Climate Change Act 2008 (International Aviation and International Shipping) Regulations 2026

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, though it has been far from perfect, I would like to start by congratulating the Prime Minister on what has happened over climate policy over the last two years. Unfortunately, he seemed to forget it in his speech in Downing Street, but perhaps we could put on the record that the last coal-fired station was closed; onshore wind has started again; we have carbon budget 7 agreed; the future homes standard at last has been published; solar capacity has gone up substantially; and we had a very successful AR7 round in comparison with AR6. I was disappointed that the Prime Minister failed to mention these matters when he talked about his resignation in Downing Street last week.

What strikes me, remembering the Climate Change Act itself back in 2008, pretty well everybody around the House regretted at that time that it was pretty well impossible—for all sorts of technical reasons and where we were in terms of the start of this process—to include international air transport and international shipping. It was seen as a hole in the system that needed to be repaired as time went on. So, there we were, back in 2021, when the carbon budget 6 was agreed under the previous Government and they took that step on the Carbon Budget Order 2021 to put this into practice at last. Hallelujah from all of us who had been waiting since 2008 for that to happen. I congratulate the last Government on achieving that.

It is a shame that there seems to be this regression in terms of appetite to make sure that the climate for our children and grandchildren is on the mend rather than degrading from here. Let us be clear: we are kidding ourselves if we believe that this sector can be left out of our equations. It accounts for something like 10% of carbon emissions in terms of our own emissions, or part of them, and globally—much more for airlines than for shipping, but both are important and both are growing, which is the important thing. As we know, if you do not measure it, you cannot manage it, and if you do not manage it, it will not happen—and it needs to happen. These are important sectors.

To the Front Bench of the Opposition, I say that this is one of the occasions when we are liberated from the European Union. This is a Brexit win: in terms of airlines, the European Union still relies on the Coursier scheme, mentioned by the Minister, which is the offsetting system that the EU has been part of. We welcomed it as well, apparently, but it is a system that is far from perfect: much better that we include it within these systems ourselves.

I agree entirely that we have big challenges in terms of sustainable aviation fuels. There is a lot to do there and we certainly cannot grow crops to get us out of that problem.