COP29: UK Priorities

Debate between Afzal Khan and Deirdre Costigan

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UK priorities for COP29.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I feel very lucky to have secured my second Westminster Hall debate as a brand new MP, and on this very important subject. I am also delighted that members of the all-party parliamentary group on climate change are here today and I look forward to hearing contributions from hon. Members from across the House.

It sometimes seems from the TV or the internet that the climate emergency affects other people. Floods, droughts and food shortages are certainly becoming more common, but the threat is often seen as only hitting those in far-flung places. But when I knock on doors in my constituency of Ealing Southall, as I do regularly, people tell me that they are worried about the climate emergency and the damage being done to nature, our environment and our economy right here in the UK.

Already, climate breakdown has seen more extremes of weather in the UK. Flash flooding is an increasing risk to homes, businesses and even lives. Food shortages are becoming more regular as UK and European farmers struggle with a climate that we can no longer rely on, and hotter summers have led to a health emergency, with an estimated 2,500 people in the UK killed by heatwaves in 2020.

My constituents in Ealing Southall are worried both about how climate breakdown is affecting them right now and how it might affect their children in the future. Given that more than half my constituents were born outside the UK, many are also concerned about friends and relatives at the sharp end of climate breakdown, whether from rain-induced landslides in Pakistan or heatwaves in India.

So what is the world doing? The COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan in November is a crucial moment for countries across the world to work together to prevent further climate breakdown and to try and undo the damage done so far. The conference will ask countries including the UK to sign up to new, more stringent targets to reduce harmful emissions that cause climate change.

The conference will also try to agree new funding to help developing countries pay some of the costs of reducing and adapting to climate breakdown—funding, primarily from developed countries like the UK, which have been responsible for so much of the historic emissions from industrialisation. It will also look at further steps to end our reliance on oil and gas, which are a big part of the causes of the climate crisis. It is vital that the new targets are robust enough to keep global temperatures down and that the funding agreement is fair to developing countries.

But we have been here before. In 2021, at the COP26 climate conference, the UK agreed to targets that we have not delivered. Indeed, the Climate Change Committee found that the previous Conservative Government only had plans in place to deliver about one third of the targets they had agreed to, with almost all targets off track. Although the UK agreed to pay £11 billion over five years to help developing countries, the former Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith resigned when it became clear that the Conservative Government planned to ditch that promise, having delivered just half of the money. On top of all that, despite signing up to start to end our reliance on oil and gas, the previous Government instead granted 27 new licences to dig for oil and gas in the North sea.

I am sorry to say that it is not at all surprising that the previous Government would make agreements that they did not intend to honour, sign up to targets that they had no plans to deliver, and shake hands on a funding deal that they did not intend to pay for. Their entire approach to the climate emergency is to stick their heads in the sand and hope it goes away.

For example, in the UK we have the leakiest homes in Europe—homes that are too cold in winter, but too hot in summer and cost a lot more money than they should to heat. We desperately need a massive retrofitting programme to insulate millions of homes, to stop so much precious energy being wasted as it escapes through walls and roofs, and to reduce energy bills as a result. However, the previous Conservative Government effectively halted home retrofitting programmes and completely failed to take the need to insulate homes seriously. They stopped the growth of renewable energy through a moratorium on wind farms—a self-destructive move that has only kept British families more reliant on Russian gas.

When the Conservative Government did not have their head in the sand, they lost their head entirely. Like headless chickens, they continually changed their mind and U-turned on key promises. They backtracked on the 2030 deadline to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and did similar with the phase-out of gas boilers. It is bad enough that our lungs will continue to be assaulted by toxic fumes for longer, but car and boiler manufacturers also wasted millions of pounds getting ready for a deadline that was then pulled out from under their feet. And guess who pays the bills—the consumer of course, so our first priority for COP29 must be to undo the damage done by the previous Conservative Government. We must showcase the clear evidence that under Labour, the UK can again be trusted to deliver on the international agreements that we make.

Where the previous Government failed, local authorities often stepped in. Ealing council has done amazing work in finding ways to reduce flash flooding by using natural solutions and more innovative approaches. Concrete verges have been replaced by wildflower rain gardens in many places across my constituency. In Dean Gardens—a small park in west Ealing—six street drains have been connected to a huge underground container, made of sustainable material, that is covered by a new wetlands area where water can slowly be released throughout the year. That should significantly reduce the regular flash flooding on Uxbridge Road. Work is currently under way at Lammas Park, also in my constituency, to create seasonal ponds that will help to protect properties around the park from flooding during periods of heavy rainfall. Ealing has also planted tens of thousands of new trees, which offer shade in summer and provide space for birds and other wildlife.

However, after 14 years of austerity, councils struggled to fill the gap left by a Conservative Government who had virtually left the stage, so there was a collective cheer across the country when this new Labour Government took power and immediately showed their commitment to taking action on what is the biggest threat to our health and prosperity. The new Secretary of State straightaway announced an end to our reliance on expensive and unreliable oil and gas and has backed that up by setting up Great British Energy. That will see massive investment in renewable energy, ending our addiction to fossil fuels, increasing our energy security and reducing bills for families.

Already, the new Government have doubled investment, resulting in 131 renewable energy projects coming forward to power 11 million UK homes, demonstrating that business has faith in Labour’s commitment to clean energy. That is a huge contrast to the situation a year ago when no energy companies at all expressed interest when the Conservative Government went out to tender. The new Government have ended the moratorium on offshore wind farms and we have gone even further—we have committed to becoming a world leader in floating wind farms. Our warm homes plan will see the Government work hand in hand with local councils to insulate leaky homes, and we will move swiftly to decarbonise public buildings.

Finally we have a Government who are serious about climate breakdown here in the UK, so a further priority for COP29 must be to develop new targets for reducing our own country’s emissions over the next five-year period. We have an opportunity to set the pace globally by making those as robust and stretching as we possibly can, and if we can sketch out our ambitions in advance of the November conference, we can establish a high bar for others to aim at. By February we will need detailed plans on how we will deliver on the targets, so that we do not repeat the Conservatives’ approach of promising everything and delivering little. It will be important to include detailed plans with local authorities and regions—key delivery partners on the ground that were often ignored by the previous Government. In fact, in 45 pages of targets agreed by the Conservatives, there were just six sentences on what local councils could do.

Finally, we need to come to an honest agreement on how much we can commit financially to repairing the damage done to many developing nations. I am confident that, unlike the Conservatives, this Government will stick to the agreement we make and will deliver it in full.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate, particularly as we come up to COP29 in Azerbaijan, which I am looking forward to attending, and I congratulate her on an excellent speech. At COP28, a historic agreement was reached to establish a loss and damage fund for vulnerable countries. My heritage is from Pakistan, which, like Bangladesh, has contributed the least to the problem yet is among the most vulnerable to it. The compensation will only come into effect in 2025. Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK must work with allies to prioritise pushing forward on this fund, to ensure that countries growing more vulnerable to climate crisis have the means to protect their civilians and infrastructure?[Interruption.]

Fly-tipping

Debate between Afzal Khan and Deirdre Costigan

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Deirdre Costigan]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. As she has said, Ealing Southall is certainly not a rural area of the country. However, my father’s family are from Tipperary, and they were farmers; I do appreciate, and am well aware, of the cost of fly-tipping to farmers in particular. As it is on private land, they are, in most cases, liable for the costs of removal themselves. It is a massive issue, and I do hope that we will hear from others today on that issue. Certainly, there is more that we can do on reporting because, as I said earlier, the reports that we currently have are only the tip of the iceberg as a lot of communities just do not report.

Having gone through the problems and realised that the solutions are complex, what solutions do I feel should be included in the national strategy? To combat the organised criminals, we need a national fly-tip investigation team. Why should environmental crime not be taken as seriously as other types of organised crime? We need national financial investigators who can use proceeds of crime laws to go after the assets of these criminals and hit them in their pockets, where it really hurts.

We also need sentencing guidelines to be reviewed so that the courts do not continue to allow fly-tippers to get away with it. We need to reform the waste carrier licensing scheme so that it is worth the paper that it is written on. We need stronger rules for bins when houses are broken up into flats; I am delighted that Ealing council is introducing a new requirement for planning permission for HMOs—houses in multiple occupation. But we need to ensure that waste facilities are rigorously assessed as part of landlord licensing schemes and before permission is given for flat conversions, and that councils have the funding to carry out those inspections.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and for the progress she is making on such an important topic. Keep Manchester Tidy established a partnership with Manchester city council to encourage residents to actively help make their communities cleaner. As part of that strategy this year, Manchester saw its highest number of volunteers supporting the national Great British Spring Clean, with more than 100 litter-picking events and more than 2,000 litter-pickers. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking all the volunteers who work extremely hard to make our communities cleaner and greener? Does she agree that they should not have to do this in the first place?

[Deirdre Costigan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I certainly agree that the work of local volunteers is hugely beneficial in preventing this problem from being even worse than it is at the moment. I know that, in Ealing, we would not survive without the work of our great friends in LAGER Can, and it sounds as if my hon. Friend has similarly civic-minded residents in his constituency too. I congratulate them on the work that they have done.

The most obvious answer to the fly-tipping crisis is to reduce waste in the first place. Let us turn off the tap of all of the waste that we see on our streets. That could be a real game changer. I know that the Minister has already committed to introducing a deposit return scheme for drinks containers by 2027 that would mean that empty cans and bottles could be returned to shops to get a deposit back. As well as cutting down on empty cans and bottles in black-sack fly-tips, research by Eunomia found that a return scheme could save councils in England up to £35 million annually. We could then spend that money on something else.

I hope that the Minister will consider the merits of a scheme that covers all reusable containers, including glass, from the outset, and it would be useful if she laid out a timetable for bringing that forward. Manufacturers should contribute to the costs to councils of clear-up by providing more take-back services so that people can hand in old furniture and mattresses when they buy new ones. The big prize is to persuade manufacturers to make their goods fully recyclable; the best way to do that is to make them pay for the cost of disposal. That is based on the idea of making the polluter pay. I hope the Minister will also set out a timetable for that approach, known as extended producer responsibility. It will encourage manufacturers to stop producing so much packaging and items that cannot be easily recycled.

Fly-tipping is not a low-level crime. It stops people from feeling proud of where they live, it encourages other crime and antisocial behaviour, and it costs millions of pounds to clean up—money that could be used for vital public services. I look forward to the Minister giving my constituents in Ealing Southall confidence that, after over a decade of inaction by the Conservatives, this new Labour Government will finally take fly-tipping seriously, with a national fly-tipping strategy, stiffer penalties for the culprits, and ways of reducing waste in the first place.