Brexit: Environmental and Climate Change Policy

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on having secured this debate and having introduced it so ably while struggling against what looks to be a pretty awful sore throat. I also have a sore throat, but it does not sound as bad, so I should be able to struggle through.

The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, somewhat improbably, made one of the best quips about Brexit. He said that the UK was in, but with lots of opt-outs, but wants to be out, with lots of opt-ins. In the case of climate change, which is a bit different from the single market, we hope that most of those opt-ins will be agreed by both sides.

In my speech, I shall concentrate on my concerns on the issue of climate change, arguably the most demanding challenge humanity faces in the 21st century. It is not only the most demanding, but the most intractable. On a worldwide level, virtually no progress has been made thus far in slowing the advance of global warming. World surface and sea temperatures in 2015 were the highest on record; 2016 is predicted by NASA to turn out even hotter.

Brexit seems insignificant compared to the global scale of the issue. After all, the UK creates only a small proportion of total global emissions. The country has a good track record in reducing those emissions compared to most other industrial states, and it has pioneered strategies of doing so that deserve to be emulated elsewhere. Climate change is a negative example of how interdependent the world has become and the impossibility of extracting any country from that interdependence, positive and negative. In such a world, Britain will have to continue to collaborate with other states, both in a European context and on a worldwide level, and in many, many different areas.

The area of climate change and energy demonstrates, in only one context, just how tortuous and difficult the process of Brexit will be. As in all the other domains of co-operation, the UK will have to sift in detail through what is to be kept and what is to be discarded, and in a context where the other 27 EU states will take the core decisions. Those who thought leaving the EU would mean an escape from bureaucracy are in for a rude shock. So far as the UK is concerned, there is likely to be a sharp increase, since in many instances specific procedures will be needed to deal with the details of the British case.

The think tank Carbon Brief, with which I am sure the Minister is familiar, has listed 94 questions for the Government to answer on the implications of leaving the European Union for energy and climate change. That list, the organisation adds, “is probably incomplete”. The Minister will be glad to know that the Government have already managed to answer one of the 94, by endorsing a fifth carbon budget consistent with recommendations from the Committee on Climate Change. There are only 93 to go. I will be more modest in my demands and list only five, or at least five clusters of issues on which it would be useful if the Minister would give some idea of the Government’s preliminary thinking.

First, somewhat disturbingly, one of the new Prime Minister’s first acts on coming into power was to close down the Department of Energy and Climate Change as a separate entity, seemingly connected with the invention of new departments relating to Brexit. Will the Minister unequivocally confirm that this change does not mark a downgrading of the significance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? It is to the credit of the previous incarnation of the Government that much of the structure that Labour set up has been kept in place. Will the Minister confirm that all this will not only—to quote an unfashionable term—remain but be further deepened?

Secondly, the Paris agreement has now been backed by the European Parliament and has recently reached the level of international endorsement to come into force globally. How does the Minister assess the issues that surround the UK’s involvement? Will the UK ratify the agreement as a member of the EU or rely on the fact that it is already an individual signatory? Will Britain continue to take part in the EU emissions trading system, and if not, what parallel procedure will be developed?

Thirdly, what implications will Brexit have for the complex connections between the energy industries in the UK and the rest of Europe? Energy is obviously deeply implicated in all this. Some 50% of the gas used in the UK is imported and the bulk of this comes through pipelines that go through EU or EEA countries. Imported electricity has been projected to increase under current arrangements by more than double over the next few years. All this depends on the integrated arrangements made possible by the single market. Can the Minister say what happens if the UK is not able to stay a member of the single market, which is a distinct possibility if control of migration is taken to be the sine qua non of Brexit?

Fourthly, so-called hard Brexit—a pretty daft name, but it has come into currency—will have huge implications, both for climate change agreements and for energy more generally. In these areas, as in almost all others, the review of competences found that the existing arrangements worked well. It is an odd situation to be leaving the EU when that review went through every single connection and found that almost all of them worked well. If the UK were to leave the single energy market, a raft of environmental standards would have to be reconsidered. Moreover, the UK would be more vulnerable to the vagaries of energy markets than is the case at the moment. How would the Government handle these issues? As an addendum, personally I think that the UK will be vulnerable economically as it detaches itself from the EU because it is an open economy, subject to the whims of global investors. That is not taking back control.

Finally, how will the Government plan ahead in respect of climate change and energy policy when so many factors are in play, and when even the Chancellor has been forced to concede that economic turbulence is likely to be caused by Brexit? Assessments of impact will have to be carried out in the light of multiple contingencies, including possible changes in the wider world economy. The review of competences, which I just referred to, was child’s play compared to the multiplicity of issues that lie in wait and must be resolved.

Brexit sounds so simple and straightforward, especially now that Mrs May has explained to us what it means. However, the issues and problems it raises are dauntingly complex.