Paris Climate Change Conference

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I am also disappointed that my noble friend has ended the “love-in”, as he calls it. If this is regarded as something that states will just cast away, it is significant that it was such a hard agreement to drive and achieve—if it really was, as he perhaps implies, just a piece of paper and not worth the paper it is written on, why was it so hard an agreement to reach? Only one state stood apart from this process and that is North Korea. I suggest that this is no time for strategic alliances with North Korea. This is a world problem that needs a world solution. The agreement is a step on that road.

[Baroness Worthington (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the role he played in Paris, alongside the right honourable Amber Rudd and her team. I also pay particular tribute to Pete Betts, who was the lead negotiator of the DECC team and, indeed, represented the entire EU in the negotiations. He has been an amazing builder and crafter of consensus on this issue.

It is clear that Paris marks a watershed and a new beginning because it is the first time that 190 countries have said that they are all on the same page and they all will take action on this. The noble Viscount pointed out that this is a different deal, and it is for a reason. It is a fantastic example of catching the exact balance between ambition and flexibility to allow maximum participation. We would have achieved nothing in Paris if we had gone trying a top-down, dictatorial approach to bringing emissions down. It is only by building consensus in the way that Paris did so successfully that we have managed to achieve this deal.

I will touch on one issue relating to the implications of this for the UK and, indeed, for the EU. It cannot be the case that Paris is such a significant moment, yet we say that there is nothing more to be done here and that we are already doing everything that we can. Indeed, the text in Paris is quite clear: all countries that can reduce emissions must do so, including before 2020. My question to the Minister is: will you instruct the Committee on Climate Change to look again at our framework to see whether we can do more? I am certain that we can; we have certainly been overachieving our targets in the first of our budgets, carrying a lot of hot air forward. Let us take that hot air out, increase our ambition and continue to lead. It is only through leadership that we can show the rest of the world that this is possible, as we have been doing to date and continue to do.

Once again, I congratulate everyone involved on achieving such a huge and monumental result, including the noble Lord, Lord Stern, who was one of the great architects of this approach, which has delivered a fantastic result.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank the noble Baroness very much indeed for her typically generous comments and associate myself with what she said relating to the noble Lord, Lord Stern, and the entire team in DECC. She rightly mentioned Pete Betts. I spoke to him today; he is up and fighting the case, even given the massive involvement that he had. I also mention in that context Ben Lyon, who was also a key negotiator. They and the entire team worked incredibly hard.

The noble Baroness is right that this process at Paris represents a bottom-up approach, rather than the top-down one that we had in Kyoto. I therefore think that it is entirely the right approach. It is not right to say that this is not legally binding. Finance is obviously connected with performance. This is a treaty that we have every reason to believe will be adhered to. As she says, it is important that the United Kingdom steps up to the plate. We have provided strong leadership and we will continue to do so. We in the department are looking at ways to reduce demand on electricity, as we always do: we are looking at the cars issue across government, at what we can do through DCLG and so on.

The noble Baroness mentioned the Committee on Climate Change. My noble friend Lord Deben is in his place. As I understand it, the committee previously wrote to us and indicated that if it needed to reassess in the light of Paris it would do so and come back to us in the new year. I presume that that is still the position. Again, I pay tribute to what he did out in Paris because I know that he was also very strong there in supporting what was happening.