Climate Change

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. If I were ever on the wrong side of him in a court and he were the prosecutor, I think I would plead guilty and ask for the maximum sentence as quickly as possible. In fact, the whole of the rest of the debate here hardly had to happen; it would have been interesting just to have had that dialogue between the noble Lord and the Minister. I ought, in some ways, to welcome the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, to this debate, because it always seemed to me that adaptation was supposed to be for Defra, yet so often it is missing in action. So, I thank him from these Benches for standing in and answering many noble Lords’ questions.

My congratulations to my noble friend Lord Russell. If I can persuade him to stick to the climate change agenda and portfolio, I would be most grateful myself. I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is here, because we need to have a proper debate in this House and I thank him. I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that it seems a bit of a Malthusian or utilitarian argument that we can get rid of the hot ones to save the cold ones; I guess what we want to do is save them all—let us see if we can do that.

One of the things that is most important is a statistic mentioned by my noble friend Lady Sheehan. Temperatures have already risen 1.2 degrees centigrade. We have that target of 1.5 degrees centigrade now from Paris that seems far more difficult. It is estimated that we have a quarter of a degree increase in temperatures every decade, so we do not have far to go. I want to echo something that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, alluded to, which is the speed of change. Whenever we look at this area—this is why that prosecution case from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is so important—we have an acceleration.

I, like many other people in politics and advocates of this agenda, used to use the cliché “Well, we need to do it for our grandchildren”. Forget the grandchildren; we need to do it for our actual children, and for some of us who are the average of the House or slightly less, probably for ourselves as well. It is happening and that is why it is so important that we take this adaptation agenda so seriously.

I remember that one of the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, often uses with regard to climate change is around insurance: this is our insurance policy—another noble Lord used that phrase. For me, another truism is that one of the first responsibilities of government is the security of the nation; its number one objective is to keep our nation secure. We often think of that in terms of defence or 2% of GDP—all those areas which are particularly important during these years of the Ukraine war. In fact, this is the most challenging part of our national security, because if we do not get adaptation right our nation will be inundated, period. That is what will happen. That is why, as was mentioned, if we stretch the Prime Minister’s five objectives out beyond the next general election, adaptation should actually be number 1, 2 or 3. It needs to be there—it is a fundamental part of government responsibility.

I think sometimes that the Minister thinks I am overcritical of the Government—he is denying it, of course, over there. It has to be recognised that this is not an easy area for government policy, for taxpayers or for people. Adaptation is not one of those issues where, potentially, we can show an immediate benefit in cost, as we can for renewable energy and EVs. There are lots of ways we could do it, and we could get the private sector to be part of it, such as changing the specifications of our homes and our buildings, with solar energy in warehouses and industrial and commercial buildings. However, there is real cost here. Perhaps the person who most needs to be here is the Treasury spokesman, because the issue is around having to put real resources into changing and improving the situation. It is a difficult area in government policy but it is one that we have to do.

We have all those vulnerabilities that noble Lords have mentioned, such as in health, as spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley, and around food systems and nature. I have to tell the noble Earl, Lord Devon, the good news: IFCA tells me that, the more it looks at the seabed, the more seagrass it sees. The amount might be going down but we are discovering more, which is a good thing.

I will not take up all my 10 minutes because so much has been said already. I want to come back to two questions, one of which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. When will the Government’s climate resilience board meet and who will be on it? Will it concentrate on nature-based solutions and adaptation? The phrase has become a bit of a cliché but it is one that can really work, and work across the terrestrial-marine border. Will the Government take that positively?

I want to come back to that one issue of mine: that the Government’s responsibility is the security of this nation. The most important medium-term way that that is challenged is through climate change, rising ocean height and all the events that we see. It is so important, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, that the Government take adaptation much more seriously than they have done so far.