is on its way, and I urge us to really think about how we can support UK cities to be on the front line of that, not just standing up and making declarations and commitments but helping to broker the financial deals that those cities need to get done to deliver the futures they want to deliver for their populations. If we can do that in the UK, I believe it has a number of benefits. One is that it can bring that inward investment into our cities that we so urgently need. But it evidences our leadership and extends our soft power. As we look at the sequence of global gatherings leading up to COP that urgently need the voice of cities, I believe that we in this country can set a global standard. But, if we are going to take this as an opportunity, we need to get ahead of it and shape it, not react to it.