Climate Change Committee Progress Report 2021

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts
Thursday 21st October 2021

(2 years, 5 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
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It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Sir Christopher. I think we may have another Back-Bench speaker whose name somehow did not make it on to the list. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) stole my gag about climate debates being like buses—two turn up at once but they are not electric buses.

I was one of the MPs who went outside yesterday to see the people who are pressing for more zero-emission buses. They had buses there from Ballymena, Falkirk, and Selby near Leeds to highlight the fact that, while the Government have pledged 4,000 zero-emission buses, only a small handful have appeared on the roads. Although the Transport Secretary responded to questions from one of my colleagues in the shadow Transport team to say that 900 were in production, we have pressed him on that since, asking where they are in production and when they are appearing, and he seems to have gone very quiet.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) on securing the debate, and I congratulate him on his optimism. We do need optimism when it comes to the fight against climate change. It can seem like a pessimistic environment. The zero-emission buses are an example of where the Government’s actions do not match their announcements. Unless we see an acceleration of action, not just warm words, we shall be nowhere near meeting the targets, which are good and ambitious. They set an example to the rest of the world, but if we cannot go to COP and demonstrate the real things that are happening on the ground, it all becomes greenwash, to put it mildly.

The Committee on Climate Change report is huge, but one recommendation goes to the heart of everything. There is a recommendation for No. 10 and the Cabinet Office that says:

“Ensure all departmental policy decisions…are consistent with the Net Zero goal and reflect the latest understanding of climate risks.”

That is where we need to be. Everything the Government do should be through the prism of trying to achieve net zero. We have the announcement of new fossil fuel projects—the Cambo oilfield and the Cumbrian coal mine. Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change, has written to the Government to say that it is simply incompatible with our stated ambitions to allow those new fossil fuel projects to go ahead. Compare what is happening with airport expansion with the recommendations of the Committee that there should be no net airport expansion. The word “net” is important. Although it does not work in the current context, where Heathrow and everywhere else is pressing for expansion, there is an argument that, if capacity declined at Heathrow, regional airports such as Bristol would be able to expand, creating regional jobs and economic growth as part of that net calculation.

Take the Transport Secretary and the road-building programme, in which billions of pounds are going towards the construction of new roads. He was advised by his civil servants that that needed to be subject to an environmental impact assessment to see whether it was compatible with the Government meeting their climate change ambitions, and he refused to do so. I know that the Minister answering today is not from the Department for Transport, but that is another example of the actions of the Government just not squaring up with this recommendation in the Committee on Climate Change’s report.

The Australian trade agreement is another example. How can we claim to be serious about climate change and protecting the environment when we are more than willing to trade away environmental protections as part of a trade agreement? When the Minister was in his previous post, I asked him about potential trade agreements with Brazil and the relationship with that country in general. On one of his overseas jaunts, the Prime Minister congratulated President Bolsonaro on being an environmental champion. This guy is almost single-handedly destroying the Amazon by allowing huge numbers of people to be displaced from their land, and allowing swathes of forest to be burned and used for cattle ranching or the growing of various commodities—soya for livestock feed, palm oil, and so on.

It was sad how little attention was paid to that issue when we debated the Lords amendments to the Environment Bill yesterday. On the one hand, we have a Government who like to boast about how many more trees they are going to plant—at the last election, every party was trying to outbid the others as to how many millions of trees they would be able to plant—but that means absolutely nothing in terms of the net number of trees across the planet if we are allowing Bolsonaro to burn the Amazon to the ground.

One of the Minister’s colleagues in the Trade team once answered a question that I asked them about this issue by pointing to the UK Government’s giving money to Brazil for certain forest protection programmes, conserving parts of the rainforest or even planting new trees there, but if we look at how those numbers stack up against the proportion that is being destroyed, they are nowhere close. It is a token effort; it is well-meaning, but unless we do something through pressure in trade negotiations and at COP to stop Bolsonaro and others in their tracks, we will be destroying a huge carbon sink. We are now in a position where the Amazon is a net emitter of carbon: we used to talk about the Amazon as being the lungs of the world, but that is no longer the case, and that is something that the UK Government could do something about.

We now have the 1.5° target that we agreed at Paris, so COP should be about how we go about achieving that target, and we do need a lot of countries to set more ambitious nationally determined contributions. We are very concerned that China and now Russia will not be sending their leaders, so can the Minister advise us on what impact he thinks that will have on the negotiations? Will Brazil come to the table, and what pressure will it be put under at COP? Finance is incredibly important—trying to secure that $100 billion a year—but as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on small island developing states, I would make the point that whenever I talk to those states, they say that this is not just about how much money is committed, but how they can access it. These are tiny countries with very small levels of resources.

Tony Lloyd Portrait Tony Lloyd
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My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. This is not just about money, but about the transfer of technologies. One of the things we saw during the covid crisis was that we were unfortunately quite reluctant to transfer technology, even in our self-interest. We have to allow the small countries that she has described to have access to the technology, as well as the finance, that makes the difference.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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My hon. Friend is entirely right. In some cases, the populations of those countries are smaller than the population of our constituencies, so it would not be a huge effort on the part of the UK Government to prioritise them and help them make the transition to renewable energy. In some cases, it involves getting out of very difficult contracts, sometimes with companies that are based in the developing world and are tied into electricity supplies based on fossil fuels. There is a lot that we could do to help them. The main plea is that we have to simplify the process. We all know of small organisations in our constituencies trying to apply for, say, lottery funding, or bidding for other funds. They face a similar situation; the paperwork and bureaucracy are immense.

I was concerned to read today in The Guardian that a third of Pacific islands have said that they are unable to attend COP, partly because of covid. That goes back to the size issue. The people who would be coming over from those islands cannot afford to take a fortnight off work to quarantine at the end of the conference. When I asked the COP26 President, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), about that, he told me two things: that the UK would ensure that all people from small and developing states could be vaccinated, and that there would be funds available to bring them over. The reason that delegates at Paris moved from 2° to 1.5° was partly because of the personal testimony and presence of the Pacific leaders in particular, and leaders of small island developing states in general. That really made the change. Their presence and their voices at Paris shamed the world and highlighted the fact that in some cases those countries will literally disappear underwater if we do not keep 1.5 alive.

I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on another of the recommendations in the committee’s report. It came up briefly at International Trade questions today, but the Minister did not have much time to outline the Government’s position. The report lists as a priority recommendation that the Government should

“Develop the option of applying either border carbon tariffs or minimum standards to imports of selected embedded-emission-intense industrial and agricultural products and fuels.”

Hon. Members can see why I had to write that down; it is quite a long phrase. As I understand it, we need to measure the embedded carbon in the products that we are importing into the country and find a way of dealing with it, and border tariffs may be one way of doing that. The report recommends that that should be discussed at the G7 and at COP, which is why I wanted to flag it up today. We should have those discussions.

I am aware that I have been speaking for quite some time, although I am also aware that, given that this is a three-hour debate, I could probably go on a lot longer. I am sure that people do not want to be detained, so I will just mention one more thing. It was reported this week that a nudge unit report on behaviour change, which recommended reductions in meat eating and measures to curb aviation demand, was buried. Can the Minister explain why that report has not been published and is not being discussed? We can talk forever about technological change, what the Government need to do and what needs to be financed, but behavioural change is a significant part of how we will meet our climate objectives.

In previous conversations, Ministers have suggested to me that they are quite reluctant to intervene in issues around the food agenda, plastic use and anything involving an element of personal choice. Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said to me that individuals could choose to bring their keep cup with them—like I have done today—so that they do not use single-use plastic, or that they could choose to eat less meat, but that this is very much a matter of personal choice: the market will respond if the public want it.

Particularly with meat eating, the market has responded, but some Ministers, from an ideological point of view, do not see a role for the Government in nudging it along. There is a real debate about whether it is acceptable to nudge things along rather than wielding the stick to make people do things. That is the crux of the issue of whether we act upon the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations. For example, they recommended a

“20% shift away from all meat by 2030”.

That is pretty unambitious, but there is an ideological debate about whether the Government’s role is to encourage people to make the shift or to make them make the shift—using all the levers, whether they be carrots or sticks.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
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My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, but on that point, is it not true that people have a choice in the supermarket between buying a meat product or an equivalent plant protein alternative, but that nearly always—particularly at the bottom end of the price scale—the plant protein equivalent is much more expensive? The Government could introduce fiscal measures to level that up or even make the plant protein choice cheaper, given the climate benefit to that, but they are choosing not to do so. That would make personal choice easier. At the moment, the choice for people who cannot afford it is to buy the meat every time.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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I agree with my hon. Friend. We had this discussion during the Agriculture Bill Committee, and I know that organisations such as Sustain were very keen on the idea that we could use agricultural subsidies to bring down the price of healthy food. However, we get into a difficult discussion about rewarding farmers for producing so-called healthy food. We could say that a potato is a healthy food, but if it gets turned into a bag of crisps it is not. If a tomato gets put in a ready meal with all sorts of other junk, it is not healthy. It is quite a difficult thing to grapple with, but I do not think that the idea of a meat tax is the way to go. I know that some people suggest that, but I think we need to look at how we can make healthy choices, and more sustainable choices, more affordable for people.

The same goes for electric vehicles. I very much welcome the zero-emission vehicles mandate that was announced this week, but the Government have been cutting the plug-in grants for electric vehicles year on year, and there are rumours that they will be axed entirely. From what I hear from the Chancellor, I think we are okay for the next financial year, but not beyond that. It almost feels as if the Government have decided that the grants that have been given out so far have done their job. They have stimulated the market, but if we are to get to where we want to be and have a vibrant second-hand market by the time that the ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles comes in, a lot more has to be done. At the moment, EVs are simply not affordable and accessible for many people, and that is partly because of the charging infrastructure points as well.

I have spoken far too many times about EVs in this place as it is, so I will draw my speech to a conclusion—as I am sure you will be very pleased to hear, Sir Christopher. As it stands, I do not think that what the Government are doing will get us to net zero by 2050, I do not think that we are on track to achieve the pledged 78% emissions reduction by 2035, and very sadly I do not think that we are on track to keep 1.5 alive.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
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It is a real pleasure to be back in Westminster Hall in person and to serve under you chairship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) for securing the debate. He said that a similar debate is taking place in the main Chamber, which means that so many Members from across the House will be talking about the most important issue facing humanity: the climate.

I know we are talking about the Climate Change Committee, and I could quote Lord Deben at length, but I will start by quoting Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific officer, whom we have seen many times during covid:

“Only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in this decade can prevent…climate breakdown”.

He is obviously the chief adviser to the Government in this area, aside from the Climate Change Committee.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and as we found out from “The Great British Bake Off”, baked goods that look great do not always taste great. That is the test for the Government. This week they have published their net zero strategy, with so many accompanying documents and reports that I have not had time to read them, so the Minister might be correcting me and others at the end of the debate because there is an answer to our questions. However, while things have looked good for a while, they have not tasted good, because the delivery is not there.

I will talk about the role of local government. Before I was elected to this place, I was the lead on climate change sustainability for Leeds City Council for a number of years. We started doing some great, groundbreaking work, but we could not complete some of those initiatives, because of Government policy and intervention, which stopped us in our tracks. Let me give two examples.

First, we installed 1,000 solar roofs on the homes of council tenants who could not afford to put solar panels on their roofs. We took those 1,000 households out of fuel poverty. We were able to do that because of the feed-in tariff. The cost of those solar roofs would be repaid in nine years because of the benefit of that feed-in tariff. When we were installing the solar roofs, the Government announced a reduction in the feed-in tariff and then another reduction, and it became uneconomic to complete the programme. We had an aim of 7,000 roofs. Interestingly, at the beginning of the programme, people did not want them. They said they looked ugly, but as soon as the first person in the street got them and reported how much they were paying for electricity, everybody wanted solar roofs, but we could not fill the demand because of Government intervention.

There is a real issue in my constituency. On one side of the main road we have a social housing estate where external wall insulation was provided because the eco-funding provided for that, and we managed to complete it after the eco-funding was cut, because we got a European regional development fund grant, which again is something that is no longer available to us. On the other side of the road, there is no external wall insulation, because there was no funding to complete the programme, and the people live in fuel poverty. That is an example of where Government interventions restricted a local authority’s ability to deliver on climate action. It is important that the Government give local authorities the tools, funding and support to complete the work.

There are big gaps. First, local authorities do not have the staff to do the work because of year-on-year Government cuts. We are not talking about local authorities’ statutory duties; we are talking about local authorities having set net zero dates themselves. The earliest one I heard was Nottingham’s, which was 2028. Leeds’s was 2030, and I think Manchester’s and Bristol’s were the same.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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indicated assent.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel
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Yes. So a lot of local authorities have quite short time periods to deliver net zero. They are not hamstrung by their own actions, but by Government actions. I hope that in the documents released this week there will be answers to local authorities’ questions.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government have not reached out to leaders in the city regions ahead of COP? We know that on day 11 of COP there is a city regions day, but the Mayor of Bristol told me that there has been no discussion with Bristol, which is at the forefront of trying to introduce measures to get us to net zero. There seems to be a lack of communication between the Government and the people in charge of delivering the policies on the ground.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel
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I have mixed news for my hon. Friend because the Mayor of West Yorkshire will be there on the 11th, and the Government have given her blue zone accreditation.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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The Mayor of Bristol is going to COP and has blue zone accreditation, but he says there have been no conversations about all the documents the Government are publishing, and no discussions with city regions about what will be raised at COP and how things will go, and they are being left to the last day, on day 11.

Alex Sobel Portrait Alex Sobel
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I completely agree that metro Mayors have been an afterthought in terms of COP. My first COP was in Paris and I went, before we had a metro Mayor, as the lead representative. The French Government and the Mayor of Paris put on a huge set of events and incorporated cities from around the world. Given the issues that were emerging in the United States at that point, it was decided that the real deliverers of climate change measures on the ground would be cities and regions. The Paris COP was just after the election of Donald Trump. Thankfully, we are through that period now and we have a President of the United States who wants to take serious climate action.

On support for local authorities, they have their own internal staff to be able to deliver, but there is a huge skills gap across all the different areas. I would like to see the Government step up and fund skills training in all areas. We now have a situation where we have shortages of workers in a whole range of areas. It is really important for the country that we retrain workers in fossil fuel industries into these new industries and that we train young people into these jobs.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire mentioned the ambition around heat pumps. Apparently, 7 million to 11 million heat pumps are required by 2035. How many air and ground source heat pump installers have been trained in the UK so far? Not many. The number is in the low thousands—I am sure that the Minister will have the exact number. That is woefully insufficient to deliver the ambition of the Government’s programme. There are university technical colleges and building colleges all around the country that could be funded to train tens of thousands of people in these industries, which is what we will need, and not just in those industries.

To digress slightly, my next point is about the supply chain. I recently went to ITM Power in Sheffield, which is a manufacturer of electrolysers. Those are what we need to convert off-peak renewable electricity into hydrogen for use in buses and heavy goods vehicles, potentially in heating, in making steel, and in other industrial processes. ITM Power has 320 people in its plant and is training people, but it says that its big issues are support for skills training and demand for electrolysers in the hydrogen sector, because there is a lack of skills training for the industries that would use electrolysers. So the supply chain issues are huge, and I will come back to them. However, I have digressed a little from local authorities.

What do the Government need to do to support local authorities? For a start, what we are seeing now, in terms of the Climate Change Committee, is five-year carbon budgets. As we have seen, we are not on track to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets. We will wait until the Climate Change Committee reports to see whether it says that, with the new plans, we will now meet those budgets; I still think that we will fall short of meeting them, because we have lost so much time. Because time is so acute—for local authorities, we are talking about timeframes of seven, eight, nine or 10 years to get to net zero—we need a practical framework for annual carbon budgeting, and we need to have shorter periods for measuring it.

Planning is a huge area; it is a really difficult area for local authorities. Time and time again, we see planning committees in local authorities—I know that it happens in my local authority in Leeds—where councillors want to turn down volume planning applications. I am not talking about somebody’s extension on their house; I am talking about big developments. They want to turn them down on climate and environmental grounds, but the legal advice and planning officers say that they cannot turn them down, because they will lose on appeal.

We do not have a good enough planning framework to meet our net zero obligations, and those need to become non-negotiable. When the planning Bill is brought forward, I hope that that is where the Government will take it and that they will not, once again, lean in to the volume property developer community, which wants to do the absolute minimum. That community has really influenced the Government twice already: once when we had the code for sustainable homes, which was introduced in 2009-10 but scrapped as soon as the coalition Government came in; and then towards the end of the coalition Government, when the zero carbon homes initiative was also scrapped after the 2015 general election. We have lost 11 years on this issue; we cannot afford to lose any more time just because volume house builders cannot meet their climate obligations. They have had 11 years; they should have caught up. In every other European country, such developers have caught up, including in Holland, Belgium, Germany and Denmark. They need to catch up in the UK.

It is not good enough that we are still building homes without alternative fuel systems and saying that we will retrofit them in 2035. How much more will it cost us to retrofit those houses, rather than building them now with an adequate low-carbon heating system? Local authorities also need access to net zero funding streams to meet their own obligations, or the Government’s obligations, around net zero.

I will just talk a little about the supply chain, because I realise that I have already talked for a considerable length of time, although I know that we have a little bit of time left in the debate. I keep speaking to people who are quite early in the supply chain; I just mentioned ITM Power. Yesterday, I spoke to people who provide the ships and the construction crew for offshore wind. I speak to people in the early stages of the supply chain for low-carbon solutions in every area. They raise the same issues every time. One issue that generally does not exist is lack of access to finance. The finance exists, but the problems are, first, the very short timescales for contracts and contracting. The Government need to provide confidence in long-term contracting.

Secondly, there are real issues around manufacturing capabilities. We do not have the shipyards and we do not have the number of buses being produced. Can somebody point me to a hydrogen heavy goods vehicle that has been produced in the UK? Not a single HGV has been produced in this country that will take hydrogen fuel. There are a few in other countries, so we are behind that curve. We need to be in a position to provide the confidence and the demand for low-carbon manufacturing and construction. Otherwise, we will be left behind once again, as we were on manufacturing wind turbines, where Denmark and Germany took a clear lead, and a number of other areas we could talk about, such as district heat and power and so on. Those are two areas.

The other area, and the most important thing, is that we do not have an end-to-end green industrial strategy, which means that people do not know exactly where they fit into the net zero pathway and the roadmap. All the Government’s ambitions and targets need to fit into an industrial strategy so people know how everything works. Germany has an industrial strategy; the UK does not seemingly have one now. If the Government have published a really good one this week, I apologise to the Minister and he will tell us all about it at the end.

I will finish on this: my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) referred to the fact that a report came out from the nudge unit but was then withdrawn. It can still be found if people know where to look on the internet. That was the one I read in quite a lot of detail, because it is always interesting to know why the Government have withdrawn something after putting it out. There is one thing in there that was interesting.

One of the big challenges at COP26—it will be a success and I will give praise to the Government if their COP presidency stands out from that of every previous COP from Paris onwards—will be getting an international agreement on aviation and shipping emissions. There is a lot of talk about technological solutions to both aviation and shipping, but I am afraid that they are a long way away. If we talk to anybody in the industry, it is clear that we are still at a very early research and development phase. As to having this at scale, it is probably past the point of no return in terms of the climate.

We are going to have to manage demand, and on aviation the nudge report suggested that the Government should consider looking at a frequent flyer levy. The reason for that is that 70% of flights in this country, pre-covid, were taken by 15% of people. Demand for aviation is not evenly spread, whereas it is much more so with car travel. It is a small group of people, whether because they are involved in business travel or because they are individually well off. There are not many ways to change that behaviour, but the frequent flyer levy is one. I am interested to know why that report was withdrawn, why that is not being considered and where we are on managing demand if we are to have no net increase in aviation emissions in this country.

I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire again. I hope we can get this right and we can get an international agreement right at COP26. The climate and climate science will not compromise with us. This is not a political problem that we can negotiate with another country; this is a problem that is based on science, and science will not wait.

--- Later in debate ---
Greg Hands Portrait Greg Hands
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The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I will come on to the point about installation. He also makes a very good point about insulation and the importance of well insulated homes, which I think nobody denies. But let me just return to the points that he made in his speech.

Local government and local delivery are incredibly important. It is very important that local leadership is seen on climate change. I see it from Mayors such as Andy Street and Ben Houchen and also some Labour Mayors. I think Andy Burnham, the hon. Gentleman’s local Mayor, has been quite good in this space as well. It is important that we all see climate change and taking action on climate change as a cross-party issue involving all the tiers of government and all the available parts of government across the whole United Kingdom.

On energy usage, the hon. Member for Rochdale asked what more the Government can do to address consumption and reduce emissions. The heat and buildings strategy addresses consumption in homes. For example, we provide increased support for low-income households through the home upgrade grant. We are committed to upgrading fuel-poor homes to energy performance certificate band C by 2030 where reasonably practicable. And there is our social housing decarbonisation fund, with £800 million provided. I think that the hon. Gentleman also asked about hydrogen investment. The net zero strategy confirms the industrial decarbonisation and hydrogen revenue support scheme, supporting blue and green H2 production. It could lead to 1.5 GW of new capacity.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) asked about quite a number of things, some of which are familiar themes. I just remind her that Cambo has already been licensed as a field, in 2001 and 2004.

I could fill the remaining time on airport expansion. Mrs Murray, you will remember that I resigned from the Government in 2018 over airport expansion at Heathrow. I note that, since I resigned, that airport expansion has not happened and I am not seeing any sign of it happening anytime soon.

The hon. Lady asked about trade agreements.

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy
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Would the Minister like to advise us as to whether, if proposals to expand Heathrow are resurrected—obviously, over the last couple of years there has been the pandemic, which has hit aviation—he will resign again?

Greg Hands Portrait Greg Hands
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Again, that is a temptation down a particular road, but let me say this. The Government are absolutely clear that all further airport expansions must be consistent with our climate change obligations. Government policy is absolutely clear on that.