UK Net Zero Emissions Target

Lord Cunningham of Felling Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cunningham of Felling (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s Statement, and the Government’s decision to set a target. Both are welcome, but the Minister and the Statement are implying profound changes in the lives of everyone in this country, including in housing, transport and workplace experience. The Statement needs to be underpinned by a sector-by-sector approach to how this will be achieved and delivered.

One thing that cannot happen—the Minister and I had an exchange about this earlier this week—is achieving this without a contribution from civil nuclear power. The world, never mind the UK, is not going to get by without civil nuclear power. We have abandoned our own ability to build a nuclear power station. I do not blame the present Government for this; other Governments are culpable, including the one I was a Minister in. The Government should set up a task force to see how we can recreate that ability on our own account, because depending on the Japanese, the Chinese or the French is a high-risk business. I hope the Government will give that serious consideration.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s first point, he is right that these are great challenges and that there will have to be a change in behaviour. We should go about this in the right way, taking people with us because a great deal of this will involve changes in individual lives. We are already seeing this through a decline in car use by many people. I have certainly noticed that younger people are purchasing fewer cars and so on. Again, this is disruptive for the automotive industry but if we want to make these changes these things will happen, and changes are happening. We will need to take people with us. However, the Government must offer help in both innovation and research, and we will do that. On the noble Lord’s point about nuclear, I have made it clear it that we have not abandoned nuclear but we want it at the right price. As we made clear in the nuclear sector deal last year, we will continue to put research into all aspects of nuclear, whether small modular, large nuclear or whatever.