Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Ed Miliband and Lord Lilley

Monday 18th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the unique speech of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley). I bow to his greater knowledge about 40 or 50 shades of grey—or green, for that matter. It is also fair to say that he has taken a consistent position on these issues. He was one of the three Members of this House—

[Mr Lilley]

Five.

[Edward Miliband]

I beg his pardon. He was one of the five Members who voted against the Climate Change Act 2008, which was supported right across the House. It will not surprise hon. Members to hear that I approach this subject from a slightly different perspective, and I want to focus on how the Bill can be improved. Given the scale of the challenge we face, the right question to ask about any energy or climate Bill before the House is this: will it do everything necessary to meet our obligations and the requirements placed on us to take a leading role in tackling climate change? I believe that things can be done to the Bill to ensure that it does so.

This Bill is unlike many other Bills that have come before the House, in that a very important event has happened in between its being introduced in the other place and its Second Reading today. That event was the historic Paris climate change agreement. I paid tribute to the Secretary of State when she made her statement on the Paris agreement, and I do so again today for the incredible job that she has done.

My case to the House is that we need to reflect the high ambition of Paris in the Bill. In particular, I want to set out why the Government, in the light of the Paris commitment to a long-term global goal of zero emissions, should use this Bill to legislate for the same objective here in the UK. We need to legislate for zero emissions in law, with the date to be advised by the independent Climate Change Committee. I want to thank Members across the House whom I have talked to about these questions. They include Members on my Front Bench, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), Liberal Democrat Members, Scottish National party Members and, indeed, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who plays an important role as the chair of GLOBE International, the international parliamentarians’ committee. If other hon. Members want to know more about this subject, a paper has been published today by the organisation Sandbag, setting out the case. My case is threefold. It is about consistency between international agreements and domestic action; it is about the economic case; and it is about the effect we can have on other countries.

[Mr Lilley]

Given what I said earlier about the effect of our having commitments that are higher than those of the other countries in Europe, which simply reduces the amount to which they are committed under the Paris agreement, if the right hon. Gentleman wants to raise our target even higher, would he not be reducing to an even lower level the amounts by which those countries would have to reduce their emissions in order to reach the EU global total?

[Edward Miliband]

No, because the EU target is set on the basis of effort-sharing between different countries, and we are one of the most important countries contributing to that effort-sharing: the more we do, the higher the EU target can be. That is part of being in the European Union and playing our role in raising these objectives.

My first case for acting relates to consistency between international agreements and domestic action. When I set a target of 80% by 2050 in the Climate Change Act, that was agreed on a cross-party basis and we were at the most radical end of the spectrum. That target was formulated to give us a fighting chance of keeping global warming below 2°C. However, Paris has crucially moved the world on from that. Paris sets a twofold objective: to try to keep global warming below 1.5°C, given that we are already at 1°, and, crucially, to achieve the long-term goal of zero emissions.