Climate and Nature Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Savage]

I applaud the fantastic work being done in Harlow to increase the number of trees. They are indeed life-enhancing and valuable self-contained ecosystems.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for having engaged with me about her Bill. She shared with me the frustrations she has had in discussing its contents with the Government. Can we get to the key issue here? She talks about urgency, but is it true that the Government are intent on kicking the Bill into the long grass because they do not want to be seen to be opposing it, yet they do not really support it?

[Dr Savage]

That is not my interpretation of the Government’s position, and we have had some fruitful conversations.

I shall move on briefly to the climate. While two sectors in climate—power and greenhouse gas removals—are on course to meet or even exceed the required emissions reductions, significant challenges remain in agriculture and land use, transport, and heat and building.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

This is getting rather worrying, because I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Either he is doing harm to his political career or I am doing harm to what might be left of mine. I shall leave it to my hon. Friend the shadow Deputy Chief Whip to jot that down in his little red book.

I find UK manufacturing really strange in this respect, because the trajectory of policy for the past several years has been very clear. We are not trying to make our petrol combustion engines go faster; we are trying to make electric vehicles more reliable, less costly, travel further and so on. Why has UK plc manufacturing not grabbed hold of that as a fourth industrial revolution and led the way, in the way that our forefathers did at the start of the first industrial revolution? We have to look to private equity and others to invest.

I was pleased to see an investment in a solar farm in my constituency. I visited the site to see where it was all going to go and how it was going to plug in, and I asked, “If you broke down a solar panel, where did the component parts come from?” Not a single component had been manufactured in the United Kingdom. They had come from about 12 different countries; the only thing that we had done was assemble them. I say to our entrepreneurs and our leaders of industry and commerce that we are better than that. We are not just assemblers; we are makers and innovators. We are an island race that has worked on free trade and exporting values, ideas and products across the surface of the globe. This is a time for us to lead in the export of actual hard power, and drive forward an international alliance on these important issues.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hoare]

Dorset is well represented this morning. I will of course give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend has not mentioned China specifically, but China is still intent on increasing its CO₂ emissions until at least 2030. As a result, it is able to compete unfairly with what would be UK enterprise if we had not put a stranglehold on it with all these regulatory restrictions. How does he expect to deal with the issue of China?

[Simon Hoare]

Let me respond to my hon. Friend by quoting one of his great political heroes, the noble Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton: just because we cannot do good everywhere, that does not mean we cannot do a little bit of good here. I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes. Of course we have to be conscious of cost differentials, production costs and all the rest of it, but I say to him respectfully that if the rest of the world does something that is to the good, and one or two countries decide not to, or go at a slower pace or on a different path, I do not believe we should just stop, shrug, throw it up in the air and say, “Oh, well, if not everybody’s doing it, why the hell should we?” We led the abolition of slavery. Nobody else was doing it. We did it because we thought it was right. We introduced factory Acts. Nobody else was doing it. We did it because we thought it was right. We introduced votes for women. [Interruption.] Not me personally! I am not as old as my hon. Friend; I have just had a hard life.

We have led. It is what the United Kingdom does. We are not a nation that follows; we are a nation that sculps, leads, forms, challenges, cajoles and encourages.

Climate and Nature Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie]

I did not know it was official Labour party policy to dissolve the other place in its entirety—if it is, please correct me; I would be keen to be educated in that regard—but no, that is not the case. As the hon. Member knows, the governing party in the upper House is determined by which party won the democratic election and commands a majority in this House. That system has worked, and I believe it will continue to work well for many years to come.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one organisation that fits his description is the Climate Change Committee, which is charged with various responsibilities but has neglected its responsibility to promote adaptation and resilience?

[Andrew Bowie]

I agree in part with my hon. Friend—indeed, the committee has neglected some of its responsibilities—but I want to make progress on the Bill, which does not address the Climate Change Committee.

Clause 1 would impose a duty on the Secretary of State to achieve the climate and nature objectives that it sets out, as if mere will alone could bring those objectives into reality. One objective is that the UK

“reduces its overall contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero at a rate consistent with…achieving its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) emissions reduction targets”

in accordance with the 2015 Paris agreement. That would entail reducing UK emissions in line with the 1.5° objective.

Clause 2 explains that the strategy that the Secretary of State would be duty-bound to produce and then take every possible step to achieve

“must include measures that…will achieve the objectives specified”

by

“limiting the United Kingdom’s total emissions of carbon dioxide, including territorial emissions”

to levels in line with the Paris agreement’s 1.5° objective. What does that mean? The Bill stops short of providing year-on-year limits for overall emissions, but does not indicate that our current carbon budget system is not sufficient for the objectives of the Bill.

Zero Hour, the climate campaign group behind the Bill, thinks that the UK’s carbon budgets are no longer sufficient to achieve 1.5° and that, once we include emissions from the goods we import, the UK’s total carbon footprint will exceed its share of the global carbon budget for a 67% chance of 1.5° by more than a factor of two.