Durban Climate Change Conference

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Huhne]

The work programme will kick off, and it is up to the UNFCCC secretariat to arrange the details, but I do not anticipate any time being lost in setting it up and getting it under way. The details of those represented on it will be settled through the process, but we as a Government are keenly interested and have a lot of expertise in the area, so I hope that we will be able to play a full part and, depending on how that is determined, be represented on any group that pushes the work programme forward.

On the financial transaction tax, the hon. Gentleman will know that we as a Government support financial taxes in general. We have moved on our own banking levy, for example, further and faster than other European countries, and we take the view that we can have further taxes on financial services, but that if such a tax touches areas that are very mobile, as a financial transaction tax obviously would do, it must be concluded at a global level. It cannot be done in only one country, because if it is the activity switches to other centres, and one simply loses out on all the revenue that one anticipated.

With that very important caveat of realism, the issue certainly has been talked about, but I do not believe that it is very likely to make progress, given the stand that other key parties have made against a financial transaction tax—and I am thinking in particular of the United States.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that in the last year of the previous Government we were 25th out of 27th on the percentage of our energy that came from renewables, ahead only of Malta and Luxembourg in the EU. Did that impair his ability to lead by example in Durban; and will he confirm that by the end of this Parliament we will have gone a substantial way to correcting that?

[Chris Huhne]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. He is absolutely right that the record that we inherited from the previous Government placed us 25th out of 27 EU member states on installed renewables, and I am determined that, having worn the dunce’s cap for some time, we shall make all the best efforts to get out of the dunce’s corner and be the fastest-improving pupil in the class.