Climate

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, on introducing this debate. Her enthusiasm for the subject is in inverse proportion to that of my noble friend Lord Henley on the Front Bench. I must remind him that he still has not replied to the questions I posed to him in the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on 24 January, despite having reminded him three times to do so.

The noble Baroness has raised an important matter and asks us to look at whether this is a climate emergency. The subject is hugely important but I will not follow her down the line of an emergency for two reasons. First, it is a climate choice. If you have a climate emergency, you may actually forget about the rest of the environment that is equally important: plastics, water, soil and all the things that she and I have been debating for the past couple of years. To make one factor within the overall environment an emergency rather demeans the others.

However, the noble Baroness is absolutely right to say that the International Energy Agency reported that last year emissions of CO₂ rose by 1.7%, which is the fastest rate of growth since 2013. The United States, having seen its emissions declining for some years, has experienced an increase. However, the main problem is in the Far East—China and India. What I am pleased about is that Europe’s emissions have fallen. Luckily, the UK is doing well in this area. We are a world leader and we have seen a fall of 42% in our production emissions from 1990s levels while still growing the economy by 70%. As my noble friend Lord Lilley said, growing the economy is important as the background to all this.

We must have more energy from renewable sources. I am glad that the Government have announced huge spending over the next decade on 30 gigawatts of offshore wind. That will produce a third of our electricity in 2030. The message must be sent out that we have to stop burning fossil fuels. When I was the Environment Minister, we were considered to be the dirty man of Europe. It is interesting to note that of the top 10 European emitters of carbon at the moment, not one is British. Seven firms are in Germany, which is supposed to be the clean man of Europe; now it is the dirty man. This is an important subject but it is not quite an emergency yet.

Climate Change

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, regardless of greenhouse gases, human beings would be discussing climate change today. We are in a warm interglacial period. These warm periods last about 10,000 years and the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago. It is a reasonable hypothesis that one of the reasons the ice age was prevented from coming again was that hunter-gatherers started settling and becoming farmers. That was the initial start of the check and the hot climate change we are experiencing today.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said, one of the consequences of climate change that we are now suffering is that sea levels are rising. During our lifetime, the north of Scotland has been steadily rising out of the sea. This is called post-glacial rebound uplift. Dynamic Coast at Glasgow University confirmed to me yesterday that its latest evidence shows that sea levels are outpacing the uplift, so the north of Scotland is now suffering from higher sea levels. Today, we have been told that the Barents Sea is at a tipping point from a climate change point of view. It is changing from an Arctic to an Atlantic climate. That will have quite major effects. This has been described as the first modern example of a rapid climate change shift event.

It is the melting of not just glacial ice but sea ice that has caused problems and has contributed to the moving of magnetic north. Recent research on the movement of magnetic north, which has suddenly accelerated, has shown that it is human abstraction of water, particularly in Eurasia and India, that has helped to shift magnetic north. What does my noble friend on the Front Bench anticipate being the effect of this on climate change? Does he think it is now increasingly likely, as some scientists are predicting, that we will get a global shift again? These happen every 400,000 years or so. The last one was 780,000 years ago, so perhaps we are due for a global shift. That will complicate matters not a little, I suggest.

Let me move from magnetic north to the magnetic field around the Earth. What does my noble friend think of the latest research in Sweden by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, which claims that cosmic rays have a major effect on our weather? Its research underpins research done about 10 years ago, also in Sweden, which says it is the high sun activity, particularly at the moment, which is the greatest it has been for at least 1,000 years, that is causing climate change. As a result, we have overestimated the amount that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases are contributing to our climate change. If we have done that, all our models—the models the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, relies on—are wrong. If we are to tackle climate change, whether it is getting colder or warmer, we need to have a factual scientific base. If some scientists are now saying that the reasons are different from what we thought, undermining much of what has been said in the debate, we need to take that into account.

I move quickly on to mitigation and follow up what the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said. Sea erosion is caused not just by the waves but the sediment in them and their force at sea level. Latest reports say that more than 1 million houses are at threat from coastal erosion in the next 60 years. We ought to start to get a planning policy that forbids any development, not just on flood plains, but in any of those areas that will be subject to coastal erosion. We need to identify areas that we are not going to do anything with, where we are going to let nature take over and where we will make protection. Could my noble friend tell us what is being done on that?

I conclude by challenging us in the West. We are terribly good at thinking we are doing good things with climate change, and it does our ego the power of good to drive electric vehicles, but it does climate change no good at all if we drive an electric vehicle that is made in the Far East, and the power to make it is generated by burning coal. That is far worse for the world than using our old diesel cars.

Queen’s Speech

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I thoroughly enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans. When I took my seat many years ago, a number of noble Lords said, “I knew your father”. I did not know the noble Lord’s father, but I knew his brother. He was also very interested in transport. I remember when I was Minister for Transport, we looked at the west mainline improvements together, as railways were his big thing in life rather than the noble Lord’s naval and shipping interests. I was glad that I was Minister responsible for shipping on two occasions and I hope that I helped a little towards keeping the City where it should be.

Whether we separate completely from the EU, as the voters wanted in the referendum just over a year ago, or whether we are an appendage on the edge of Europe paying a large sum of money to be part of a trading bloc but not having our feet under the table determining the policies, is irrelevant. What matters is the economy—James Carville coined the phrase when he was working for President Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid”. So whether we are in or we are out, what really matters is the economy.

There has been a shift in the UK, as all parties now want more state intervention. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said “Spend spend” in her speech, completely forgetting of course that it was only seven years ago that the Chief Secretary from her party left government with a note in the drawer saying that there was no money left. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, talked about “Spend, spend” and even my noble friend Lord Callanan in introducing this debate talked about spending. But we need to be wary if Governments spend, spend, spend, because the national debt is still very large by recent historic standards and, relative to the size of the economy, it has grown.

Moreover, there are now more complicated issues to take into account for that. We have an ageing population, increased health spending, pensions and long-term care. We are incredibly lucky in this country, but at some point we have to sit down, like any good housewife running the household budget, and say, “Enough is enough. We have got to stop spending and set priorities”. Does healthcare always have to be free at the point of use? If that is what is agreed, something else will have to be cut; otherwise, this country will go completely bankrupt.

Who pays the taxes for the Government to spend? A quarter of the tax that the Government raise comes from income tax, but only 50% of us pay it. That is good in one sense but not so good in another. It is quite right that the low paid are taken out of tax, and this Government have done more than any other to accelerate that, but it puts an extra burden on those who are paying tax. During the campaign, Mr McDonnell said that he wanted to squeeze the rich because the poor were overtaxed. He has only to look at some of the statistics to realise that it is actually the rich who have seen their tax burden increase hugely over the past 20 years in comparison with the poor. Therein also lies a problem, because the rich are not necessarily on fixed salaries, and they move. If Mr McDonnell wants to squeeze the rich, as Mr Healey did, entrepreneurs and those who pay taxes will leave this country. That will do us no good whatsoever.

When we look at the UK workforce, it is important to realise that fewer than one in 10 people are working in manufacturing and even fewer in construction. The biggest growth in employment over the past 20 years has been in public administration, education and health. That all has to be paid for by other people earning money and contributing to the economy.

There is an unfairness in the tax system. We in this country pride ourselves on being fair, but there is a gross unfairness. If you take someone earning £40,000 as an employee, he will pay around £12,000 in tax. If he is self-employed, he will pay around £9,000 in tax. If he is an owner-manager, he will pay around £7,500 in tax. That is inequitable. Are the Government looking at this issue? I know that the Matthew Taylor report is yet to come. When is that to be published, because this area does need to be addressed? The Government are losing what is potentially quite a large sum of money. Will the Government also look at national insurance contributions again? What are they going to do about the loss of revenue that I have mentioned?

I conclude by turning to a subject that is closer to my heart, which is agriculture and fisheries. I am delighted with the Bills which have been proposed. At the moment, farmers are in an extremely difficult situation. They know the market within the common agricultural policy, but they have no idea what is going to happen in the future. When does my noble friend expect the Government to publish their 25-year plan for farming? A stock farmer is now putting cows into pregnancy to produce calves that will be fattened up for beef to be sold in a market that he has no idea of what it is going to be. We do not know whether we are going to be in or out of the EU or what rules will apply. Farmers are potentially at huge risk. There is a high chance of either an oversupply or a shortage of food. I hope that the two Bills which are to come before us on fisheries and agriculture will go some way to reassuring these people because they are absolutely key to maintaining the countryside as the nice environment we all want. We look forward to receiving them in this House soon.