Climate Change

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Chester (Chris Matheson) on his excellent maiden speech and his generous tribute to Stephen Mosley. I would very much reiterate his comments. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Braintree (James Cleverly) and for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) on their fantastic maiden speeches. The Conservative party is in extremely good hands with such people on our Benches.

In the short time I have, I would like to concentrate on why I believe the issue of climate change is so important. My reasons come from a very practical standpoint. I lived in Tanzania for 11 years on Mount Kilimanjaro and I saw the diminution of the glaciers there, which continues to this day. I also worked—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—in small-scale agriculture, and I saw the impact on smallholder farmers across the world of both erratic rainfall and unseasonable events, such as hail storms that could destroy crops and droughts that could mean they had no crops at all. That is why adaptation is so critical, and the work of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for International Development is incredibly important.

My approach is also practical in the area of distribution. We have talked about generation quite a lot, but the distribution of power is vital, which is why I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to mention smart grids and interconnectors between the UK and elsewhere, allowing us to balance generation both within the UK and across Europe.

Finally, I would like to reiterate the comment made by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) about high energy-intensive users. We have to be practical. We do not want imported carbon emissions. We have a large trade deficit, and perhaps one reason our carbon emissions have decreased over the past 20 years is that we have a substantial deficit in manufactured goods. As we seek to increase our trade and cut that deficit, we might see an increase in emissions related to those exports, despite the energy efficiency of our industries. We have to adopt a practical approach, like the French and Germans do. We also have to remember that our house-building programme, which is vital, depends on the availability and manufacture of bricks and tiles in this country, often from Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, part of which I represent. We have to make sure that we do not drive the manufacture of those products overseas by policies that might have those unfortunate consequences.