Fourth Carbon Budget

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Huhne]

Were our EU partners to move even further and faster than we are currently suggesting, we might indeed see revision in the other direction, but I think that the hon. Gentleman accepts as much as I do that the chances of that happening appear to be remote at the moment. I think that we are making progress with our aim to achieve a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. A number of other countries have joined us in the call for that, including, recently, Denmark, Sweden and Spain, and I am confident that we will make further progress among our partners in the months to come.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Businesses in my part of west Yorkshire are already playing a major part in the green economy. David Brown Engineering in Lockwood make the gears for offshore wind turbines and is very appreciative of a £2 million investment from the regional growth fund for a research centre there; TEV Ltd in Brighouse is investing in air source heat pumps; and the then Conservative-run Kirklees council introduced the warm zone scheme. Does my right hon. Friend agree that as we cut emissions, the number of green jobs will increase?

[Chris Huhne]

I certainly do. I think this presents an enormous opportunity for the future. There will be enormous numbers of jobs in energy saving and in the other low-carbon goods and services, and that will be the case right across the country. There will be no bias towards one region or another—no bias towards London and the south-east, for instance—because homes, and therefore the industrial opportunities, exist everywhere.