Paris Agreement on Climate Change Debate
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Barry Gardiner
Main Page: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent West)Department Debates - View all Barry Gardiner's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that the USA and China have both ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change; regrets that the Government has not accepted the Opposition’s offer of support for immediate commencement of domestic procedures to ratify the Paris Agreement; further notes that if the UK lags behind its G20 partners in ratifying the Paris Agreement it risks losing diplomatic influence on this crucial future security issue; recognises, in light of the EU referendum vote, the need to maintain a strong international standing and the risk of rising investment costs in UK energy infrastructure; and calls on the Government to publish by the end of next week a Command Paper on domestic ratification and to set out in a statement to this House the timetable to complete the ratification process by the end of 2016.
I am delighted to rise to move this motion.
“My country has an unwavering commitment to pursue the path of sustainable development”: those were the words of President Xi last week when he and President Obama jointly—communist China and capitalist America—announced their ratification of the Paris climate treaty. In a quite extraordinary event, we saw the world’s two superpowers, who are also the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, locked in an embrace to try to save our species from itself—from so altering our atmosphere that we make it almost impossible for many of our fellow human beings to survive, and destroy countless other species and ecosystems in the process. A few days before they did so, I wrote to our Prime Minister urging her to begin the process of ratification of the treaty by the UK. I understand her office passed my letter to the Secretary of State. I also tabled today’s motion to discuss ratification and press for the UK to follow China and America’s lead and get on and ratify the Paris agreement. So now with the US and China making it highly likely that the agreement will formally come into force by the end of this year, I decided that if China and America can put aside their differences and ratify, surely we in Parliament could do the same and become founder parties to the agreement.
I wrote to the Secretary of State and offered to amend the motion to make it the formal vote required by the House of Commons to ratify the treaty. The process of ratification is not unduly complex. It requires the tabling of a Command Paper by the Government and then affirmative resolution by both Houses. The Government have not tabled that Command Paper. In fact, my offer has still not received any formal response. The Scottish National party agreed. The Green party agreed. Plaid Cymru agreed. When I eventually could find a Liberal Democrat to speak to, he agreed as well. Here we had Her Majesty’s official Opposition, the Labour party, offering to forgo one of its precious Opposition day debates to do something on a cross-party basis and for the wider good—to create parliamentary time for something the Government had said they wanted to do but could not find the time for—yet that offer was rejected.
Sometimes, I think that people must look at us in this Parliament and say to themselves, “Can they not, just for once, put aside their petty party differences and agree to do something together? Are they really not bigger than this?” The Government had even said earlier this year that they would do this. In March, David Cameron agreed the EU Council conclusions, which underlined
“the need for the European Union and its Member States to be able to ratify the Paris Agreement as soon as possible and on time so as to be Parties as of its entry into force.”
James Heappey (Wells) (Con)
The shadow Secretary of State knows that I am a great supporter of the Paris climate change treaty, and I hope that we will ratify it as soon as possible, but I cannot help but feel that he is manufacturing a disagreement here. I think that there is consensus on both sides of the House that we should ratify it. All member states of the EU must ratify it in their time, so in my view, his sense of urgency is also manufactured.
Barry Gardiner
The hon. Gentleman is wrong. I trust him, and I know that he cares deeply about this issue; I think he knows that I do, too. The olive branch that I extended to the Secretary of State was a genuine one. This is something that I had been told the Government wanted to do; indeed, they stated publicly on many occasions earlier this year that that was the case. However, I had been told that they had been unable to find the time to do it yet, so I decided that this would be an opportunity for them to make time. This is therefore a matter of deep regret to me. I am sure that the Minister will come to the Dispatch Box in due course and explain to us precisely why it was impossible to take this opportunity to table the Command Paper yesterday or the day before and to use this parliamentary time to enable us in the House of Commons to vote to ratify the treaty.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has secured this time to debate these matters. The United States of America, China and France have already completed ratification, and other G20 countries such as Brazil and Germany have pledged to do so by the end of the year. All we are asking this Government to do is to set out precisely what the timescale is going to be for the United Kingdom to ratify this important piece of work, but we are not getting any answers from them.
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but I really hope that we can make some progress this afternoon. The right hon. and hon. Members in the Government Front Bench team know that I have respect for them and that I do not seek to be partisan on this matter, but I will attack them if they do not keep to their commitments and I will continue to do so.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, and this has been very much a cross-party debate on climate change, but the heart of the commitment on climate change is the Climate Change Act 2008, which was voted on in this House and is now part of British law. We have committed in the Act to achieve an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050. I echo the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) that the hon. Gentleman is creating an argument where there is none. The Government have not said that they will not ratify the treaty, and I fully believe that we will do so. We must think about this very sensibly, and I hope that we will continue to lead the way, just as we have done all along the line.
Barry Gardiner
I am delighted that the hon. Lady has referred to the Climate Change Act 2008 and to the fact that the commitments made under the Act are legally binding on us. Later in my speech, I shall examine exactly what the legislation stated and try to show precisely where the Government have deviated from it over the past couple of years. This is why we have been on a pathway of divergence rather than convergence in this House for the past two years. The bipartisan—indeed, cross-party—approach that used to obtain in the House on these matters has been severely tested by what has been seen as the Government’s backsliding on those legally binding commitments. I shall adumbrate that a little later.
Until this morning, it was not clear to me why the olive branch I had extended to the Government had been quite so haughtily ignored. Then I found out what the Minister had said to the Aldersgate Group and what the Secretary of State had quietly revealed to journalists at his departmental cocktail reception for the ladies and gentlemen of the press yesterday evening—[Interruption.] They laugh. They said candidly that they would not be publishing the carbon plan by the end of the year. Carbon plan? What is that?
This is not the kind of thing that any normal member of the public would think sounds terribly important. If I were to explain that it is really important because it is supposed to set out precisely how the Government are going to meet their carbon budget, that same hypothetical member of the public might look blank, because people do not talk in these terms. They do not talk in terms of carbon plans and carbon budgets; they talk in terms of effects, not budgets. They know that climate change is causing disruption across the world, with more flooding in some places and more drought in others, with stronger hurricanes and typhoons and with the loss of crops and arable land. They know that that is related to the emissions polluting our air and our children’s lungs, and these things are important to them.
That is precisely why we politicians agreed, back in 2008—under a Labour Government but very much on a cross-party basis—to limit the ways in which we were causing those problems. We agreed to reduce and limit those emissions that were changing the world with such devastating effect. That is why we created the Committee on Climate Change to set legally binding carbon budgets that would precisely limit the damage that we were doing, but we tasked it to ensure that we always adopted the most cost-efficient pathway, so that we could move towards the long-term target of at least an 80% reduction in admissions by 2050 at the lowest possible cost to the public, to industry and to business.
That is why this carbon plan is so important. How dare the Secretary of State let slip to a few journalists at a cocktail party that of course he will not be publishing the carbon plan by the end of this year? How dare the Minister reveal to the Aldersgate Group that he “may” find space in the timetable to publish it in 2017? May? May? I ask the Minister to read the primary legislation, which states that after the publication of a carbon budget, the Government must publish a plan to put it into effect
“as soon as is reasonably practicable”
thereafter. The fourth carbon budget was published in 2011. Five and a half years later, we still have no carbon plan. My grasp of the English language is not so weak that I would think that five and a half years, during which we have had a change of Government and a new Prime Minister, constitutes “as soon as is reasonably practicable”. And now the Minister says that he “may” get around to doing this in 2017.
Earlier this year, the Government promised that the reason for the delay was simply that they now wanted to include their measures for achieving the fifth carbon budget in the plan, which they set almost three weeks later than the legislation required. This is another area in which the Government have lost the people’s confidence. The primary legislation is very clear. It states that a carbon budget must be deposited on 30 June 12 years before it comes into effect. The Government published it before then, but they did not set it in legislation, as was required by law, until 19 July—almost three weeks late.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is making the point that publishing the carbon plan would be very good and a useful next step. He spoke earlier about the pertinence of climate change to ordinary people on the street. The reality is that 222,000 homes in Wales are in danger of flooding. The current cost of remedying that danger would be about £200 million, and that cost is certain to grow. This demonstrates the need for urgency.
Barry Gardiner
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. When we talk about such matters in terms of carbon plans and carbon budgets, it can seem as though we are talking about a world separate from that understood by the people who listen to us. They understand when their homes are being flooded. They know that such things are the effects of climate change. What they need to know is that we are following what was the best legislative model in the world when it was set out in 2008 with cross-party agreement under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). We achieved that here and it has become a model across the world, but we must follow it and the tragedy is that this Government have been backsliding.
The reason Ministers could not accept the cross-party olive branch that I extended was that, the night before, they knew that they were about to admit to the world that they still had not a single clue about how they were going to meet the promises and targets that they had already made to keep the UK safe from climate change. They knew that they were not even going to commit to a new deadline by when they might put such a plan together and that to come to this Chamber today—all smiles—in a cross-party endeavour to ratify the Paris agreement would have exposed them to the accusation of being arrogant hypocrites. They have avoided that charge, but they have opened themselves up to an infinite number more: incompetence, dithering, anti-business, anti-investment. They are a party divided between those who circle on the Back Benches saying that all these budgets and plans are just costly “green crap” and that we should get on with a future industrial strategy based on fossil fuels and the few sane heads, some of whom are in the Chamber today—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. There is some unrest about the hon. Gentleman’s language, but I think that in using a word that I would not advise him to use, nor would I use myself, he was in fact perhaps quoting.
Barry Gardiner
My excuse is that I believe I was quoting the former Prime Minister, who used such language about his previous embrace of the huskies.
Madam Deputy Speaker
We will leave the point as to whether it was a quote or a misquote, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will temper his language.
Madam Deputy Speaker
No. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his making his point of order, because the reason for my intervention was to ensure that the rest of the debate will see temperate language that we would all be happy to quote in future.
Barry Gardiner
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
This is interesting because the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) is one of those who believes that in meeting their climate change commitments the Government are wrongheaded and that man-made climate change is somewhat overblown as a hypothesis. He is, in effect, a climate change denier—[Interruption.]
David T. C. Davies
Up until that point, the hon. Gentleman was quite right and I was nodding. I have never ever denied that the climate changes. In fact, on every single occasion that I have spoken on this subject, I have made the point straightaway that of course the climate changes, but that it has been changing for a lot longer than 250 years. The real deniers are people like the hon. Gentleman who seem to deny that the climate changed prior to the industrial revolution.
Barry Gardiner
I was of course referring to the hon. Gentleman being a denier of anthropogenic climate change, and he knows that.
However, there are sane heads who understand that when the world’s largest superpowers ratify a climate change treaty that commits the world to a net carbon future by the second half of this century, it is time to do what President Obama said last week and
“put your money where your mouth is.”
Last year, global investment in low-carbon technology was $286 billion. The problem is that investment in developing countries outpaced that in richer nations. We are locked in a low-carbon race and we are losing. The reason I want us to get on and ratify is not because Paris is some sort of totemic environmental symbol, but because political leadership sends a strong signal to attract investment. Countries with a clear policy framework are the ones that attract investment. Countries with a stable policy framework attract investment. The UK has had neither over the past few years.
On solar, the Government plan this month to hike the tax on businesses with rooftop solar installations through a six to eight times increase in business rates. In 2015, they cut all solar subsidy for commercial installations of over 5 MW and reduced the subsidy for the rest by 65%. The Government’s own figures show that that has resulted in a 93% fall in UK solar deployment and the loss of more than 12,000 jobs in the industry.
On wind power, the Government decided to end all subsidy for onshore wind farms despite them being the cheapest source of renewable power. For offshore wind, they took away all investment certainty by announcing that they would extend the levy control framework only to 2021.
On biomass, I wrote to the Secretary of State only a few days ago to ask why regulatory changes to the tariff structure of combined heat and power biomass plants were rushed through this summer, using secondary legislation to amend the renewable heat incentive without proper consultation. No impact assessment was made of the risk to business, and trade associations estimate that £140 million of investment is now at risk.
On carbon capture and storage technology, the Government broke their manifesto promise, cancelling £4 billion of promised finance—the latest £1 billion was cancelled last year just six months before it was due to be awarded, sinking the White Rose and Peterhead projects.
On energy efficiency, the Government ditched the zero-carbon homes policy and finally scrapped their green deal policy despite having no idea about how to replace it with other household efficiency measures.
On transport, the Government reduced the vehicle excise duty incentives for low-emissions vehicles. Is it any wonder that in just four years we have sunk from fourth to 13th in the Ernst and Young index of the best places for investment in low-carbon industries?
Just to make the investment picture complete, they took the quite monstrous decision to sell off the green investment bank. A bank that was precisely set up because there was a market failure that the private sector simply could not address. By abolishing the GIB, they are now prepared to starve low-carbon industries in the UK of the investment that they need at a critical phase of development.
However, not all parts of the energy nexus are being hit by this Government. In 2013, they announced that fracking companies would pay half the tax paid by conventional oil and gas producers. The then Chancellor called the tax regime the
“most generous for shale in the world”.
CCS, commercial solar, business rates on rooftop solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, biomass, the levy control framework, the green deal—is there any part of our energy sector that I have not mentioned? Oh yes, nuclear. Hinkley—oh dear. Dithering, delay, incompetence and an overpriced contract have led to a contract for difference that will now cost the bill payer, not the Government, not the £6.1 billion originally calculated by the Government but the £30 billion as determined by the National Audit Office.
The Hinkley project has already been delayed for eight years, and the Prime Minister has now thrown in into chaos. Two and half years ago, the Government should have reviewed the project on grounds of cost. To do so after the EDF board had taken a final knife-edge investment decision is to show a level of contempt for investors in our energy infrastructure and a lack of understanding of how company boards actually take decisions, sending out the most damaging message and turning investors away from the UK as a market of preference for low-carbon investment.
Rebecca Pow
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point, but I suggest that it is all about the way one uses statistics. In this country, 16% of our energy comes from renewables, and this year 25% of our electricity is from renewable sources. He laughs, but in 2014, 30% of all of Europe’s renewable energy investment took place here. Does he not agree that that is an excellent track record, and that one of the best ways we can indicate we are combating climate change is by phasing out fossil fuel power stations, which is exactly what this Government are doing?
Barry Gardiner
The hon. Lady is right to say that we have had an enviable track record on the amount of our renewables and way in which they have been built up. But of course the statistics she referred to were created by the policies that previously allowed the subsidy into the renewable industry. The points that I have just been making show clearly how the Government, in the past 18 months to two years, have withdrawn those subsidies. As I said, the effect on the solar industry was a 93% cut in the projects that are now going ahead—in the panels and the capacity now being installed.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) mentioned energy investment in this country, but she failed to mention that energy companies in this country often buy in energy from Europe—in fact, they have invested £2 billion to £3 billion in Europe. That does not say much for the Government’s energy policy, does it?
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I had not referred to it in my speech, so I am glad he has drawn the House’s attention to it, because interconnection with Europe is vital for our energy security. It would be a very positive move if the Minister were to talk about the future of energy infrastructure and of energy interconnection with the continent. As I understand it, there is no reason why coming out of the European Union should mean we are not part of the single energy market—that can stand separately. I would very much like confirmation from the Minister that the Government intend to make sure that that is safeguarded, because it is an important way of managing our energy supply.
Instead of using our time today to take a bold step forward, seeking Commons approval for the UK to join the founder parties of the historic Paris climate deal, we have had to hold the Government to account for just how far the UK’s leadership on climate change has fallen on their watch. Leapfrogged by the world’s biggest polluters, we have gone from the world-leading Climate Change Act to where we now sit: with a 47% gap in meeting our target, which we simply do not know how to fill—we have not yet even given a date for the publication of the plan as to when we will fill it. I will rephrase that, because we do know how to fill it. It is by properly insulating millions of homes in the UK to increase energy-efficiency and, where that is not viable—with older, single-skin properties—by ensuring that they have access to low-carbon renewable community sources of energy, so that we are not burning fossil fuels to see the heat escape through draughty walls and windows. It is by transforming our transport system with electric vehicles whose battery capacity can double up as storage facility and fill that space that intermittent renewable technologies require.
Later today, the leader of the Labour party will set out his ambitious vision for our environmental and energy policy, creating 300,000 jobs in low-carbon industries and using a new national investment bank to invest in public and community-owned renewable energy projects. The Paris agreement demands that we move to a net zero-carbon future in the second half of this century. That requires courage and imagination. It requires a coherent low-carbon investment plan. Today should have been a day when all parties came together to piece together that future in optimism and hope. By turning their back on that opportunity, the Government must explain when they will ratify the Paris agreement and when they will publish the carbon plan to show the British public how they will deliver on that promise.
Mr Hurd
The hon. Lady addresses a very important and substantive issue, which lies at the heart of this Government’s commitment to forge and commit and put on the tin of this new Department the need for an industrial strategy. As the Prime Minister said, that strategy needs to work for everyone, to create a broader sense of opportunity across the country and to take a very hard look at industries, sectors and places and think about future competitiveness and resilience, It needs to ask such questions as: “Where are the opportunities going to come from?” and “How do we broaden the opportunity for other people?”. I am talking about fundamental, deep-seated questions, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering. Fundamental to that incredibly important work is this debate today and the debate about the future of our low carbon economy.
I was just trying to make the point about the importance of the fifth carbon budget, which commits us to reducing our emissions in 2030 by 57% relative to 1990 levels. That is a very major commitment. I will return to our commitment to take effective climate action in the UK, but, out of respect to the hon. Member for Brent North, I will address the issue of Paris ratification, before moving on to address how we intend to maintain our international influence.
We signed the Paris agreement in April and we said that we would ratify it as soon as possible, and we will. For the information of the House—the hon. Gentleman knows this—there are two steps to ratification. First, countries complete their domestic processes to approve the treaty and then they deposit an instrument of ratification with the UN. We signed the agreement as part of the European Union. As many Members know, we negotiated the treaty together and—this point was ignored in the hon. Gentleman’s speech—the convention is that we will ratify it together. That is our understanding. Until we leave the EU, the UK will remain a full member with all the obligations that that entails.
Colleagues will understand that with such a complex process in which so many different countries are going through their domestic processes of approval—we are lucky because ours is relatively straightforward and there is an understanding that we will ratify simultaneously —it has always been understood that the EU was never expected to be at the vanguard of ratification. Indeed, that was confirmed to me by the most senior people involved in the negotiating process and, in part, explains why others have chosen to go first. Of course we welcome that, as we want early ratification of this hugely important treaty.
Mr Hurd
I will just finish my point and then, of course, I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. For the same reason, it is very difficult for us to set the timeline for ratification that the hon. Gentleman seeks. It depends on the timing of the other processes. However, I wish to reassure him and the House that we will start our own process as soon as possible. Although I cannot confirm the exact timetable today because the processes are not complete, we will make a decision and we will communicate it at the appropriate point. The main issue is not whether that decision comes next week, as he seeks, or soon after, but that we fulfil our commitment to ratify as soon as possible. With that I am very happy to take the hon. Gentlemen’s intervention and thank him for his patience.
Barry Gardiner
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene. He has just said that it was never the intention that the EU would ratify the treaty as one of the founder members, but in March this year, the EU Council underlined
“the need for the European Union and its Member States to be able to ratify the Paris Agreement as soon as possible and on time so as to be Parties as of its entry into force.”
The conclusion of the March Council, therefore, was that we would be founder members and that we would enter the agreement. However, because it is now clear that that final ratification with the Secretary-General will be in December of this year, it is vital that EU member states now take early action. We should be taking even earlier action to push other member states to fulfil what the European Council statement said.
Mr Hurd
Let me be absolutely clear: this Government welcome the shift in dynamic in terms of the ratification process. It is fantastically good news. As the hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out, the important change—it has been the most important change since I was immersed in this matter in my first Parliament—is the shift in the attitude of the two biggest economies—the United States and China, This is the big game changer. Frankly, that is much, much more important than the exact timing of when we lay a command order in this place. No one is in any doubt about the commitment of the UK to this process. We have demonstrated that commitment under the leadership of successive Secretaries of State—I am delighted to see the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) in his place today—over many Governments.
Mr Hurd
The hon. Gentleman has a long and distinguished record. We served together on environmental Committees a very long time ago. I thank him for his interest. He is right on one point. Yes, France has completed its domestic processes. He is entirely wrong on his second point, which was that the Government have not even begun to think about the process. We have, and we will be in a position to make our announcement on this at an appropriate point. I am sorry that it is not today, but we have made it clear, as the Prime Minister set out explicitly today, that we do intend to ratify as soon as possible.
On the important question of international influence, the challenge is not just how we meet our own commitments in the fairest and most cost-effective way, but how we maximise our influence to make sure that others play their full part. Those two aspects are linked, because it is easier for us to keep our people, businesses and private sector with us on this journey if they feel that other countries are fully engaged, and if they see that the global opportunity offered by the low-carbon economy, which I will come to, is real, substantial and growing, and that we must maximise our involvement in it.
I want to address the question of an international instrument, which the hon. Gentleman is rightly and understandably probing and which underlies the motion. UK diplomacy is widely recognised as having played an important role in shaping and securing the Paris agreement. The framework for the commitments to which countries have signed up has clearly been influenced by the structure that we have set up in the UK. That is enormously welcome. Our influence was built not on symbolism, but on substance.
We were the first to put our own house in order, putting world-leading targets into law and implementing the policies to meet them. We then established what is still the most extensive network of climate attachés in our embassies overseas. We gave other countries practical help in areas such as carbon pricing, energy planning, power sector reform, low-carbon urban development, green finance and climate legislation. Climate change researchers are now, apparently, working with the Chinese on the structure of their own emissions trading scheme. In many of these areas, UK expertise is world leading, and sharing it has strengthened our bilateral relationships and opened up commercial opportunities. I pay tribute to Sir David King for the work that he has done over many years with commitment and passion, which he maintains today.
We have also played a leading role in international climate finance. Ahead of Paris, we committed to providing at least £5.8 billion—that is serious money—of international climate finance over the next five years to support poorer countries in raising their level of ambition to reduce emissions and strengthening their resilience to growing climate insecurity. In the Department for International Development, I had responsibility for the climate finance brief. On regular trips to Africa, I saw the exposure, vulnerability and cost attached to lack of resilience to climate change, which made even clearer to me the importance of international climate finance. I am very proud of the lead that we have taken, and of the fact that we have been asked by the global community to take the lead in Marrakesh on setting out the road map for further progress.
We arrived in Paris well respected, with a strong set of relationships. On top of that, the UK negotiating team in the UN is recognised as one of the strongest in the world. It was rightly praised after Paris for playing a key role in bringing diverse countries into the agreement. Before I close on the past, it is appropriate to put on record my personal appreciation, and I am sure that of many colleagues, of the leadership role played by the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who is now Home Secretary.
I can reassure the House that all these elements of our influence remain strong. Our bilateral co-operation on climate and energy with key international partners remains as wide ranging and ambitious as ever. As I said, our climate finance over the next five years will be 50% greater than it was over the past five years. Our investment in clean energy research and development will double over the next five years, and we are a leading member of a group of 20 countries that have all made such a commitment. The Governor of the Bank of England is leading the way globally on green finance and the important issue of climate risk disclosure. The Bank of England co-chairs the G20’s working group on green finance with the People’s Bank of China. Our negotiating teams across Government remain active and influential, not only on the US process that will meet again soon in Marrakesh, but in critical negotiations on emissions from civil aviation and the maritime sector, and hydrofluorocarbons.
I agree that ratifying the Paris agreement early is important symbolically. That is why we will ratify as soon as we can, but it is not credible to suggest that our international influence hangs on this one symbol when it is so firmly rooted in substance. We in this Government are proud of the leadership that the UK has shown and we have no intention of surrendering it.
Our influence overseas will always rest on our action at home. Few countries can lay greater claim to leadership in decarbonisation than the UK. Through the Climate Change Act, we were the first country to set a legally binding 2050 target to reduce our emissions by at least 80% compared with 1990. That target is in line with the Paris agreement’s goal of keeping the temperature rise to well below 2º C. We have not just set targets; we have acted. At home, just as abroad, we focus not on symbolism, but on substance. We reduced UK emissions by 36% in 2014 compared with 1990. Between 2010 and 2015 alone, we reduced emissions by 17%, which was the biggest reduction in a single Parliament.
On this journey, we have proved something that was in doubt when we started debating the issue in 2005 and 2006: whether cutting emissions comes at the expense of economic growth. We have proved in the UK that it does not. UK emissions have steadily decreased since 1990 while GDP has increased. By 2014, emissions had fallen by 36%, while GDP has increased by 61% since 1990. We have proved that green growth is a reality.
We have invested in clean energy, with 99% of our solar power being installed since 2010. Renewables now provide a greater share of our electricity generation than coal. I am confident that that impressive progress will continue. During this Parliament, our investment in clean energy generation is set to double, and we are on track for 35% of our electricity to come from renewables by 2020.
I will respond to the provocation from the hon. Member for Brent North. As we develop our emissions reduction plan, which is one of the Department’s top priorities, we will set a course towards deeper emission reductions in both heating and transport. The hon. Gentleman asked me about the emission reductions plan and, I think, manufactured a suggestion of gossip from the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman totally distorts what I said last night. He needs to check his sources.
The emissions reduction plan matters enormously. Any suggestion from the hon. Gentleman that this Government are not taking it seriously, are sliding away from it or do not understand its importance is misleading and misrepresents our position. It is important for the reasons that he states: to underpin the credibility of our progress towards challenging decarbonisation targets, and because, as he stated, if it is done well, it will send signals to market for investment and for the mobilisation of private capital and the private sector that is fundamental for success. It is essential that we get our carbon reduction plan right.
Mr Hurd
I am about to finish. The hon. Gentleman had plenty of time to speak. He knows that I am very laid back, but he stirred me with the approach that he took. The conversations that we are having about the emissions reduction plan—the carbon plan—are driven by the conviction that we must get this right. The hon. Gentleman knows the subject well and he knows the challenge that faces us. We have to take people with us, including a set of new Ministers with critical briefs, who need some time to get on top of the issues at stake because they are so important. We need to engage with the private sector and non-governmental organisations. This has to be a shared challenge. We have to make sure that the process is properly connected with the extremely important substantive and long-term work and thinking being done about the industrial strategy, because Paris, as he rightly said, changes so much—not least because the two largest economies in the world are saying, “We are now set out on a path towards decarbonisation of our power systems and our transport systems.” If we turn that into an estimate of the investment required, it runs into trillions of dollars.
We need to get this right, and all I was saying is that that is the priority. If we can meet all those criteria—if we can do all those things—by the end of 2016, great, but the overriding priority is to get this right, and that is what drives us. I hope that that is supported by Members on both sides of the House who can see that this commitment is important for our UK national interest, as it is for our identity as a responsible global citizen.
I am going to conclude. Our primary task is to manage a risk, but all this investment and innovation, as I have suggested, is creating one of the most important economic opportunities the UK has seen—arguably since the industrial revolution. The global low-carbon market is estimated to be worth more than $5 trillion, and it is now forecast to expand rapidly in the wake of the Paris agreement. Over the next 15 years, it is estimated that around $90 trillion will be invested in the world’s energy systems, land use and urban infrastructure, and an increasing proportion of that needs to be low-carbon if our globally agreed climate goals are to be met. The UK’s leadership and experience will put UK industry in a prime position to benefit.
The UK low-carbon sector is worth over £46 billion across more than 90,000 businesses. It employs more than 240,000 people and indirectly supports many more. There is great potential for it to continue to create high-value jobs in construction, manufacturing and services. That is why—here there is a genuine point of difference with the Opposition—the creation of the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is such an exciting opportunity. As we contemplate the importance and the consequences of Paris, and as we go through substantive processes in the industrial strategy, we think deeply about the future of our places, industries and sectors, and about what we can do to make them more competitive and more resilient, to broaden opportunity in this country and to make the economy work for everyone. It must be right to look at how our energy decarbonisation and industrial challenges can be brought together and thought through much more effectively than in the past. I regret that the Opposition continue to shadow the Government as they would like them to be, rather than as they actually are.
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that is a fact. There was a cooling from the 1940s onwards. That is why, when I was growing up in the 1970s, people were worried that the next ice age was coming.
From the mid-1970s until about 1998 there was a significant amount of warming, but from 1998 until now there has been no statistically recognisable warming. People keep referring to the third hottest year on record, or whatever it is, but the reality is that when we look at the actual temperature increases, we see that they are absolutely minute. They are almost impossible to detect. Scientists who are asked about it will also have to admit that the margin for error within those increases is much greater than the increases themselves. Given the level of increase that we are seeing, it is perfectly possible to explain it away, because we are not comparing like with like. We are using slightly different temperature gauges, the areas in which we are using them have moved, some of the areas that they are in have changed over the years, and they can be subject to something called the urban heat island effect or to other natural factors. So there has not really been an increase since 1998.
Members may shake their heads, but I have raised this with the Met Office, and also with Professor Jim Skea. Scientists refer to it as the Pause, and they have come up with numerous explanations for it. I have heard about volcanoes, for instance, and the heat going into the ocean. At a meeting in this building, Professor Skea suggested that a pause over 16 or 17 years was statistically insignificant, which prompts an obvious question: if 17 years of temperatures not rising are insignificant, why are 30 or 35 years of temperatures increasing slightly so significant that we have to make radical changes to our economy and our industry to try and tackle that?
Barry Gardiner
Of course I have not dismissed the possibility that the hon. Gentleman might be right and that all the meteorological experts in the world are simply mistaken, but does he accept that if his thesis that there is natural as well as anthropogenic warming is correct, we are in a much worse position than we had thought, and therefore anything we can do to minimise the anthropogenic causes becomes all the more important, rather than less so?
David T. C. Davies
I do not of course dismiss the possibility that the experts may be right. I have never said they are wrong; I have merely suggested that they ought to be able to answer some fairly basic questions if they expect us as policymakers to go ahead with policies that are going to be profoundly unpopular with the public and which, in many cases, the NGOs that support those policies will not support the consequences of—I will come back to that. The point the hon. Gentleman is making is that if some of this warming is natural, the amount of warming that is not natural is that much greater in terms of the percentage of CO2 that has caused it. [Interruption.] Well, there is another issue that I am tempted to go into, but I have been asked by the Whips to keep it short and I will respect that, and that is whether or not this is a logarithmic increase. In other words—[Interruption.] Yes, I am getting looks from all around. In simple terms, if X amount of CO2 has caused Y amount of warming, would 2X of CO2 cause twice as much warming? People seem to have made the assumption that it would, but of course, in nature things often do not work that way.
Let me return to the Paris agreement. It talks about limiting temperature increases to about 2° of what they were in pre-industrial times. With due respect to the Minister, which pre-industrial times is that? I do not mean to look angry, but which times is he talking about? Presumably 1800 is about the base figure, but pre-industry goes on for about 4 billion years longer than that. We could quite easily go back a few years further and say 2° above temperatures in the medieval warm period, when they were around the same level as they are now. They were around the same temperature as they are now in the Roman optimum, too. I am probably going to mess this point up, but a Greek philosopher—I think he was called Thracius—was writing about date trees in Greece and how they could be made to grow but could not produce fruit, therefore intimating, through that, that temperatures were about the same then as now in Greece because date trees behave in the same way as they did 2,000 years ago. The point I am making is if we took as a pre-industrial basepoint the year 10 AD we could probably carry on merrily putting CO2 into the atmosphere for quite a while yet before we hit 2° degrees above that period.
Dr Whitehead
Indeed, yes. That is now two stabs to the heart of the Minister’s career.
In his responsibilities and those of his Secretary of State, the Minister has a problem arising from the flurry of policies over the past year on the long-term considerations relating to climate change effects. If his new Department lets those policy changes lie, or runs further with them, the problem will be exacerbated, and his problem of writing a low carbon programme will be magnified.
The new Department benefits from particularly good appointments in the form of Ministers who completely understand and are at ease with the question of what we need to do, where we need to do it, how we need to do it and what the effects will be. We need to identify where those effects may continue to be felt outside the new Department. We can point the finger at what happened with some of those changes under the previous Department of Energy and Climate Change, and we can point the finger in the direction of the Treasury. During the latter stages of the previous Government and in the first period of the present Government, we had the Treasury’s energy and climate change policy and the Department’s energy and climate change policy, and the two rarely coincided. Let us guess who came out on top in terms of policy direction.
My first plea, coupled with kindly advice to the Minister, is to get on top of the Treasury straight away. If Treasury domination of energy and climate change policy is allowed to continue, regardless of the long-term climate consequences, the writing of a new carbon policy will end in tears. To illustrate that, we can look at the previous carbon plan, which came out in December 2011. That plan not only contained some bright ideas, but set out where we were, where we wanted to be in 2050 and how the transition would be undertaken in each of a series of sectors, and that was analysed thoroughly for those sectors.
In the context of the 40% emissions cut that we are now looking at in the European INDCs, the assumptions underlying a low carbon plan are important. How effectively do they cover where we are now, where we are going to be in 2050, how we make that transition and how that transition works in 2030, which is the period that we are now considering? The carbon plan 2011 is clear about carbon saving, the green deal and ECO. It envisages that all practical cavity walls and lofts will be insulated by 2020 and up to 1.5 million solid walls will be insulated. We know that that has gone. There is no longer even a remote chance of such an achievement, particularly with respect to solid walls and probably also with respect to other forms of insulation, because the green deal has gone and ECO has morphed into a pretty restricted version of the original ECO. Yet, the Committee on Climate Change, in its preamble to the fourth carbon budget, suggested, as an assumption in that carbon budget, that by the early 2020s over 2 million treatments of solid-wall properties would have to be undertaken as a central contribution to carbon reduction. So that has gone.
The 2011 programme says carbon capture and storage will
“make a significant contribution by 2030”.
In the scenarios modelled, it is estimated that CCS will contribute as much as 10 GW. Well, that has gone. The Treasury managed to bundle CCS into a cupboard very neatly just a little while ago. Personally, I thought that was one of the biggest enviro-crimes committed by the Treasury, in terms of its policies of cutting off the fundamental route to decarbonisation of remaining baseload power over the period and apparently not worrying about the consequences.
The 2011 carbon plan says:
“From 2030 onwards, a major role for gas as a baseload source of electricity is only realistic with large numbers of gas CCS plants.”
We have committed ourselves to close down coal by 2025, although we have yet to see the consultation on that, but that is to be undertaken, it is stated in the relevant consultation, only if the progress on building new gas plants is sufficient to allow that to happen—that is, the commitment is to phase out coal, but to replace it with a new dash for gas. Yet, the carbon plan and, indeed, the Committee on Climate Change indicate very clearly that gas itself can be maintained as a baseload only if it has a substantial amount of CCS attached to it. We are apparently going ahead with the dash for gas over the next period without any thought that in the reasonable future CCS may come in as far as gas itself is concerned. That has a substantial impact on our ability to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets over the next period.
The low carbon plan says:
“Looking to the future, between 21% and 45% of heat supply to our buildings will need to be low carbon by 2030”,
but the then Secretary of State warned last year that we are failing badly on our 2020 heat targets and there is no chance at present of getting to our 2030 target, so that contribution has also gone.
Finally, let me just pick out some of a larger number changes from the 2011 report. The report said
“all new homes from 2016”
will “be zero carbon”, which would make a considerable contribution to the fourth and fifth carbon budgets. Well, of course, those homes will not be zero carbon, because the zero-carbon homes plan has also been pulled.
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend always speaks with such authority on these matters. In relation to CCS, is he as concerned as I am that the cross-Yorkshire and Humber pipeline has just had its planning deadline extended by the Secretary of State? It looks as if, yet again, these projects are being put into cold storage.
Dr Whitehead
There is perhaps an irony in the words “put into storage”, because the whole purpose of the exercise in the first place is storage. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that the whole question of what will happen with not only CCS pilot projects but the infrastructure and the prospects for CCS as a whole appears to have been put into the long grass, and that is a profound problem as far as our future climate change commitments are concerned.
It is going to be hard to write a convincing new low carbon programme in the light of just some of these things unless the Department gets to work very rapidly and unpicks the damage to the long-term low carbon prospects that have been underlined by the savage changes of the past year. I know that the new Minister is committed personally to making sure that the consequences are right, so that is perhaps an early task on his desk. Let us turn this round so that we can put into the low carbon programme positive consequences for the future rather than the negative consequences that there are at the moment.
These two issues go very closely together. We have to get on, very soon, with doing our bit on ratification. I am encouraged to hear from the Minister that if the documentation is not imminent, perhaps it is pretty imminent.
Mary Creagh
We did not look at all the life cycle issues, but I have a feeling that that might be coming out in the hon. Gentleman’s report. If so, that would be great—a good bit of boxing and coxing from both Committees. He makes a good point: we still have coal-fired power stations, and it would make no sense to have emitting power stations fuelling electric vehicles. We need to look at the whole life cycle of the power supply. There are big issues with battery storage and battery life, and it would be a great prize for our industry if we could find a way to capture renewable energy and store it when we have more than we need.
I have talked about air pollution and air quality zones, and the fact that the targets will not be met until 2020. The report contains a detailed analysis of that. The Volkswagen emissions scandal revealed that 1 million diesel cars in the UK contained cheat device software, and we found a worrying inertia among Ministers when it came to deciding whether to take legal action or any other action. We want Ministers to ask the Vehicle Certification Agency to carry out tests to find out whether those Volkswagen group cars in the UK would have failed emissions tests without those cheat devices. It is important for people to know that. We would also encourage the Serious Fraud Office and the Competition and Markets Authority to make their decisions about whether to take legal action against Volkswagen. In the United States, Volkswagen owners have already started to receive compensation; some have received as much as $10,000.
The Committee has also produced a report recently on the Government’s approach to flooding. Flooding is the greatest risk that climate change places on our country, and the risk is threefold. There is a risk from surface water following heavy rainfall, whether in summer or winter. The July 2007 flooding, which flooded more than 1,000 homes in Wakefield, was the largest civil emergency that this country had seen since world war two. There is a risk from river flooding, which is what we saw in the Christmas and Boxing day floods in York and all across the country, including Scotland and Wales. There is also a risk from a tidal surge from the North sea. We were in a position, I think in 2014, in which a combination of high winter tides and heavy rainfall resulted in red flood warnings and evacuations from Newcastle all the way down to Margate. The entire east coast of England was at risk from a tidal surge.
The ways of mitigating these risks are complex. We need to get in place the civil resilience systems so that we are able to respond when floods occur. So far, we have been fortunate that most of them have happened at different times, but if we were to experience all those different kinds of flood problems at the same time, there could be issues relating to our ability to respond adequately.
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend is making such an important point about flooding. Does she recall that had the high tide and the surges been realigned by one hour, more than 10,000 homes in the Humber area would have been underwater?
Mary Creagh
It was an anxious time. I remember following events on the Met Office website and thinking, “This is not looking good. I would not want to be the Minister in charge.” We cannot keep relying on luck. We must be fully prepared. I am disappointed that the Government’s flood review and the analysis of the resilience of national infrastructure to deal with flooding emergencies has been postponed. We understand that it was a Cabinet Office responsibility, and I have written to the DEFRA Secretary and the Minister for the Cabinet Office to find out where that responsibility now lives because there has been some confusion.
During the recent flooding, we found that if the transport network goes down because a bridge has been taken out or a road has been flooded, the police, the fire service and ambulances are unable to respond. People are unable to make phone calls because digital infrastructure or phone lines go down, and power supplies can also go down. People end up literally and metaphorically in the dark about the flood situation sometimes only 10 miles up the road. We heard that from the people of the Calder valley who came to Leeds to talk to the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally), who is not in his place, and me, and we had an interesting conversation.
Turning to the Environmental Audit Committee’s work on looking at the Treasury, all such decisions are ultimately signed off or not by the Treasury. The National Audit Office told the Committee that there is a growing gap between our stated ambitions on climate change and the policies and spending that the Government are bringing forward to get us there. According to the Government’s own calculations, we are on track to miss our fourth carbon budget between 2023 and 2027 by 10%, yet we saw no action in the previous spending review to take us nearer to closing that gap.
In fact, the spending review contained a number of negative decisions that impacted on our ability to tackle climate change. The last-minute cancellation of support for carbon capture and storage, for which industry had been preparing for seven years, has delayed the roll out of this crucial technology for a decade or more, meaning that the eventual bill for cutting our carbon emissions could be up to £30 billion more. Other last-minute changes, including ending all funding for the green deal, cancelling the zero band of vehicle excise duty on low-emission cars, abolishing the zero carbon standard for new homes, cutting the funding available for greener heating systems available under the renewable heat incentive, and closing the renewables obligation to onshore wind a year earlier than previously promised, have all damaged business and investor confidence.
We need to start valuing our natural capital, such as our bogs, peatlands and rivers—our wild and special places. There is twice as much carbon in our bogs than in the UK’s atmosphere. If we practice farming techniques that drain that land, degrading peat soil and releasing that carbon, we are contributing to the problem, not taking away from it. We need to consider the role of soils—that was another excellent report by the Committee that did not get much Daily Mail attention—and what peatland and bog restoration can do for capturing carbon. That work is vital and contributes to the richness of our ecosystems and wildlife. We will continue to scrutinise the Treasury’s record and work with the National Audit Office and evaluate every future autumn statement for its environmental impact.
In conclusion, the US and China have worked together to ratify the agreement. They are getting a head start in the next great innovation race: the decarbonisation of advanced economies. We are fortunate that we have the Climate Change Act 2008 and the framework that forms the basis for this new industrial revolution in sustainable technology. I hope that all Members will continue to work together and do diligent work in our Select Committees and interest groups to ensure that the Government ratify and honour the spirt of the Paris agreement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jesse Norman)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is my first time at this Dispatch Box. I have often wondered what the view would be like, and I must tell you that it is really not bad. [Laughter.] And I do not just mean the Scottish National party. I was lured, without difficulty but with great regret, from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee because of the challenges involved and the extraordinary fascination of the issues. I discovered on my first day the challenging, testing and strenuous nature of the Department: the Canadian swim technique of being welcomed to the Department, briefed, and then invited to manage two statutory instruments within four hours—on carbon budgets, I might add. I could not have been more pleased to do that, given the importance of the issue.
We have heard many passionate speeches about climate change from Members on both sides of the House. We have gone from the Oracle of Delphi, to the Philippines, to Swansea, to Malawi. We have gone from “Star Trek” to logarithms, and from bogs to lagoons. It has been a fascinating debate. There has been great expertise, some humour and some real wisdom displayed across the House. However, one very odd thing is that this has been an Opposition debate with remarkably little true opposition. We heard very eloquent words from the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who was very kind about the new ministerial team. We have had the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) welcoming the fifth carbon budget. We have had the hon. Members for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) praising the Home Secretary. Their tone has been absolutely admirable—constructive, bipartisan, intelligent and right— and it has been echoed by other colleagues across the House, particularly the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig).
What a contrast with the manufactured indignation of Opposition Front Benchers. You may know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that John Gielgud’s Hamlet was famous for its choked ferocity. He had the capacity to bring a tear to any eye, such was the intensity of his engagement. The Opposition spokesman managed to bring a tear to the eye of those in the House but, alas, it was a tear of laughter. He reminded me more than anything, in his histrionics, of Dame Edith Evans in the role of Lady Bracknell; but instead of declaiming about a handbag, he gave us a lot of nonsense about the Government’s record.
Barry Gardiner
Can the Minister adumbrate one single point that I made in my opening remarks—one single point where I criticised the Government for backsliding—on which I was wrong?
Jesse Norman
There are many that one could pick on, but my point was a matter of tone.
Jesse Norman
I am enjoying the sedentary contributions from the Opposition spokesman, but he has had his moment. Let us focus on the two themes that came through, loud and clear, across all the speeches and interventions today. The first is that the issue of climate change is now in the absolute mainstream of our political debate. Whatever people’s specific views, climate change is recognised across all parties, in all the nations and regions of this country, as a central issue of public concern. The second point follows from that, and it is that we cannot and we must not view this country’s commitments in relation to climate change in a narrowly partisan or party political way. The Paris agreement has been welcomed by Members from across the House, as has the concerted action taken this week by China and the USA.
As the Prime Minister underlined only a few hours ago, this country has long exercised global leadership in this area. It has balanced great ambition with a sober recognition of the costs involved—costs that can hit not merely industry but often, directly and indirectly, the poorest people in our society. There is so much more to do, but what the UK has done is cause for celebration, not regret.
We can all agree that climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the world, and that has been brought home to us again today by the excellent examples highlighted in the contributions of the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) and the hon. Members for Wirral West, for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and for Wakefield, as well as by my brilliant colleague the Minister of State. We agree that climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the world. We agree that the UK has played, and will continue to play, a unique and important role in global action to tackle the changing climate. We agree that that action is an opportunity for growth, for new jobs and for improvements to health, to cities and to our daily lives.
That consensus is the prerequisite. It is the essential long-term basis for concerted action in this area by all Governments, at any time. It will be especially helpful to us as we look forward to the COP22 meeting in Marrakesh in November, which will help to set many of the rules relating to the Paris agreement and so will mark a shift from aspiration to implementation. That consensus, and the need to maintain it, is fundamentally why I still hope that the hon. Member for Brent North will not press this needlessly divisive motion to a vote.
The Government have made it very clear that they welcome the push by the US, by China and by other countries towards the early ratification of the Paris agreement. We remain firmly committed to that agreement and to ratifying it as soon as possible. The convention, however, is that all European Union member states ratify the agreement together, collectively. We hope that that will happen, as has been said, as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, it is not true, as was stated by the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), that France has ratified the agreement. The Commons Library briefing of 6 September says:
“As set out on the UK French Embassy website it will not do so until all Member states and the EU are ready to do so, and will focus”—
in the meantime, on—
“encouraging other Member States to make progress”.
France was reported in the press as having ratified the agreement, but it has not in fact done so.
I appreciate that we have heard some perfectly proper concerns about the Paris agreement coming into force before the EU has ratified it. However, there is widespread international understanding that in the event that the agreement enters into force early, countries that have not yet completed their domestic processes to allow ratification to take place—very important processes of consensual ratification—should not and will not be prejudiced. Not to do so would mean that as many as 140 countries, including some of the very poorest and most climate-afflicted nations in the world, would be denied a full seat at the table. COP22 in Marrakesh in November will, I hope, take a formal decision to that effect.
Turning to recent history, few countries have been more active in decarbonisation than this one. We were the first country to set, through the Climate Change Act, a legally binding 2050 target to drop our emissions by at least 80% on 1990 levels. Far from not having a strategy, we have just signed off our fifth carbon budget, which sets the terms for the overall picture. The UK has made great progress in reducing its emissions, which had fallen by 36% by 2014 on 1990 levels. During the past five years, between 2010 and 2015, our domestic greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 17%, which is the biggest reduction in a single Parliament. We already have domestic obligations that keep the UK well below the 2° rise in temperature goal mandated by the Paris agreement.