Global Climate Change

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I join with those who thanked my noble friend Lord Hunt for introducing this timely and vital debate. We should also thank him for his lifetime of hard, committed work and leadership in this sphere. We wish him well for the continuation of that.

Britain led the Industrial Revolution. We therefore were the leaders in the accumulation and acceleration of the destruction of the environment, with pollution and all the huge issues that we are discussing. That demands of us a leading role in ensuring success in Paris. We cannot just go to Paris. We cannot just have hard-working, committed civil servants negotiating like mad; we have to have political leadership with commitment on this score. I want to hear from the Minister an assurance that the Prime Minister himself will focus on and go to Paris, and that the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development will go.

My next point is: let us not just think that it is a matter of leaving it just to DfID or the Department of Energy and Climate Change to get on with it. As has been said very well—not least by the Minister’s noble friend Lord Borwick, in what I thought was an incredibly interesting speech—this demands disciplined and committed support and work by almost every government department. I do not see the signs of that at all. In fact, I see a contrast. On the one hand we take security threats extremely seriously. I congratulate the Government on having concentrated on setting up a security council of their own that brings a cross-section of ministries together to work on that issue. But this is a far bigger threat than terrorism or anything else that we are discussing. It is the survival of the species. If that is the case, where is the evidence of disciplined, interdepartmental leadership on this—to which, of course the Prime Minister’s commitment will be essential—and of the drive that is necessary?

We have talked a great deal about hopes of an agreement in Paris. I, too, hope that there will be agreement in Paris, but if I have learned anything in my life—in public life, in Parliament and, indeed, in government—it is that there is a hell of a difference between an agreement and the effective application of that agreement in practical policy. That is why we must resist any intellectual or theoretical temptation to say, “If we get agreement, that’s victory”. It is not at all. It is essential that we get agreement, but the agreement is the gate to the action that will then be necessary.

I will make one other point. We have regretted the failures in international negotiation in this sphere in the past. I have regretted them, too, but, because of my work in what we have traditionally called the third world, I have not been surprised. That is because what we are doing is asking the majority of humanity to sign up to a strategy devised by the advantaged industrial nations and to produce a contribution which is essential to success. Let us look at that in perspective for a moment. Those nations are being asked to sign up to, and get involved in, the disciplines which will be necessary before they have even begun to get access to what we take for granted in our way of life and our economic and industrial organisation. They have to do that, of course; that necessity cannot be escaped. However, that demands of us imagination and real commitment to ensure that this agreement is as fair as it can be in the burden that it places—of course, burdens can create opportunities for humanity—on the poorest people in the poorest countries in the world. Therefore, redistribution of resources to enable those people to organise their society in such a way that they are helped to make that contribution is absolutely crucial.

My last point is that it is not just fairness and justice that will be important in this sphere; there must also be a sense of ownership across the international community. If it is felt by the leaders of the majority of the world that this is something devised by others with which they are having to co-operate, we are in danger of having a minimalist approach to its application. However, if those leaders feel that it is something in which they have participated and which they own as a policy, we are in a strong position. Therefore, I repeat that the leadership of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and, of course, the Secretary of State for International Development, and the full-hearted commitment of leaders and Ministers in many other spheres, are absolutely indispensable.