Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

This has been a tremendously good, positive and applied debate, and, from my 21 years in this House, I cannot say that has always been the case. I have attended virtually every climate change debate in this House, and it is shocking that we have not had one for two years.

Those previous debates were usually characterised by a claque of climate change deniers who regularly attempted to derail them. This debate is perhaps a reflection of where we have got to now. I thought that one of the last remaining serious climate change deniers in the House, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), would take part, but it turned out he wanted to talk about Welsh tourism, which is a mercy.

We are all together this afternoon, perhaps for the first time, when it is almost too late. Everything that has been said by climate scientists, and that has been said in all the debates I have been involved in during my long time in the House, is coming true and proving to be right. We should perhaps talk not about a climate change debate but about a climate is changing debate.

I am not smug about the fact that what I was saying in our previous debates has been proved right, and what those climate change deniers were saying has been proved wrong; it scares me stiff. We are now at two minutes to 12 on the climate emergency before us. I thank all the hon. Members who, in different ways, have contributed this afternoon on that central point.

I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate, and I thank the hon. Members, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), who pointed out just how little time we have had for these debates. When we get the advice of the Committee on Climate Change on a net zero future, it might be appropriate for the Minister to make sure that we can have a debate in Government time, for at least half a day—or a whole day, if we want to be ambitious—on that advice and its implications and ramifications so that hon. Members are allowed the proper time to put across what they want to say about this climate emergency and what we need to do to deal with it.

I am scared stiff because I know that the ability to do anything about this climate emergency is on our watch. Members of Parliament over the next 12 years, as mentioned in the IPCC report, will have to get their act together on climate change or forever miss the opportunity to do anything about it.

[Mr Sweeney]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about the time constraints, and about how this House has not done nearly enough to debate this issue. Does he agree it is critical that other Government Departments, not just BEIS, focus on the implications of climate change, particularly the Department for Transport, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Defence and so on? We must understand the impact those Departments have on Government policy in shaping a holistic approach to policy making across all parts of Government.

[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that the action we need to be taking in this House for the future must not just be the province of one Department, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out. It needs to be something that seeps to the core of every part of government and of this House. Everything we do must be judged by whether we are making progress on reducing carbon emissions and fighting the effects of climate change or whether it is going in the opposite direction.

In that context, I want to draw the House’s attention to what we have done so far and what we are—we hope—going to do for the future, because that is crucial in terms of moving from our current target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 to that net zero target. Of course a net zero target does not just mean doing things that reduce carbon; it means doing things that actually put carbon back in the ground. We are talking about negative carbon emissions, as well as positive carbon emissions. It means planning a whole different system of doing things, as my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) and for Cardiff North drew attention to. We need to do things in different ways in order to make that change in our economy, so that we have a permanent low-carbon, sustainable economy for the future.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Before the hon. Gentleman moves off that point, would he agree that one of the more encouraging signs is that technology is being developed for carbon reuse, which does not necessarily mean putting it back in the ground, but at least recycles it?

[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct about that; using carbon cycles so that they are as long as possible and in the end the carbon is sequestered is a good way of ensuring that we make our economy as circular as possible, in addition to sequestering the carbon arising from it.

We have been given the Government’s clean growth plan. It was set out in response to the fifth carbon budget requirements, which, among other things, require us to get our carbon emissions down by 57% from 1990 levels by the end of the fifth carbon budget. I have to say to the House that the clean growth plan fails to do what it says it is going to do about the fifth carbon budget. Indeed, it suggests that we may be as much as 9.7% over the targets for the fifth carbon budget in terms of the things that the Government are setting out to do. So absolutely the first thing we need to do in considering our progress towards zero carbon is to fundamentally make over, that clean growth plan so that it actually works. Not only must it achieve the terms of the fifth carbon budget, but it must go beyond that so that we are ready and setting ourselves up for the advice we are going to get from the Committee on Climate Change as to how we get to zero carbon. I invite the Government to start work today on getting that clean growth plan reorganised so that it can meet the terms of net zero when they come to us. Were the Government to embark on that strategy, they would have the full support of the Opposition in making that work and making sure that we are ready for net zero, and not running along behind, as we have for so many years in this House since the climate emergency started to come upon us.