Finance Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. We will not have to wait for the Minister to respond to hear the Government’s case, because I can tell the House what he is likely to say. He will tell us that tackling climate change is a top priority for the Government, and that this is demonstrated by the UK becoming the first major economy to pass legislation committing us to reach net zero emissions by 2050. He will tell us that the UK reduced its greenhouse gas emissions faster than any other G20 nation between 2008 and 2018. He will cite measures taken in this Bill as further evidence of the Government’s commitment, including tax support for zero-emissions vehicles; reforms to vehicle excise duty and company car tax; preparations for the introduction of the plastic packaging tax; and the establishment of a UK emissions trading system outside of the European Union. I suspect he will also point to previous announcements made by the Government, such as the £800 million fund for carbon capture and storage.

Taken individually, these steps are welcome, but collectively they do not provide the momentum we need to accelerate progress towards net zero. The Opposition do not believe that the 2050 target is ambitious enough, and neither does the science, so it is all the more worrying that, on current projections, we will not even achieve that deadline.

In its 2020 report to Parliament, the Committee on Climate Change underlines the charge that I am laying at the door of the Government this afternoon. It acknowledges, as do we, that in the time that has passed since the UK legislated for net zero by 2050, initial steps towards a net zero policy package have been taken. However, as the Committee says,

“this was not the year of policy progress that the Committee called for in 2019.”

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a really strong case. Does he agree that the problem with the Government’s actions to date is not just what they have not done but what they are promising to do, including a £27 billion road-building scheme and boasting of 4,000 miles of new strategic roads in Britain? That would be an absolute disaster as far as the climate is concerned.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the parliamentary leader of the Green party for that intervention. There is a really important issue here around infrastructure. Our current infrastructure contributes enormously to the carbon output of our country. If we make the right infrastructure decisions now and get our priorities right, which is the point the hon. Lady is making, the Government can accelerate our progress towards net zero.

The Committee on Climate Change recognises the policies announced by the Government on transport, buildings, industry, energy supply, agriculture and land use. However, taking all of that into account, the Committee states that

“these steps do not yet measure up to meet the size of the Net Zero challenge and we are not making adequate progress in preparing for climate change.”

The charge sheet is serious. The Committee tells us:

“Announcements for manufacturing and other industry have been piecemeal and slow…There is still no strategic approach to drive change at the required scale and pace.”

It also says:

“Buildings and heating policy continues to lag behind what is needed”,

and that nearly 2 million homes built since the Climate Change Act 2008 was passed

“are likely to require expensive zero-carbon retrofits and have missed out on lower energy bills.”

At the general election, the Conservative party promised in its manifesto to invest £9 billion in energy efficiency over the next decade. The Committee says that that

“is welcome but not enough to match the size of the challenge and has been delayed while awaiting the National Infrastructure Strategy.”

The Committee also welcomed plans for reform of the renewable heat incentive and plans to introduce a green gas levy, but warned that

“the current plans are far too limited to drive the transformation required to decarbonise the UK’s existing buildings”.

On agriculture and land use, land-use change and forestry, it noted that

“the current voluntary approach has failed to cut agricultural emissions, there has been no coherent policy to improve the resilience of the agriculture sector, and tree planting policy has failed outside of Scotland.”

There is no room for complacency, which brings me to new clause 28. It asks the Chancellor to

“conduct an assessment of the impact of this Act on the environment…within six months of Royal Assent”,

including the impact on

“the United Kingdom’s ability to achieve the 2050 target for net zero carbon emissions…the United Kingdom’s ability to comply with its third, fourth and fifth carbon budgets…air quality standards, and…biodiversity.”

At present, the UK is set to miss its legally binding fourth and fifth carbon budgets, having only achieved its second carbon budget thanks to accounting revisions to the UK’s share of the EU emissions trading scheme and the impact of the global financial crisis. I am sure many Members of the House will agree that we should not rely on fiddling the figures or economic crisis to help us to achieve our carbon budgets, though I have to say, looking at the current state of the aviation industry and the Government’s unwillingness to act to save jobs, perhaps it is their intention simply to allow jobs to go and businesses to pull out or even go bust, rather than take the action needed to ensure a just transition.

Too many of our citizens are breathing in toxic air, with the serious health consequences that follow. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted developed countries in the world. Despite our being a signatory to the convention on biological diversity, 41% of species in the UK have decreased in abundance over the past 50 years, and 15% of species are threatened with extinction. As Sir Robert Watson wrote in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss,

“We either solve both or we solve neither.”

The risk is that as it stands we are going to solve neither.

We had hoped that the Prime Minister’s speech this week would provide more than warm words to tackle global warming. It had been billed as a new deal in the spirit of President Roosevelt’s response to the great depression, but moving some infrastructure spending forward is not a new deal and planting a few new trees certainly is not the green new deal our country needs. State action alone will be insufficient to meet the challenge, but national and international leadership from the Government is essential if we are to succeed. The public recognise that. They are looking to the Government to provide that leadership, but according to a YouGov poll published by the Institution of Civil Engineers today, less than a third of the public thought the Government had a plan to achieve net zero. They are not wrong, and there is no shortage of ideas available to the Government.

The Committee on Climate Change has provided a series of recommendations for every Government Department, including Her Majesty’s Treasury. Today, the Institution of Civil Engineers has dedicated its annual “State of the Nation” report to infrastructure and net zero, with a range of practical proposals that I hope Ministers will look seriously at adopting. This week, the Climate Coalition organised a fantastic lobby of Parliament around its green recovery plan, with citizens from all over the country Zooming in to meet their MPs virtually and underline the importance they attach to getting it right.

In the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it has brought about, there can be no return to business as usual. Climate justice and social justice go hand in hand. If we take the right decisions now on industrial strategy, infrastructure, housing, energy, transport, agriculture, research and development and our natural environment, we will not only accelerate progress towards net zero, but will create new jobs—good jobs—new industry and better opportunities in communities blighted by deindustrialisation. In doing so, we will build a better, fairer Britain. We will improve the nation’s health and happiness, and we will safeguard our natural environment and our planet for future generations.

That is why we ask the Chancellor to come before the House next week not just with an economic update, but with a back-to-work Budget that has a laser-like focus on protecting people’s jobs and livelihoods and safeguarding their lives through the pandemic. Our approach, our ambition and our determination to achieve net zero should absolutely be at the heart of that Budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We have just under 30 minutes before I want to bring in the Minister and we have four more speakers. I do not want to set a time limit, but it would be helpful if speeches did not go over, for example, eight minutes.

[Caroline Lucas]

This debate could not be more important. The Arctic is on fire; 2020 is on course to be the hottest year on record; and 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have been since 2000. There is such a thing as being too late. This is a pivotal moment, because the actions that we take over the next few weeks and months will either lock us into high-carbon dependency for decades to come, in which case we can say goodbye to any chance of avoiding the worst of climate catastrophe, or they will start to lay the foundations for a greener, safer, fairer future as we emerge from the peak of this pandemic. These decisions could not be more consequential and nor could the issue be more urgent.

New clause 34 would require the Chancellor to review the impact of the Bill on human and ecological wellbeing, including the wellbeing of future generations. I am grateful to colleagues for their support. Ministers might like to note that the Scottish and Welsh Governments are already members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership, a global collaboration of nations and regions whose leaders and Finance Ministers recognise that economic progress in the 21st century means delivering human and ecological wellbeing as the overriding priority.

If we are going to build back better, we need to put improving the health and wellbeing of people and nature first when it comes to economic policy making. That should be the primary objective of every Budget, every Finance Bill and every short-term measure that the Chancellor announces next week as part of his plans for economic recovery. I hope that today we can take a small step in that direction by requiring that the Bill be assessed against its impacts on human wellbeing and the health of our natural life-support systems.

My new clause is also a step towards putting the provisions of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill into action. That is the subject of Lord Bird’s Today for Tomorrow campaign, which is supported by dozens of colleagues across both Houses. I am pleased to have introduced a private Member’s Bill in this House to match Lord Bird’s in the other place. That would bring about a future generations Act. I pay tribute to Jane Davidson for all her work in the Welsh Assembly on that issue.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister talked of addressing inter-generational injustice, yet so far the Government’s economic response to covid has doubled down on business as usual. Young people are at the forefront of the campaigns for a transformative green new deal, yet all they are being offered is a bargain-basement imitation, with none of the necessary boldness, vision or resource.

My new clause 34 also considers the interim report of the Treasury’s own Dasgupta review on the economics of biodiversity. It recognises, as Professor Dasgupta has written, that economies

“are embedded within—not external to—Nature.”

So we urgently need a new economic rulebook. As Dasgupta explains:

“Unlike standard models of economic growth and development, placing ourselves and our economies within nature helps us to accept that our prosperity is ultimately bounded by that of our planet. This new grammar is needed everywhere, from classrooms to boardrooms, from parish councils to government departments.”

I would argue that it is needed in this Bill as well. The good news is that just 6% of the public want to return to the pre-pandemic economy. Many of them know that GDP is a poor measure of the things that really matter and that we should not let policy be guided by it. The Government must change course and put public health above private wealth.

As for what an assessment of human and ecological wellbeing would look like, the Treasury could do worse than start with the seven wellbeing goals in the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015: prosperity; resilience; health; equality; cohesive communities; vibrant culture; and global responsibility. All this comes with a “sustainable development principle” to guide delivery. Even the inventor of GDP was adamant that it should not be used as a measure of wellbeing, because GDP goes up when things that are detrimental to human wellbeing go up. For example, a motorway pile-up is a nightmare for everyone involved, but a boon for GDP, as new vehicles are bought and possessions are replaced. It is little wonder that the majority of people want the UK Government to pursue health and wellbeing ahead of economic growth.

[Anna McMorrin]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech about the wellbeing of future generations and the Act that I am proud to have drafted and written in the Welsh Government, along with Jane Davidson, when I was a special adviser. Does the hon. Lady agree that that Act helps pave the way for what we hope will be something across the UK, including in England? Does she also agree that it demonstrates working together across all the Departments and all the different forms of government, and how we must have sustainability at the heart of things?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, not least because it gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to her work in drafting that Bill. I was not quite clear about the role she had played in drafting it. I have worked closely with Jane Davidson on the private Member’s Bill, as has Lord Bird. I am delighted to pay tribute to the work of the hon. Lady and to agree with the substantive point she makes, which is that that kind of Bill is a way of mainstreaming sustainability across every Department and every nation of the UK.

If we were to ask the millions of households in the UK suffering from hunger, food insecurity or fuel poverty whether our current growth-based economic model has delivered them prosperity, we would find that they would say that it has not. It has delivered rising inequality, insecurity, and environmental breakdown. What would change if we made the wellbeing of people and nature our primary economic goal? Some examples are obvious. Of course, we would have investment in things such as energy efficiency and retrofit, creating thousands of good jobs in every constituency, ending fuel poverty and getting emissions down—a real win, win, win. Despite Dominic Cummings apparently thinking this is all a bit boring, it is fundamental to that win-win of combining social and environmental justice. It would also mean more jobs in care, and the Women’s Budget Group shows how sensible that would be. Investing in care creates seven times as many jobs as the same investment in construction, for example, with 50% more recouped by the Treasury in tax revenues. Investment in care is also greener, producing 30% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than construction. A care-led recovery is also a green-led recovery. That just one example of what new clause 34 is all about, and I hope the Government will agree and look upon it favourably.

I wish to finish by saying a few words about the level of climate ambition. I am delighted to hear everybody, right across this House, talking about the importance of the climate crisis, but unless we get the ambition right, fine words will not get us where we need to be. As for where we need to be, organisations such as Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid, ActionAid and others have worked what our fair share of a climate reduction ought to be. If we look at how that compares with the Government’s 2050 net zero target, we will see a massive gulf. Those organisations have worked out that, based on our relative wealth and historical emissions, we should be getting to net zero by 2030—a full two decades earlier than the current target—and that we should be creating the equivalent of another 100% reduction of UK emissions overseas through climate finance to the global south. That is what we need to be aiming for.