Climate Change Assembly UK: The Path to Net Zero

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Please do not worry, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is not my speech that I am holding. You and I have seen a lot of reports since we came into the House, and I have here the “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”, the “UK National Ecosystem Assessment”, the “State of Nature” report, “Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming”, the “Clean Air Strategy 2019”, “Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK”, “Reducing UK emissions: Progress Report to Parliament” and “How carbon pricing can help Britain achieve net zero by 2050”—just a small selection of what is on my shelf. Do we really need another report? Yes, we do.

All those reports are politicians telling the public what needs to be done. This Climate Assembly UK report, “The path to net zero”, is the public telling the politicians what needs to be done. About time too! Some fantastic principles have been used to get there. The report is 552 pages long—it is a big read—but it is underpinned by fundamental principles: education and information, fairness, freedom of choice, protecting nature and restoring our natural environment, strong joined-up leadership from Government and a joined-up approach. That is what makes it different.

I want to go straight to recommendation 1:

“We want the transition to net zero to be a cross-political party issue, and not a partisan issue”.

I take it that everyone in this Chamber is in agreement that we need to achieve that. If anything that I say to the Minister sounds like a criticism, it is not because I want to play party politics. I want to co-operate with the Minister, to work with him and to achieve what we have all set our face to achieve.

I want to focus on how the report looks at joined-up government. In that respect, I recommend to everyone yet another report, the National Audit Office report on “Achieving government’s long-term environmental goals”. It states that the 25-year environment plan

“brings together a number of government’s environmental commitments and aspirations in one place, but it does not provide a clear and coherent set of objectives…and…government has yet to set a clear course for the development of a coherent and complete set of environmental objectives, and for a full set of costed delivery plans”.

The report goes on to say that

“government has yet to set out whether or how it will clarify long-term ambitions for the five environmental goals that it has not designated as priority areas…and…that neither Defra nor HM Treasury yet has a good understanding of the long-term costs involved in delivering the Plan as a whole…Defra is developing governance arrangements to help manage the links between different environmental issues”,

and has set up the “two oversight groups”, but:

“In July 2020 the Implementation Board started work to assign responsibilities for managing the links between goal areas, although it has not yet agreed what the most important links are.”

Furthermore, the report recommends that DEFRA

“maps out the most significant interdependencies between the goals in the 25 Year Environment Plan and sets out how decisions about any significant trade-offs will be made, and by who”,

and states:

“Government’s arrangements for joint working between departments on environmental issues are”

simply not good enough. There are

“no clear indications of senior ownership outside Defra and its arms-length bodies for the Plan as a whole…and…no regular, formal arrangements at all for Defra to engage other departments”.

I now go to page 539 of the Climate Assembly report, where it states that 78% of people engaged in the assembly agreed:

““There should be a Minister with exclusive responsibility and accountability for ensuring net zero targets are met and government departments are co-ordinated in their efforts and achievements to meet their targets”.

The Minister must act and do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I thank all Members; this is one of the best debates I have seen in the House. I thought it was temperate, with lots of extremely well considered and informative speeches, so I am very pleased to take part in it.

I thank the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. I particularly thank the citizens who gave up their time to take part in the Climate Assembly UK. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spoke at the launch of the report, and we have taken this report extremely seriously in the Department in which I serve as a Minister. Initiatives such as the Climate Assembly play an important role in helping to develop policies that are achievable and fair.

In response to the point from the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), clearly, citizen engagement—the engagement of our people—is absolutely necessary if we are going to achieve the net zero carbon emissions target that we have set ourselves. I am very pleased that the Select Committees of this House took the initiative and were able to inaugurate this process. Many of the recommendations—people have said this—of the Climate Assembly report have been reflected in the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan that was announced last week, and I will return to some of those at the conclusion of my speech.

Public engagement of this kind, as I have said, is absolutely necessary. We completely agree with the spirit of the Climate Assembly’s recommendation on greater citizenship involvement, and that point was very ably raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), who is not in his place, and it was alluded to by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. The Government will continue to engage with the public on the changes that are needed to develop our ambitions on net zero and to listen very attentively to feedback. People from all over the UK are already doing their bit on climate change, and, with the Together for our Planet campaign, we aim to celebrate this and inspire even more of our fellow citizens to join them.

As a Government, we have also increased dramatically our engagement with the public on policies for net zero. In the past year, we held deliberative workshops with the public on transport, heat, carbon capture and, particularly, on the environment. Last week, as I said and as has been mentioned many times, we saw the Prime Minister announce the 10-point plan. I remind the House that that 10-point plan delivered and reflected many of Climate Assembly UK’s recommendations. The assembly called for a green recovery. The 10-point plan is the Government’s plan for that green recovery, particularly focused on jobs.

[Barry Gardiner]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

There is limited time, so I will just allow one intervention.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am very grateful to the Minister. Speaking of the recommendations, the second most-supported at 94% was:

“We need much more transparency in the relationship between big energy companies and the government, due to concerns over lobbying and influence”.

His Department is responsible for that, so will he take that on board, because transparency is absolutely at the heart of gaining public confidence?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Transparency is absolutely central to any governing process, but particularly in respect of the challenge of fighting climate change.

The assembly called for more wind and solar power. We have stated not only in the manifesto on which we stood last year, but also in the 10-point plan, that we would quadruple offshore wind capacity to 40 GW by 2030. The assembly called for the driving of the growth of low-carbon hydrogen, and the 10-point plan committed £500 million in the first instance for low-carbon hydrogen production across the decade.

The assembly called for a faster transition to net zero emissions vehicles, and I was very pleased to hear the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) mention that in her remarks. She pointed out the fact that in London, and particularly in her constituency, congestion, traffic and pollution are huge issues, and they apply equally to my constituency, which is only a few miles away from hers as the crow flies. I am very pleased to say that that call was listened to, and we have brought forward the zero emissions vehicles target to 2030. I have to add at this point that many natural supporters of the Government have been somewhat sceptical about that ambition, but it is something we are absolutely focused on delivering.

Furthermore, the assembly called for the Government to invest in low-carbon buses and trains. Again, we have committed in the plan to £4.2 billion on city public transport and £5 billion on buses, cycling and walking. The assembly requested that the Government speed up progress on low-carbon aviation, and that point was raised directly by the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury). Once again, as the MP for Spelthorne, which is even closer to Brentford and Isleworth than it is to Richmond Park, I fully endorse that move. I am pleased to announce that the 10-point plan commits to research projects for zero emissions planes and also for sustainable aviation fuels.

The assembly called for a strong policy on greening our buildings, and that point was ably raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston). I am pleased to say that the 10-point plan provides £1 billion to extend the schemes announced by the Chancellor earlier in the year to put energy efficiency at the centre of our building strategy. The green homes grant has been inaugurated and we have extended its deadline. We hope to achieve further successes in the roll-out.

Finally, the assembly recommended maintaining and restoring our natural environment, and that is central to the Government’s ambition to meet the net zero carbon target. It is an ongoing area of policy. Initially, the plan has committed £40 million for a second round of the green recovery challenge fund, but I feel strongly that there will be more to come in that respect. Next year, we will publish a comprehensive net zero strategy and, crucially and critically, we will use our G7 and COP26 presidencies to promote international climate action and to provide the leadership that the hon. Member for Bristol North West spoke of in his remarks.