Climate and Ecology Bill [HL]

Lord Oates Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Redesdale on introducing this important Bill and on his excellent speech in support of it. I was pleased to support the Bill, along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues and members of all parties, in its previous incarnation in the other place, where it was sponsored by Caroline Lucas. I pay tribute to her work and that of Zero Hour, which has been tireless in its advocacy for the Bill.

While Theresa May’s Government are to be commended for having adopted the net-zero target for 2050, we are way off implementing the measures needed to achieve it. Moreover, recent government decisions have run directly contrary to the legally binding target that the Government have set. For instance, who can forget Rishi Sunak’s decision to slash air passenger duty on the eve of the United Kingdom hosting COP 26 in Glasgow, the Government’s plans to license more fossil fuel exploitation in the North Sea and their refusal to end the policy of maximum economic exploitation of North Sea fossil fuels, or the UK’s central role in financing global fossil fuel investment?

As Carbon Tracker’s recent report highlights, listed fossil fuel companies make up 15% of the value of the London Stock Exchange, making it far more exposed than any other stock exchange in the world. According to Carbon Tracker:

“Only around half of the future ‘business as usual’ spending by oil & gas companies listed in London was found to be compatible”


with keeping within our 1.5 degrees target. This suggests that London will be landed with trillions of dollars of stranded assets, posing a grave threat to financial stability, not to mention to the future of the earth itself.

As each month passes, the already yawning gap between rhetoric and reality grows ever wider and the consequences of it become ever more terrifying. The Bill would help to bridge that gap by introducing the measures on climate and nature that my noble friend has set out, including restricting net CO₂ emissions between 2020 and 2050 to no more than the UK’s proportionate share of the remaining global carbon budget, setting a legally binding target to reduce UK imported emissions and establishing a requirement to halt and reverse the UK’s catastrophic biodiversity loss.

I particularly commend the measures in Clause 3 relating to public involvement via a climate and nature assembly. Such deliberative democracy has proved highly effective in many places, such as the Republic of Ireland, where it ensured that public engagement in complex and often highly controversial issues has been taken on board. It is crucial that, in all the complex decisions we will have to take on climate and nature, there is full engagement with the public in that decision-making process.

This week I had the pleasure of giving a tour of Parliament to my godchildren, Darcy and Kira, who are visiting from Australia. They left Sydney as it faced unprecedented floods and arrived in London as it faced record-breaking temperatures. Around the world, extreme weather events are multiplying. Climate change is not something happening in the future; it is here now, a clear and present danger. It will affect all of us one way or another, but the poorest and the youngest will suffer the most devastating impacts of our inaction. Young people are looking to us to act to safeguard their future, so it is time for us to step up to the plate, take our responsibilities to them seriously and pass this Bill.