COP 26

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord, then, will have welcomed our announcement today that will generate the tens of thousands of jobs to which he refers. The idea of the campaign, of course, is to try to educate and change behaviour.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister not accept that the Prime Minister’s new 10-point plan is not a plan but a wish list of future developments based on undeveloped technology? It is not new, because it is largely recycled commitments and resources. Will he confirm that the actual new, additional amount is £4 billion—not £12 billion—which does not begin to address the scale of the problem and does not bear comparison with our colleagues in France, Germany and elsewhere?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not sure that the noble Lord is being entirely fair with his critique of the announcement. Many of the initiatives are based on new and existing technologies. We are building on many of the initiatives that we already have going, for instance the green homes grants system, which is proving so successful and popular and is building on an existing scheme. I think that noble Lords in many parts of the House would accept that we should go further on things such as hydrogen and elsewhere.