Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the proportion of known fossil fuels which need to be left in the ground to prevent global temperature change above two degrees centigrade.
Answered by Nick Hurd
In 2013 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that to have a 50 percent chance of limiting global average temperature rise to below 2°C, the remaining permissible carbon emissions were up to 305 billion tonnes of Carbon for the period 2011 to 2100. According to the latest estimate of cumulative emission by the Global Carbon Project in 2016, this figure has reduced to 255 billion tonnes of Carbon.
In 2011 the IPCC estimated the amount of carbon within existing proven reserves of coal, oil and gas to be 1,053 billion tonnes.
Based on these figures, between 70-75 percent of known fossil fuels would have to be left unused in order to have a 50% chance of limiting global temperature rise to below 2°C.
Asked by: Andrew Smith (Labour - Oxford East)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whether he plans for the proposed £1,000 immigration skills charge to apply to NHS nurses.
Answered by Nick Boles
The Immigration Skills Charge will be paid by UK employers recruiting skilled migrant labour from outside the European Economic Area. This includes employers of nurses. The charge will apply from April 2017. There will be a flat rate of £1,000 per Tier 2 migrant sponsored per year. Some public sector employers could benefit from the small and charitable sponsors reduced rate of £364 per Tier 2 migrant sponsored per year.
As the independent Migration Advisory Committee stated in their January 2016 report on Tier 2, public sector organisations are employers like any other and should be incentivised to consider the UK labour market first, before recruiting outside Europe.