UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) because I thought this might be a slightly dry debate with the usual suspects in violent agreement, but it has been much more rigorous, thoughtful and lively. The real thanks for the debate must go to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), the Chair of the Select Committee. I thought at the outset that this is a strange time in the calendar for a debate on the United Nations framework convention on climate change, because the reality of seasonality in such matters is that negotiators do not start to clear their throats and focus on COP until the second half of the year. The debate has shown that there is a great deal to discuss, and some important points have come out.

I do not share all the analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk, particularly of the carbon floor price, but I share his view and take on board some of the criticism from the shadow Minister about the need for a strong emissions trading scheme and a uniform price signal on carbon throughout the European Union. It would negate the need for a carbon floor price here in the UK and for a unilateral policy. We consider the impact on British industry’s competitiveness in every policy. We take that extremely seriously, and that is why the Government broke with previous policy and introduced a substantial package of measures to help energy-intensive industries to deal with the cost impact on their businesses of supporting renewables.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) made a sensible speech, and I listened carefully to his points about members of the Select Committee and GLOBE attending COP last year and before then. When I first attended as a Minister, I was struck by the lack of support, hospitality and information-sharing with parliamentarians at those important negotiations. In the past couple of years, I have tried to go out of my way to make parliamentarians feel more part of team GB and certainly to make available more of the facilities. However, we can go further, and the hon. Gentleman is right that we should co-ordinate more closely. I am happy to consider whether there is a possibility of including them in the delegation.

I am not making a commitment, because clearly there is a difference between the Executive, who speak for Her Majesty’s Government, and the House of Commons, which challenges and scrutinises the Government. We would not expect it to have the Government’s role, but the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) are absolutely right that, because of the reputation of GLOBE UK and Parliament, they can bring a lot to the party. The issue does not involve partisan politics, but there may be some subtleties about the legislature and the Executive. I will look at the example that the hon. Members raised, and perhaps return to it at a meeting here or in the Department.

Perhaps the liveliest part of the debate was the speech and interventions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden. However, I fear that his whole thesis was to drag us down into the climate and energy politics of either/or when we are trying to develop, both here and globally, a pluralistic approach to energy. We do not want either/or—fossil fuels or renewables—but gas and wind. There will be a need for coal, but also for biomass. We want solar and hydro. We want large-scale solutions deployed, as well as distributed generation. We want industrial-scale generation and consumer generation. The 21st century calls for plurality of energy supply, sources and technology, as opposed to a monolithic, one-size, fossil-fits-all model at home and abroad. That will be good for security as well as value and climate.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I am particularly interested in plurality and retaining public support. As a political institution, Parliament can act only with public support. Does the Minister accept that, whatever avenue the Government go down that impacts on our climate change policy, public support is important? We have a disconnect growing between the people and the Government. Eventually, the Government’s policy will fail.

[Gregory Barker]

There is an important balance to be struck. Of course, we are here to listen to and represent our constituents, but we also have a leadership role. If ever we were reminded of the importance of not bending to public opinion in the short term, but aiming for the right long-term solution, it was this week, with the funeral of Lady Thatcher, who understood that being unpopular in the short term and not listening to the crowd can often not only be the sensible and right thing to do, but pay dividends in the long term.

On the issue of Lady Thatcher, perhaps because of the week of that extraordinary and very moving funeral, it is worth remembering that it was Mrs Thatcher, as she was then—a scientist by training and a Conservative by conviction—who more than any other world leader acted to put climate change on the international agenda. At the Royal Society, of which she was a fellow—one of the very small band of Conservative MP scientists—she said:

“For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes—population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels—concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.”

That was said in 1988, which shows extraordinary foresight.

Pursuing that line of inquiry—Lady Thatcher did not just make one speech on climate change, but several important interventions—she went to the United Nations the following year, in 1989, and crystallised her thinking. More than 20 years later, what she said then is relevant to this debate today:

“the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.”

Lady Thatcher’s actions led, in large part, to the Rio Earth summit of 1992 and to the UNFCCC process that continues today.

The process continues with all its imperfections. There have been huge setbacks to date, not least at Copenhagen in 2009. Having participated on behalf of the Government in three COPs now and their subsidiary meetings, I am under no illusions about the difficulty of negotiating a global treaty. However, I must tell the Chamber that having returned last week from the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which meets during the year to consider action in the UNFCCC, I detect movements of the tectonic plates. I am not suggesting that we are back to where we were in 2008, when we were all expecting global cap and trade, but we are seeing significant policy shifts—or at least the consideration of policy shifts—between what is now termed the G2, or the key players, which are China and the USA. That will not come overnight. A lot more is still to be delivered, but we are seeing the signs of a recognition that they have to deal with the problem. It cannot be ducked.

Part of the reason why we are seeing politicians show, at national leadership level, a willingness to return to the subject from which President Obama and the Chinese leadership were severely scorched—from the experience of Copenhagen in 2009—is that they are driven not only by the science, but by the economic reality of the imperative of diversifying energy sources away from fossil fuels and the recognition that the low-carbon goods and services sector globally is now worth more than $3 trillion, and is growing.

As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) pointed out, here in the UK, that is a sizable factor in our growth, not only in terms of the narrow subsection of wind or subsidised renewable energy, as the low-carbon sector runs much more broadly than that and includes energy efficiency and a range of innovation of products and services. That is why, this year, in recommitting the coalition to being the greenest Government ever, our Prime Minister said that not only are we in a global race, but the countries and economies that will win the global race are those that are most efficient, and the most efficient will be those that drive after energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The Government’s clear ambition is to be a leader, not because we are on a moral mission at the expense of our national prospects, but because we recognise that it is a massive economic opportunity. That is why we think that we can seek not to disadvantage industry, but to obtain a first-mover advantage. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden is out of step with the CBI and with a whole range of smaller businesses, which make that argument strongly to the Government.