Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

This country has the opportunity, through the COP 26 conference next year, to take the lead internationally on setting out actions that people and communities can take. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a role for people across this country, in the run-up to COP 26, to identify practical steps that communities and industry sectors can take, to bring those to COP 26 and to highlight them around the world?

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a busy debate, so interventions must be brief—one sentence at the most.

[Sarah Newton]

We will bear that in mind, Mr Gray. My right hon. Friend makes a good point: COP 26 is a great opportunity, as he so well articulated. Some sort of roadshow would be a good idea, as it would harness the great work going on and give the Government an opportunity to communicate to communities the sort of innovation funding and support plans available, so people can engage.

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[Sarah Newton]

I gently ask the hon. Lady: how can she claim to speak for everyone outside? A little bit of humility in all of us does not go amiss. Everyone in this room is 100% committed to getting to net zero. It is clear from Parliament’s actions that we want to do that. That is why I wanted to focus this debate on ensuring that we have clear plans and communications and measures are reported in an open and transparent way, so that people cannot make cheap party political points, which damage people’s wellbeing and how they feel about this issue.

Let us be honest: in post-Brexit Britain, we will need a unifying cause. We will need something to bring the whole country together, and this is it. People from all walks of life, all backgrounds and all ages want us to work together, to tackle this huge challenge, which I believe is also a huge opportunity. In this debate we should show our unity of purpose in supporting the Government to take those actions, and that we are truly a United Kingdom that everyone can be proud of.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

It will not have escaped colleagues’ notice that many people wish to speak. While I do not intend to impose a formal time limit, which I believe to be bad for debate, I leave it to the conscience of individuals to recognise that they should speak for two or perhaps three minutes, because if they go on longer than that, they will be squeezing out their colleagues. To save a bit of time, let me say that I am delighted to be your Chairman; you do not need to say so.

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[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend has read my mind, because I was just about to come on to that. She is absolutely right, and it is one element of the difference between the ambition we should have for the extent of the changes we need to make, and what we see before us in terms of the existing clean growth plan, which, as I have emphasised, is not meeting its own targets even on the old emissions levels, and is certainly not addressing what we need to do with our new targets. We need a comprehensive, country-wide, house-by-house energy refit, and it must be done urgently—in stark contrast with the pick-and-mix approach that has been taken so far on energy efficiency management, with the occasional person getting a refit.

There are a whole series of other areas where the numbers that we need to achieve bear no relation to the ambitions currently in Government policy. To achieve our energy ambitions, we urgently need to increase our offshore capacity sevenfold over the next few years. We need to increase solar provision threefold over the next 10 years. As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) mentioned, we need to really get going on carbon capture and storage, not just with a few projects but comprehensively across industry across the country.

We need trees, as has been mentioned, but we do not need to put a few trees in here and there, important though that is. In order to replace the forest cover lost in this country over the years, which is absolutely central to capturing and maintaining carbon stores, we need to plant 2.4 billion trees over the next 10 to 20 years— 30,000 hectares per annum of new forest cover—to get us anywhere near the sort of levels we need to achieve our ambitions. That is solely lacking in the Government’s actions at the moment.

I will just draw attention to one little thing that came out recently.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Very briefly.

[Dr Whitehead]

Very briefly. The 2019 spending review came out with the fabulous figure for decarbonisation of £30 million. To get some scale on that—

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Let’s not get some scale on that; let’s wind up.

[Dr Whitehead]

Indeed; I am about to wind up, Mr Gray. For scale, “Paddington 2”, the movie, had a budget of £32 million.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It is time for the Minister.