Net-zero Emissions Target: Affordability

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow a maiden speaker in your Lordships’ House, but this was more than a privilege: it was a pleasure and a very moving experience for all of us to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Easton. At one point, he said his background was chaotic. The speech he made about his early life—his experiences and how an intervention from the Prince’s Trust could make an enormous difference and end up being one of the factors that brought him to your Lordships’ House—told me how much we will benefit here from the breadth of experience that he brings.

I think we knew of the noble Lord as Mayor of Bristol; he comes as a Bristolian, and I am sure that that city’s interests will be well represented in your Lordships’ House. But the dimension that he talked about afterwards, how cities are important in the governance of nations and governance globally, is an essential point for all of us concerned with tackling not just the climate issues we are debating today but the social issues we will all face in one way or another. The noble Lord has an enormous amount to contribute to your Lordships’ House, and we all look forward to hearing more from him in future.

Turning to my own contribution to this debate, I declare my interest as chair of Peers for the Planet. I put on record at the outset, because the point has been made by others, how much I regret the crumbling of the cross-party consensus that has served this country so well in our efforts to combat climate change, and which has given us such soft power globally and allowed us to lead so effectively on the international stage. The noble Lord, Lord Offord, has done the House a service in initiating this debate, allowing us to hear some extraordinarily powerful contributions. It is always invidious to name names, but I shall continue by doing so. We have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Sharma, Lord Turner and Lord Stern, people who have huge authority in this area. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Offord, might share the relevant Hansard with the leader of his party, so she can perhaps reflect on the rather high-level attitude she has taken on these issues.

No one disputes that achieving the Government’s statutory commitment to reach net zero by 2050 will cost a lot of money—although, as many noble Lords have pointed out, a substantial part of that investment will come from private rather than public sources. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, is absolutely right that we have to look at innovative ways in which to partner between public and private in this area. But affordability, as this debate has illustrated, is a much more nuanced concept than simply that of price. It is less easy to calibrate, and it involves questions of both the return on the investment we are making and the value ascribed to the outcomes of that investment. It is also dependent on the external environment and changing pressures, as we have seen only too clearly in the altered views in NATO countries, since the invasion of Ukraine, of the affordability of increased defence expenditure.

There is no denying that there will be real technical and capacity challenges, particularly regarding the national grid, and competing interests and trade-offs of particular policies and infrastructure proposals. I certainly would never deny that the high cost of energy we currently face is causing hardships for households and holding back business growth. But there are solutions to all those issues; as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, pointed out, we need to take the right and urgent action to tackle them.

But other things cannot be denied. The overwhelming scientific evidence of the perils facing the world if we do not rapidly reduce global emissions and halt the rise in temperature has only become more compelling year by year. The recognition of that danger is what led to the passing of the Climate Change Act in 2008 and the net zero remit in 2019. The UK’s response through both policy and action on decarbonisation has been of benefit, not only in the global fight against climate change but domestically in the UK, as many have said.

We have reduced our dependence on fossil fuels, improved our air quality and, strikingly, grown our economy. We have established footholds in low-carbon industries and created new markets for exports, as we can see in our world-leading offshore wind sector. The net-zero economy, as others have said, is growing three times faster than the wider economy and each job generates 38% above the UK average in economic value. I will repeat the quote that others have given from last week’s OECD report:

“Accelerated climate action does not hinder economic growth, it provides economic gains”.


We have to recognise that calling a halt to progress is not a neutral or cost-free option. That was the crucial point that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, made in his seminal report. His judgment has been echoed by many others and many organisations. In the words of the CBI’s chief economist,

“inaction is indisputably costlier than action”.

Nothing has changed the imperative of the transition; it has become only more urgent. Our climate is already warming faster than scientists initially predicted. In these circumstances, it is a category error of monumental proportions to suggest that investing to tackle climate change can be treated as just another spending issue, of no greater significance than any other in the annual spending decisions, and airily dismissed as an unaffordable dream. This is not the time to lose our nerve. We need to buckle down with grit and determination to provide certainty for industry and to encourage innovation.

The fundamental reason why we should continue to lead on this issue is that we owe it to those who are immediately threatened by climate change and to our children and grandchildren. As many contributions in this debate have shown, leading nationally and globally to tackle climate change will also be in the best economic and security interests of the UK. Let us not behave like Oscar Wilde’s cynic, who knew

“the price of everything, and the value of nothing”.