Paris Agreement on Climate Change

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Under the last Labour Government, we in the UK took the initiative and developed the Climate Change Act 2008, a world first. We really should continue to take the lead on the world stage. I was therefore disappointed to hear the Minister say today that he cannot give us a timetable for ratifying the Paris agreement on climate change. I urge his Department to bring one forward as soon as possible.

People often wonder what the point is of us in the UK doing anything if the big players do not. But now China and the US are taking the initiative, which is particularly welcome because of the size of their economies and populations. I really would like to see the UK up there among the world leaders on climate change, keeping our position of influence on this extremely important issue.

Tackling climate change is an immensely important task, but one that it is very easy to put off, or accord only a low priority to, particularly when voters have more pressing concerns in their everyday lives. We ignore climate change at our peril, as we have seen from the numerous flooding incidents in our country in the past few years. As other hon. Members have mentioned, the problems are very much worse in some of the poorest parts of the world. Temperature increases and periods of drought are driving people from their homes and becoming a major cause of migration. At the other end of the scale, we have the problem of flooding, as was well explained by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood).

It is not for me to tell the Prime Minister how to organise her Departments, and there is certainly a logic to including energy with industrial strategy, but I am concerned that the abolition of DECC will make the issue of climate change less visible. It is extremely important that proper resourcing and importance should be dedicated to tackling climate change. More than that, tackling climate change should be a part of thinking and policy development in all Departments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) pointed out, the Treasury is a key Department to get onside. I would have preferred to have a dedicated Energy Minister in the Commons rather than in the Lords because other Ministers will stand in for her at questions and debates in the Commons, which is not satisfactory.

The Government’s record to date on green issues, and on the incentivising behaviour that will help to reduce our emissions, has been inconsistent and disappointing. First, back in 2011, the accelerated reduction in feed-in tariffs for solar energy was announced before the industry had been properly consulted. We had a repeat earlier this year with the changes in valuation office assessments, which will make it less viable for businesses, including schools, as an hon. Friend pointed out, to benefit from having solar panels on their roofs and to contribute to a reduction in emissions. We also had the abolition of the Green Investment Bank, which had provided valuable finance to incipient industries that cannot always get funding from elsewhere, and the abandoning of plans for the carbon-capture demonstration plants, despite their being a manifesto commitment.

On wind power, energy companies have effectively withdrawn from new projects in England because of the hostile environment the Government have created. We at least have a more positive attitude to wind power in Wales, but subsidies are a UK Government matter. Eventually, wind projects in Wales will be affected by those reductions.

The Swansea tidal lagoon is continuously postponed and kicked into the long grass—back in February, a review into tidal lagoons was announced. I urge the Government to look carefully at the tremendous potential that the project offers. Rather than looking at the cost of the Swansea tidal lagoon, they should look at the potential of lagoons elsewhere and the export potential. The Swansea proposals require no money up front from the Government—the taxpayer pays only when the electricity is delivered. The bosses of the project are very committed to sourcing as many of the components as possible locally in the UK. If we could be a world first and lead the way, it would open up opportunities to our manufacturing industry, not only in providing the Swansea lagoon, but in providing other lagoons here and abroad.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

How many homes might the Swansea barrage light or heat, because it is a great idea?

[Nia Griffith]

The figure that has been given is 800,000 homes—that is just one project and it could be repeated elsewhere. That number of homes heated is the size of a substantial town, so it is very worth while.

[Bob Stewart]

When you used the word “export”, did you mean exporting electricity or exporting the idea and the technology?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that he is speaking through the Chair—when he says “you”, he is addressing the Chair.

[Bob Stewart]

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Nia Griffith]

I was referring to exporting the idea. In the past—with wind turbines, for example—we have lost the initiative in manufacturing and find ourselves importing. We do not want to do that. We want to be world leaders—we want to make the components, export them and build potential markets for our industries for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

What I would say about a 2050 target is that it is long enough away for none of us to be accountable for it, because most of us will be dead by then. [Interruption.] Well, some of us; I probably will be—no, I will be enjoying a long and fruitful old age, as I intend to live until I am 100. I want to see interim targets, so if there is a 2050 target I would be interested to see what are the 2020, 2025 and 2030 targets, because faraway targets can always be our children’s problems.

The issue in the report about our transport sector is that we are not doing enough now, and I want to develop my theme because transport emissions increased in both 2014 and 2015. Some 94% of those transport emissions are from road transport, and we were concerned that less than 1% of new cars are electric. There is a good reason for that: they are very expensive—£30,000 or £32,000, perhaps. The Committee on Climate Change says that we need 9% of all new cars to be ultra-low emissions vehicles by 2020 if we are to meet those targets at the lowest cost to the public. We should match what the Committee was saying with the Department’s forecasts; the Department was saying, “Well, actually 3% to 7% of vehicles will be ultra-low emissions by 2020, but our average central point is 5%.” So the Department’s central forecast is 5%, but the Committee on Climate Change says it should be 9%.

That is worrying, because the next target—the 2030 target—is that 60% of all new vehicles should be low-emissions. If we are only at 5% by 2020, I cannot see a way of getting to 60% of low-emissions vehicles without some spectacular change in the way we buy cars in this country, and we did not hear any brilliant bright ideas from the Department for Transport. We heard of the money that was committed, but we did not hear a strategy for getting that mass take-up. That means we are playing catch-up and we are not going to follow the lowest cost route to decarbonise the economy.

[Bob Stewart]

I am no expert, but is there any way of measuring progress towards the targets for 2020, 2030 and so on, perhaps by year?

[Mary Creagh]

Yes; it is done in the single departmental plans and the annual reports, and the Committee on Climate Change looks at these targets every year and says whether we are going to meet our various carbon budgets. There is a range of reporting mechanisms, and I see it as the job of the Committee to point out where we think things are going wrong.

We could see a whole range of policies that would help drive low-emission vehicle uptake, and local authorities had a range of innovative ideas, particularly in the area of fleet procurement. The Government are probably the largest buyer of vehicles in the country, and if the NHS were to move to all electric vehicles, they would get them at much less than £30,000 per car. They could then guarantee buy-back and there would then be a second-hand market that gets people used to buying these vehicles. We could see workplaces investing in charging points—one of the perceived problems with electric vehicles is their range—and the introduction of a national grant scheme, or scrappage scheme, for electric and low-emission taxis.

We also want the Treasury to think about changes to the taxation of vehicles, including company cars, to make electric vehicles more attractive. This is really important for the UK’s industrial strategy. I was born and brought up in Coventry, and I watched the car manufacturing industry virtually disappear around me in the 1980s. The remaining manufacturers, including Nissan, Honda, LTI—which I am delighted to say makes electric taxis in Coventry—and Toyota, need a reason to choose their UK car factories based in Sunderland, Swindon, Coventry and Derby to manufacture the next generation of low-emission vehicles. We have heard from the Japanese ambassador about some of the anxieties following the vote to leave the European Union, but we are obviously keen to see Nissan manufacture the next generation of its electric car, the Leaf, in Sunderland from 2018. That decision is under consideration at the moment. Investors want stability, certainty and policies that will signal the Government’s intention to incentivise the uptake of these vehicles. All those factors are vital.