COP26

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and his colleagues for enabling this important debate to be held today. I also thank Members from across the House for their contributions. They have made some excellent points about the Government’s plans for COP26, with many focusing on the lack of clarity around the efforts made so far on the road to COP26 and to our critical net zero targets. We have heard repeated calls for the Government to outline their proposed path to net zero, not just their targets, as was suggested by the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne). Certainly, speaking as a representative from a Scottish constituency, the continued uncertainty over their plan for the involvement and participation of devolved Administrations in the delegation, as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), seems unforgivable given the lead that Scotland is taking on climate issues.

The thing to really focus on is the Government’s planning for COP26. If that planning exists, there is, I am afraid, little evidence for it. There may be a few targets floating about, but there are no details of the strategies, no plans, and no route map to reaching all those targets. There may be a nationally determined contribution, which sounds impressively whizzy, but there is none of the real grunting heave of an effort needed to move us along towards any kind of emissions reduction. There is so little ambition, drive, vision or political capital being expended. The motions are being well rehearsed. If going through the motions was what was needed, we could all sleep soundly in our beds, but the truth is that we are facing the nightmare of a crisis worse than the pandemic—it is unimaginable, but the scenario is that terrifying. The UK has a Government playing shadow puppets with the issues. Perhaps worst of all, the UK is supposed to be leading world discussions in a few months’ time.

As COP21 showed in creating the Paris agreement, delivery on an ambitious programme and a visionary agenda requires the agenda and the programme first, but it also needs a whole of Government effort and a comprehensive and dedicated diplomatic effort to pull it off. The French Government showed themselves capable. They delivered. The evidence given to the BEIS Committee suggests that the UK Government will miss the train altogether.

The Committee was told that the diplomatic effort of the UK amounted to the Foreign Secretary and the permanent secretary in that Department sending a few letters to diplomatic staff to remind them about it. It was a note to remind them to do their homework, as if the diplomats needed that. The previous COP26 President told the Committee of the chaos and infighting in Whitehall that bedevilled her attempts to get anything done, although the CEO of the COP26 unit assured the Committee that everything was hunky-dory now and that they are working night and day to deliver.

I had a look at the COP26 team on the website, and there were a couple of folk from environmental think-tanks and pressure groups in among the career civil servants, but there was also a former deputy head of press at Tory HQ—now policy adviser to the COP26 President—and a former Tory special adviser, who is now the strategy director. Then there are a couple of bankers and a businessman bringing his experience of emerging markets, but that lack of focus on environmental and climate change expertise does not inspire confidence.

I have no doubt that these civil servants will do their jobs efficiently and well, and I have no doubt that the diplomats engaged as regional ambassadors will deliver on what they are asked, but they need political leadership and the investment of political capital, and that is missing. If I may, I point to the evidence that Lord Deben gave to the BEIS Committee in July last year, speaking as chair of the Climate Change Committee. Responding to a question about whether sufficient progress was being made towards the net zero target, he said:

“We are clearly not. In almost every sector, we are failing…The Government are not on track to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budget”.

He went on to say that measures were “not taken quickly enough” and that the Government

“have simply not done the radical things that need to be done.”

That is fairly unequivocal. He went on to say that using the pandemic as an excuse for inaction, rather than a “springboard” for action would be unforgivable. We are sliding down that slope from which there may be no return, and we are still waiting for Government action.

Even the arrangements for the summit in Glasgow are opaque. We have a bald and unconvincing headline Budget figure with no more to it. We have an agreement with Police Scotland that there will be no detriment to its budget, although some of us remember that the same was promised for the Gleneagles G8 in 2005, but Scotland still got left with that bill. There appears to be little if any consultation, engagement or interaction with the Scottish Government over this event, which will be on their patch.

While I am seeking clarity, I hope the COP26 President will see his way clear to elaborating on the arrangements with MCI over accommodation. There appears to be some exclusivity being claimed for that organisation, and the booking website appears to suggest that using any other accommodation provider in Scotland is likely to result in some loss to the customer. I am sure he will agree that that unintentional slur should be corrected at the earliest possible opportunity.

Will the COP26 President elaborate on the arrangements with MCI? How will it make a profit, and will any of that profit be heading back to the Government? Will international visitors be getting surcharged for MCI’s services? Furthermore, has MCI been given what amounts to a Government monopoly with the arrangement that it entered into? Will he publish all the tendering documents and other correspondence around that arrangement?

The operation of the summit is one thing; the fight against climate chaos is another. Here we are approaching the setting of the sixth carbon budget, with COP26 following close behind, and still we do not know what the Government’s intentions are. We still do not have a really clear idea of what they hope to get out of the summit. The Chancellor’s Budget lacked any real commitment to environmental action or action to address climate chaos, and it seems like the efforts on COP26 will match that lack of ambition all too well.

The truth is that the current UK Government just do not care enough about the issue to want to address it. They are so blinkered to the probable effects of the changing climate that they will stumble blindly on, hoping that it all goes well in the end; so tone-deaf to the pleas of climate activists that they cannot see the benefit of copying the French and putting in the early effort to get results. COP26 is on course to be an opportunity wasted, and it will be wasted simply because the Government do not put in the effort.