Finance Bill

Debate between Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

The issue of electric car targets illustrates my hon. Friend’s point about complacency. The Government’s target was to convert by 2040. They have brought it forward by five years to 2035, but Scotland’s target is 2032. The ambition of this Government does not even match that of one of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. How on earth can it be called world leading?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. We will not have to wait for the Minister to respond to hear the Government’s case, because I can tell the House what he is likely to say. He will tell us that tackling climate change is a top priority for the Government, and that this is demonstrated by the UK becoming the first major economy to pass legislation committing us to reach net zero emissions by 2050. He will tell us that the UK reduced its greenhouse gas emissions faster than any other G20 nation between 2008 and 2018. He will cite measures taken in this Bill as further evidence of the Government’s commitment, including tax support for zero-emissions vehicles; reforms to vehicle excise duty and company car tax; preparations for the introduction of the plastic packaging tax; and the establishment of a UK emissions trading system outside of the European Union. I suspect he will also point to previous announcements made by the Government, such as the £800 million fund for carbon capture and storage.

Taken individually, these steps are welcome, but collectively they do not provide the momentum we need to accelerate progress towards net zero. The Opposition do not believe that the 2050 target is ambitious enough, and neither does the science, so it is all the more worrying that, on current projections, we will not even achieve that deadline.

In its 2020 report to Parliament, the Committee on Climate Change underlines the charge that I am laying at the door of the Government this afternoon. It acknowledges, as do we, that in the time that has passed since the UK legislated for net zero by 2050, initial steps towards a net zero policy package have been taken. However, as the Committee says,

“this was not the year of policy progress that the Committee called for in 2019.”