Climate Change Act

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies]

There is another explanation, which is that they do not have a clue what they are doing. Based on the precautionary principle, perhaps we should not hobble the entire manufacturing industry in this country alone on the assumption that they have got it right. I accept my hon. Friend’s point about water vapour, which is important. Water vapour is a far more important warming gas than CO₂, although neither is a pollutant. Without CO₂, we would have none of the trees, plants and wildlife that the greens—and I, actually—love so much.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

I will give way one last time and then move on, because there are people in the Chamber from whom I would like to hear.

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman need not rely on a conspiracy between the Hadley Centre and the Met Office. He should look at the Oxburgh report on the Hadley Centre and the work of Professor Jones, who leads the centre. He will find that Professor Kelly from Cambridge said that Professor Jones’s methodology is

“turning centuries of science on its head”.

He also found, as the Oxburgh report found, that none of the work the Hadley Centre was doing under Professor Jones was replicable. As I understand science, one must be able to test it, so I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that what Professor Jones was doing was not science but writing narrative.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am grateful for the intervention and agree 100%. We could argue a long time about the science, but even if the Minister does not accept anything that I am saying—although I hope that he will answer my questions at some point—for us to embark on a unilateral policy, without anyone else in the world following us, is surely folly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I just want to make three simple points.

First, is the Act working in its own terms? I often think that that is the best way to approach arguments—not to start with one’s own premises, but to consider those of the opposition. The Act is supposed to be bringing down carbon dioxide. Is it doing that, or helping to do it? The facts are that since 1990, instead of producing an extra two parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere per year, we are producing three. In Europe, the production of carbon dioxide since 1990 is down by 15%, but consumption is up by 19%, so in fact more carbon dioxide is being put into the atmosphere as the result of activity in the European Union. To put the matter at its simplest, if there is a carbon tax in Europe—if we charge for carbon—and not in China or India or elsewhere in the world, we are giving those countries an export subsidy. If that were to be put down as a straightforward argument, or motion, in the House of Commons, no one would support it. To put things another way, the policy is one of deindustrialisation, as the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said.

Secondly, is the policy affordable—for the country, as well as for individuals? There is an excellent paper by Liberum Capital, which I would advise anyone to read, on capital markets in utilities, and particularly energy, in the next 15 years. The paper expresses a belief that there will be several critical points in the next 15 years when the lights may well go out. To take the analysis at its simplest, replacing the current energy-producing power plants would cost the country an extra £250 billion. I remember when £1 million was a lot of money, but £250 billion is, as a friend of mine used to say, a very lot of money, and capital markets cannot produce it—or are most unlikely to. I shall send the Minister the paper, if he would like to look at it. [Interruption.] I cannot give way. We have got ourselves into a policy of absolute minimum flexibility to deal with investment and changes elsewhere in the world.

Thirdly, I do not think political forums are the greatest place to discuss science; it is complicated, and I am a scientist by background. Many things have been said that would require further examination.

As a member of the Science and Technology Committee, I had a very close look at what was happening at the university of East Anglia and the two inquiries that went into it at the time. Looking at it closely, we see that there was not science going on there. There was a group of enthusiasts who were pretending to be scientists, because what they were doing was not testable. In terms of the critical things that were in the public domain, Muir Russell’s report did not ask the basic question about whether e-mails had been deleted in the university of East Anglia, and the Oxburgh report, which was supposed to look at the science, did not, but it did turn up the fact that they were not using the best statistical methods of analysis and they could not reproduce their work.