Global Climate Change

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (Lab)]

My Lords, I lend my voice to the many before me in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for securing this debate and indeed for his lifetime of contribution to this important area. We are a matter of weeks away from the Paris negotiations and this is therefore a very timely debate to be having, which has shown some of the strengths of our House. The Government Benches have perhaps been slightly underrepresented, but there may be other things happening today that we are unaware of.

Notwithstanding that, it has been an excellent debate. I always find when I sit and listen to debates in your Lordships’ House that I learn something new, and today has been no exception. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for introducing a whole new topic for me, about the fashion industry and its relationship to this. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, for her perspective as a lawyer on the things that we need to start preparing for, such as how arbitration will be carried out and what we can look forward to in terms of legal cases and the tools that we will need to enable us to see proper justice in this area. That was fascinating.

I am not going to be able to do justice to all noble Lords who have spoken in the 10 minutes that I have, so I apologise. I always hear new acronyms: the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, introduced SUDS—sustainable urban drainage—to my vocabulary, for which I am very grateful. We have had fantastic speeches with great use of imagery. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, gave the apt analogy of us prodding the environment with a stick. We are conducting a global experiment which we do not know the consequences of. That is something we must take very seriously. I was also fascinated to hear the eloquent defence by the noble Lord, Lord McFall, of the Pope’s encyclical and the call to arms that it represents. Like him, I am no great defender of the Pope, but the symbolism of what he said and his overarching call for us to take more care of our common home and to have more respect for it resonated with everyone from every religion.

In addition to these wonderful new additions and perspectives, we heard from some of the greats in our ranks today. The work that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is doing in every area is absolutely remarkable. Knowing that he is a friend of the chair and is working with Christiana Figueres to secure a deal in Paris makes me feel very confident that we will make progress in December. I wish to mention everybody and apologise if I have skipped over anyone. I should mention the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and his role on the Committee on Climate Change, which has to be one of the best aspects of the UK’s governance structure for climate change. The Climate Change Act 2008 created it as an independent committee, and it has served us very well, helping to depoliticise what is essentially an overarching priority for a Government of any hue. The Committee on Climate Change does excellent work, and I know we will be meeting soon to discuss the setting of the fifth carbon budget. I am sure we will return to that debate in the coming weeks and months.

I apologise if I have missed anybody out. The role played by the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, in the Kyoto negotiations and since then with the GLOBE network in visiting countries such as China and India, to forge a consensus and to build the sense that we are not working in isolation but that this is a global effort, has been most remarkable. I think I will mention everybody now, because I have almost done so, but I apologise again if I miss anybody. I would also mention the noble Lord, Lord Haskel. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, introduced a whole new concept about cooling and how we do cold, which, again, is a new area that I have not paid too much attention to. I am grateful to him for bringing that up.

In the remaining six minutes, I hope to pick up some of the themes that have been discussed and ask the Minister to offer us some insights into the Government’s perspective. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, used the phrase “disappointingly vague” to describe the Government’s response to some of the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations or at least the Government’s thoughts on where they were going. I am optimistic and hope that this new Government, despite perhaps having got off to a bit of a shaky start, will come forward with a clearer plan for what they intend to do in relation to energy policy. At the moment, if you are simply observing from the side-lines, it does look like a big reversal in the direction that was set under the last, coalition Government. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, set out some of the examples of where we have seen some unhelpful—or perhaps just misinterpreted—events in recent months, which have given the impression that the Government are no longer committed to solving climate change or to the low-carbon agenda.

I hope and suspect that is not the case, but I also suspect there is a rather large battle going on within the Government about the mechanism by which we decarbonise, which is what is causing the friction. I imagine, as with everything, that it will be the Chancellor and the Treasury who are playing a hugely important role in this debate. It is incumbent on all of us to put forward a vision that the Treasury can accept and embrace. I say that because although it is of course interested in longer-term issues, its focus will primarily be on short-term economic issues. The problem is that climate change is not a short-term issue. The timescales involved are very lengthy, which makes it very difficult politically for it to compete with the shorter-term, pressing political priorities that the Treasury or the Prime Minister may be facing on a day-to-day basis.

For example, we need look no further than the steel problems of this week, which we have all seen in the media. We are losing industrial activity in the UK, with obvious social and economic impacts. That is bound to press on Ministers’ minds, but we must always bear in mind that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global environment and that we should not see climate change as a purely environmental issue—it is a social issue and an economic issue as well, and is of overriding importance. As the noble Lord, Lord Stern, has said, the stakes are incredibly high. We are talking about whether we can keep a habitable planet. This is the only habitable planet that we have yet discovered. We inhabit a unique planet, from all that we can see so far. Our generation bears a huge responsibility for ensuring that that planet remains habitable.

It falls to our generation because 20 or 30 years ago, some people may have been aware of the impact of burning fossil fuels and deforestation on our global climate, but it was a marginal issue. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, began his brilliant speech by bringing us back to Rio in 1992, which was the first point when the global community started to wake up to this issue. Since then, we have seen faltering moves forward to try to address it, but still not the urgency or co-ordinated effort that we need. I am very hopeful that Paris will see the beginning of that. Paris will mark a real watershed in our approach to climate change, because it is the first time that we will have all the major emitting countries in the same room debating the same set of commitments. I am delighted to read today that 155 countries have now submitted INDCs, representing 88% of the global population and 87% of global emissions. It is clear that there has been a change. We are now moving forward in a much more holistic and equal way.

That is not to say that it will be adequate because, as we know, the sum of the pledges does not add up to a safe climate. It is imperative that the Minister and his colleagues, when they go to Paris—indeed, we hope, the Prime Minister himself, when he attends—stress the need for a proper ratchet review mechanism to be included within the new deal. We cannot lock ourselves into lengthy targets which we know now to be inadequate; we must be able to revisit them, certainly within five years, to ratchet them up. Why should we do that? Because almost every target that has ever been set on climate change has been beaten. We always find that it is easier to deliver than we first thought. That is true of the UK and of Europe. We are already ahead of our 2020 targets on climate change, and we can go much further. Let us bank what we have at Paris, but let us make sure that we create the right framework not to lock ourselves in but to enable more ambition as things progress far faster than we can now imagine.

I want to end on this. As we sit here today and consider our roles as legislators in this great House, what can we contribute? Some of us will be attending Paris, which will be an historic contribution. For those of us who do not attend, our job lies in monitoring, scrutinising and advancing expert opinions on the laws and regulations which pass through this House. We have already seen with the Energy Bill how well this House can work in embedding the issue of climate change into government thinking. Together, we have improved the Energy Bill in its passage through this House, and I hope that we can hold on to some of those improvements until it returns here. It is not just the Energy Bill: there is the Enterprise Bill and the Green Investment Bank issue, the Bank of England Bill, which I spoke about because I consider this to be a financial as well as an environmental and social risk, and countless future regulations and laws that we will need to pass to tackle this issue.

The UK is at the forefront with the Climate Change Act. We are a seeding ground for good ideas. We have fantastic lawyers, policymakers and politicians. We have already contributed a huge amount and we can go on to do a great deal more, but it will need political consensus, and we should ensure that that remains. I hope that the Government will do all they can to reassert that consensus in the coming weeks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

Of course I do: there is no shortage of challenges here.

Just to bring us back to the reality, which was again outlined by the noble Baroness opposite, there are three key aims for the department. I do not think they have changed from the previous Government. Those aims are affordability, security and decarbonisation. Noble Lords will recognise the reality of government that sometimes hard decisions must be made. There is no better example of that than the steel industry. I was at the steel summit. Many Labour MPs, understandably—and, in one sense, rightly—argued that there should be relief for those businesses. We seek to go forward with all three aims together. I do not disagree with that.

All I am saying on this particular point is that there is a massive opportunity for British businesses. I will come on to that in a minute. It is not just the Government that must address these issues; it is also cities, businesses and individuals. We have touched on all that. A massive part of the UK economy is already low carbon. If we translate that, say, to the opportunities for zero-carbon cars, again we are already the second-largest producer of those. This is another massive opportunity for the United Kingdom. Work is being done on this, but again it is not simple. It is a question of ensuring that we have battery storage and so on. This work is going on.

[Baroness Worthington]

It is a challenge and there needs to be cross-departmental thinking, but I always feel that at the heart of this is the Treasury. A positive statement from the Chancellor on the kind of approach that the Treasury wants us to take—that is, least cost, focusing on those win-win situations where we can attract inward investment into the UK—would be enormously helpful to reassure people ahead of Paris that the whole Government share this agenda. Could the Minister commit to speaking to the Chancellor to get him to say something positive on this, please?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

The noble Baroness is not wrong about the need for messaging. My right honourable friend the Chancellor has on many occasions spoken of the importance of addressing the two challenges of climate change and the economy at the same time, and noted that we can go forward on the two together. I will endeavour to get her copies of that. Of course the Treasury is central to this. It is central to it in any Government. That almost goes without saying.

I addressed the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. I understand the points she made about the great advantage we have with the United Kingdom’s strong position on law and order, and the importance of the legal system, and so on. I absolutely agree with that.

To illustrate the fact that this is being taken forward internationally, and that not only the United Kingdom has moved on in climate change policy, since 1997 there have been globally 750 new policies enacted. Now, we all know the challenges in making sure that those translate into action, but at least there is a recognition internationally of the nature of this challenge. That is really one of the very heartening things about the position at the moment. Of course there are differences of opinion on the way forward in the sense that each country will want to puts its own particular case, quite naturally, but there is an international recognition of the nature of this challenge.

I certainly do not need convincing about the scientific case. I do not believe that the great bulk of the overwhelming scientific evidence is wrong; it is right. I do not believe that 155-plus countries are wrong; they are right. This is a massive challenge and one we need to address. Indeed, it is one we are addressing. I was talking with representatives from South America yesterday, and there is recognition across the board that this is a crucial issue that needs addressing quickly.

I shall pull my comments to an end because, although I have not got to the end of my 20 minutes, I think that the debate has run out of time. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, also raised the issue of economic growth and climate action going forward together, and I entirely agree with that.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, has vast experience of overseas matters. He asked, perhaps slightly mischievously, if the Prime Minister will be going. He will know that the Prime Minister’s diary would not be public at this stage—but, suffice to say, the Prime Minister, DfID, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Foreign Office are all very closely involved with this, and all regard it as imperative. We have had a state visit by President Xi, when these were discussed. We are about to have a visit from Prime Minister Modi of India, when these things will be discussed. These are all crucial.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, asked some very interesting points, although I was slightly blindsided because I had not thought of this dimension. I shall get a detailed response to her on those points, but it is certainly true to say that she raises relevant issues on air and water pollution and the use of energy.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McFall, for endorsing the Pope’s encyclical in this regard; that is entirely right.

On domestic adaptation, we are doing many things domestically; it is partly about mitigation and change of policy and partly about adaptation. That means things like coastal protection on the east coast, in Clacton, and flood measures in Leeds, as well as the Boston barrier. We are looking at how effective the Thames barrier is. Thank goodness that we have it, but we need to look at it again in the light of changing circumstances.

I shall write to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in relation to the tax regime on community energy schemes, because I do not have the answer to hand. I have a feeling that it was recognised in the consultation as a special case. However, I may be wrong on that and I shall write to him in detail.

This has been an excellent, first-class debate. I shall make sure that a detailed response goes to noble Lords on points that have been discussed and that I have not covered, and that those points will go to all government departments. Once again, many thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.