Wednesday 10th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Bernard Jenkin Portrait Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
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It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell). My immediate priority is to ensure that the Government have the wherewithal to deliver this. They have many key priorities at the moment, not least the recovery from covid, economic rebuilding, consolidating Brexit and establishing the UK’s new place in global affairs, but what could be more important to that fourth priority than COP26, which represents such a critical opportunity for the world to address the increasingly severe impacts of the climate crisis? The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, described it as a “crucial milestone”, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) said:

“The eyes of the world will be on us”.

The UK has often taken the lead on climate issues, and this presidency is a chance to push for ambitious commitments from partners across the globe. I personally favour the idea of a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, embodying treaty commitments to limit fossil fuels coming out of the ground or to bind states to offsetting carbon capture and storage. We already have a good record on that in our own country, and it is important that our own policies reinforce the UK’s commitment to this work. Examples include our commitments to international marine reserves, which promote carbon capture; to agricultural reform and rewilding; to our net zero target; and to insulating homes and reducing carbon emissions from transport. Incidentally, we are going to have one of the biggest hydrogen production green energy hubs in Essex, at the new freeport that was announced last week.

The key to success in the past has been the significant effort and resources expended on conferences like these, long before the conference itself. I was reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a little while ago that the French employed a former Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, and he had 12 months and 200 diplomats at his disposal to support the preparation for the Paris COP in 2015. I very much congratulate the COP26 President, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), on his appointment and on being given a Cabinet-level role for his COP presidency. He is wholly devoted to it, but it is vital that he has a team with both the resources and the clout, not just to bring our international partners together, involving many Foreign Office resources, but to ensure that the Government Departments work together to deliver on our own targets and our own work.

I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and we had to report that the net zero target was not effectively embedded in policy making on a cross-Whitehall basis, so I ask my right hon. Friend: what is the machinery of government that is going to back him up and support his work in the run-up to COP26? We have been expecting a written ministerial statement, and we still expect it. I have been invited to guest on the Environmental Audit Committee tomorrow, and I expect I will press him on this subject then if he does not want to answer that question in the debate this evening. The question is: how much real clout does the machinery of government give the him to deliver this very substantial and defining task for the Government?

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow pointed out, the Select Committee system in this House is already getting well prepared. Three Chairs of Committees have commented already in this debate, and the Committees are linking their inquiries. The Transport Committee is looking at zero-emission vehicles, the Treasury Committee has been working on decarbonisation and green finance, one of the key summit issues, and the Science and Technology Committee is looking at the potential for hydrogen to meet the UK’s net zero target. The Committees are also demonstrating their flexibility and willingness to collaborate, and I am delighted that they are coming together in this way, effectively to form a kind of informal committee on COP26 to scrutinise the work of the Government in the run-up to the COP summit.

I have to say that this is also an effort to limit the demands on my right hon. Friend the COP President’s time so that there is no duplication of evidence taking by different Committees. As I say, he is coming before the Environmental Audit Committee tomorrow. I ask him what commitments he can make to the programme of other meetings that I, as Chairman of the Liaison Committee, am setting out and that other Committees are setting out, in order that we have a coherent programme of scrutiny of the work of the Government up to COP26.

The big challenge here is for the Government to put themselves in the global picture on the most important global summit we are likely to see them undertake in this Parliament; there will be G7s, G8s and NATOs, but nothing is going to cap this. This is the defining COP summit that has to crown the achievement of the Paris summit. I very much hope that this will be seen as a British diplomatic success and not as something that other countries have had to sort out for us. My right hon. Friend has an enormous task. I congratulate him again on his appointment and wish him all the very best. He should come to the Select Committees, perhaps privately, if he needs us to add pressure in order to ensure that he can deliver the task that the Prime Minister has given him.