Green Climate Fund
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the UK Government asked for a 40% carbon emissions ambition to be reached. That is something the Prime Minister put forward earlier this year. I am glad to say that all the European countries have agreed to that 40% greenhouse emissions target.
Lord Tomlinson (Lab)
May I ask the Minister to return to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit? It is a very pertinent question. Is the money that is going to be pledged in November already in the Budget, or is it to be an increase in the borrowing that the Government will have to undertake, at a time when they have just hit a record for the amount of borrowing?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, we are clear that we need a Green Climate Fund. We will use a number of financial instruments to be able to achieve that.
Energy: Winter Supply
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I think I would prefer to write to my noble friend directly on the issues that he raises and put a copy in the Library. However, I reassure him that what we are trying to achieve through the Energy Bill is greater competition so that we see lower bills and a securer source of energy.
Lord Tomlinson (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that an important part of government energy policy is the energy company obligation? Designed to help poor consumers, it is in a shambles and failing. It appears that as much as 60% of the total cost of that could be going to wealthier consumers, and the cost is spiralling out of control.
Baroness Verma
No, my Lords. I reassure the noble Lord that 230,000 low-income and vulnerable households will benefit this year from the energy company obligation.
Energy: Electricity Generation
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma(11 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the Government are taking action to ensure that the UK economy continues to enjoy high levels of electricity supply security in the short, medium and long term. Our proposals for electricity market reform will drive investment, ensuring that we have a diverse mix of energy sources. Those proposals also include legislating for a capacity market to ensure that we have sufficiently reliable capacity on the system in the long term. The legislation, which will come to your Lordships’ House for consideration shortly, will enable a capacity market. With regard to the short term, we expect to see some reduction in margins as we move towards the middle of the decade; we saw similar reductions in the previous decade.
Lord Tomlinson
Does the Minister agree that we are falling further and further behind the necessary timetable for getting new nuclear power on stream? Without that new nuclear power, we will see the proportion of our energy that is generated from nuclear rapidly declining as we close the existing stations, and we will become more and more dependent on imported energy. At the same time, we will of course fail to meet our Kyoto targets. In those circumstances of an increase in imported energy, will the Minister answer the question I asked her yesterday, and which she failed to answer: what is the effect on imported energy requirements of the devaluation of sterling, which is further exacerbated by the loss of our AAA status?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, new nuclear is one of the country’s options. As I have said many times at the Dispatch Box, it is part of an energy mix. However, like all things, it goes through the proper procedures, as the noble Lord would expect. We have a lot of interest in investment in the UK from outside; I just mentioned Hitachi’s purchase of Horizon. The noble Lord needs to be reassured that we are going through processes that need to be properly done through planning and all the other necessary requirements of new nuclear. On yesterday’s question, if the noble Lord had been here, he would have heard my noble friend’s response.
Energy: Prices
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma
Baroness Verma
My Lords, it is an interesting option, which I think I will take back to the department. Through the Energy Bill and through the ECO the Government are reaching out to the most vulnerable families and tackling as early as possible the issue of those who need support. We are doing that and helping 2 million households at the current time.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, does the Minister accept that part of the reason for the increase in energy prices is the devaluation of sterling? Our failure to keep our AAA rating is bound to have a continuing effect on the devaluation of sterling and therefore feed though into increases in the price of imported fuels, particularly those based on petroleum, which are all designated in American dollars.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord will be pleased to know that today the oil and gas industry report sets out some very positive figures, showing that investment is increasing in the UK and that we are able to provide security and supply of energy in our own country. Of course, we are going through a difficult time, but that should come as no surprise to the party opposite because they were the instigators of it.
Energy: Self-sufficiency
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma
Baroness Verma
My noble friend raises a very important point. We are trying to make sure that we have greater self-sufficiency through our renewables but this means only that we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and, although it is helpful to say that that is what we want to do, we are not currently at that stage. However plausible our scenarios of future energy, I think that there will still be a place for some fossil fuels.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is an illusion to pretend that we can ever attain self-sufficiency in energy without showing a rather more robust and urgent approach to the nuclear industry than the present Government are doing?
Burundi
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma(13 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Verma
My Lords, as the noble Baroness has just heard, we believe that we are better placed to put some of our funding through the EU and the World Bank, where we are large contributors. Our funding programme that will end in 2012 was only a small programme of £10 million. We believe that putting in an agency that will actually help Burundi grow through its economic development will benefit that country far more than the £10 million that we were giving.
Lord Tomlinson
Will the noble Baroness accept my congratulations on the fact that in her answers she has suddenly made multilateral aid through the EU respectable? Thank you very much.
International Development Aid
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma(13 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the Government’s strategic defence and security review set out a clear vision of enhanced UK work on upstream conflict prevention. Building on this, DfID, alongside the FCO and MoD, is taking the lead in developing the Government’s new Building Stability Overseas strategy to be published in the spring. This strategy will set out how we will use development, diplomatic and security tools in an integrated approach to tackling conflict and instability overseas. No fragile state has yet achieved a single millennium development goal.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, is the Minister aware that her statement about getting value for money for every pound spent from the development budget will be very welcome? Can she tell us which precise, ring-fenced developmental objectives were met by the transfer of £1.8 million from the DfID budget to finance the visit of his Holiness the Pope?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the money was not taken out of ODA but was a part of DfID’s budget. The work that the Pope and the Catholic Church do overseas is welcomed; they do a lot of work through educational and medical care across the world. It was therefore not ODA money but came out of the DfID budget.
International Aid
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma(13 years, 12 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Countess is right. Some 75 per cent of the developing world’s poor—2 billion people—live in rural areas. The majority depend on agriculture to provide jobs and incomes. Agriculture has a key role to play in helping to meet the millennium development goal of halving the proportion of people in the world suffering from extreme poverty and hunger. Further allocations to agricultural programmes in each country will be determined after the bilateral reviews.
Lord Tomlinson
May I invite the noble Baroness to turn again to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, and stand up and say quite clearly to him that he is wrong?
UNESCO: Equatorial Guinea
Debate between Lord Tomlinson and Baroness Verma(14 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, on the specific subject of the Question—Equatorial Guinea—where in the pecking order of issues for which we give assistance from our development funds do democracy, human rights and good governance figure? Are they near the top, near the bottom or somewhere in the middle of the list?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, on the specific point about Equatorial Guinea, I should say that we have no presence there, although the high commissioner to Nigeria, Bob Dewar, visits twice a year. However, we completely agree that there needs to be transparency in what Equatorial Guinea is doing on human rights. That is what we will urge through all the multilateral agencies through which we supply our funds.