Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) on securing this important debate. We all know the scale of the challenge and the imperative it entails. Declaring an emergency comes easy and “net zero” trips off the tongue, but in reality, these things are difficult. To achieve that requires a per annum reduction in our emissions 30% greater than we have achieved on average since 1990. That is why the Committee on Climate Change said that a 2050 target was the latest that our country could credibly maintain our status as a climate leader at the same time as being the earliest at which it would be credibly deliverable alongside other Government objectives.

I have asks of the Government, which I will come to in a moment, but, first, I have asks of the wider sector—everyone who has an interest in this vital subject. First, we must acknowledge progress. My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) touched on this. There is a difference between saying that more must be done and saying that nothing has been done. It can become debilitating to think that no progress has been made and nothing has been achieved.

I first came across that when I was a junior Minister at the Treasury and I would meet Finance Ministers from other countries, and we would talk about climate change. They would say, “Of course, you in the UK are leaders,” and I would say, “We are? That’s not what I keep reading.” Other countries do look to us, starting with our framework of the independent Committee on Climate Change, the periodic carbon budgets and the rest of it.

In international studies we are ranked among the top 10 nations for our performance on tackling climate change. We have made huge progress on renewables, specifically offshore wind, where we are a world leader, if not the world leader. We have also set an end date for unabated coal. Our role at COP 21 was pivotal, as was our role in showing leadership in setting the net zero target. Our international work on climate finance through the Department for International Development is pivotal, too.

The second ask is that we prioritise and triage, because we cannot just tell people that everything must change at the same time. Some things must be prioritised. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth mentioned retrofitting homes. The two biggest things alongside that are energy generation and transport, particularly domestic transport. Those two massive areas are dependent on the development of batteries.

The third ask is that we go with the grain of people’s lives. It is a hard sell to tell people that they cannot go on holiday, they will be cold when they are sitting at home and they must become vegan. It is a much easier sell to say that the electric car is now as high-performance a vehicle as a petrol car, and that we can be warmer at home and it can be cheaper to heat our homes than it was in the past.

That becomes even more important when talking about developing nations. We have had our industrial revolution and we have all reaped the benefits. It is natural that other countries want that development too, and we must help them to have clean growth.

We need a bipartisan approach. That has been a great strength of the approach to tackling climate change in this country. It is tempting to say we must always do more and we must do it sooner. As with international aid, there are two aspects to this: first, what we do ourselves; and secondly, how we can leverage our position internationally. However, leveraging our leadership is helpful only if what we say is credible—if we say not only that we are going to do something but that we absolutely will do it. If we are going to say we must do this bigger, better and faster, we must be honest with people about the implications of that. I sometimes hear people talking about change for them versus system change, as if system change has no effect on individual families and companies, but it does: it affects the rate of economic growth, which in turn affects jobs and wages, and of course it affects the taxes people pay.

We must focus in particular on what can be done, especially in transport with electric vehicles. I join others in paying tribute to those who are doing great work locally. In my area, that includes the climate action network and the work the council is doing to plant a large number of trees. This is a global problem, and every nation must play its part, but we, in our individual communities, can make a difference.