Net-Zero Carbon Emissions

Lord Oates Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to take part in this debate and to have heard the many insightful contributions from across the Grand Committee. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lord Teverson, who opened the debate so eloquently and powerfully. As my noble friend told the Grand Committee, joined-up thinking across Whitehall departments is critical and integrated planning with local government is essential if we are to meet our net-zero target. He also reminded us that while long-term targets unnecessary and welcome, they are meaningless unless they are backed up with credible action plans to deliver them.

Back in October, at Question Time, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, agreed that the Government’s net-zero target needed to be backed up by a credible short-term action plan for achieving it. When I asked him when we could expect one, he said:

“we will be setting this out in due course”.—[Official Report, 6/10/20; col. 517.]

I hope that in his response he will update us on when we can expect that plan, because we do not have time to waste.

In so many areas, the lack of a plan or even of any joined-up thinking is painfully evident: whether on decarbonising our buildings, transforming our transport system, protecting local ecology, tackling air pollution, reducing energy consumption or preparing the grid for a net-zero future. Just as the Government failed at the beginning of the pandemic to co-ordinate effectively across government or to understand that local government was a vital partner for effective public health interventions, so they are failing in the same way on climate change, where co-ordination in government is crucial and where local authorities have an essential role to play on the ground. The Government’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution failed to recognise that important role, mentioning local government just once.

We have also heard from many noble Lords about the silo approach that has been taken in government, which is a big concern to many of us. We have heard about incidences where the Department for Transport and BEIS pursue conflicting goals on decarbonising transport; the Department for Education throws obstacles in the way of the deployment of solar in schools; Defra, as my noble friend Lord Teverson reminds us, seems like it is on another planet from BEIS; MHCLG seems like it is on a different planet from all of us; and all the while, the Treasury continues to exert a negative influence over climate policy as a whole.

I was taken by the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, that the Chancellor should be made responsible for meeting our climate targets. Certainly, without Treasury help to drive policy, we cannot hope to be successful. Instead of fostering co-operation and integrated approaches with local government, however, more often than not the Government seem determined to frustrate the efforts that local authorities are making.

Planning is a key example where the Government’s policy stance is completely at odds with their net-zero objectives. First, they scrapped zero-carbon home standards, which the coalition had established. As a result, 800,000 homes have been built since then which will now have to be retrofitted, at much greater expense than if they been built to a decent standard in the first place. Now the Government aim to take planning powers away from local authorities—the exact opposite of what they should be doing, which is to enhance the local authorities’ ability to tackle climate change through the planning system, and to introduce a requirement that all planning decisions must have regard not just to the 2050 net-zero target but to the intermediate nationally defined target of a 68% reduction by 2030 and the sixth carbon budget’s 78% reduction target by 2035. How can we believe that the Government are serious about these targets when their policies point in the opposite direction?

Then we have decarbonisation of our housing stock. This is really where the rubber hits the road, because the changes required will reach into almost every home in the country and impact people in a way that is far more profound than the decarbonisation of the economy that has taken place to date. We have zero chance of success if local authorities are not intimately involved. My noble friend Lord Stunell gave a comprehensive and powerful overview of some of the challenges in delivering in this area. They involve overcoming consumer resistance, developing a local skills base, co-ordinating decarbonised heating schemes and providing information and reassurance to the public. That cannot be done from Whitehall alone, and any Government who try will fail, as the green homes grant has shown.

I will not repeat the points that have already been made about the shambles of the green homes grant, but I remind the Minister that, many months ago, I suggested that he consult my noble friend Lord Stunell so that the Government could avoid making the mistakes that they subsequently made. I suspect that the Minister, having heard my noble friend’s forensic speech on this issue, wishes that he had taken up my suggestion. However, to be fair to the Minister, I have always got the idea that he agreed with many of the criticisms that we made about the design of the scheme, and I suspect that it was the Treasury, as usual, that got in the way of sensible policy. I will take his nod as assent.

If we are to succeed in this area, local authorities need to be given targets and resources for driving this work forward. They are the only agents on the ground with the ability to co-ordinate change on this scale and the trust of the public to do it. As my noble friend said, they have proved that they can do it, but it will not happen unless the Government provide the right resources and incentives, and long-term funding that allows local governments to plan and work with local businesses to develop the skills base that would be required to deliver on decarbonising 28 million homes.

Our electricity grid will also face huge challenges as we continue to decarbonise our economy. We will have to hugely strengthen the grid if we are to sustain a switch from predominantly petrol vehicles to EVs and from fossil fuel to electricity in home heating. Yet the constraints on investment in the grid as a result of the Ofgem settlement make it seem not up to the task. Again, we seem to be failing to join up the various government agencies and departments and the private sector in a co-ordinated way. Can the Minister confirm that he believes that the level of investment is sufficient for what we need to do?

My noble friend Lady Randerson drew our attention to a wide range of contradictions between government transport policy and our net-zero policy, whether in the Government’s roads plan or in above-inflation rail fare rises while fuel duty is frozen. We heard yesterday that international aviation and shipping will be included in the 78% target for reducing emissions, although just last month the Government announced plans to reduce air passenger duty. There just seems to be no joined-up thinking.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, rightly drew attention to the need for co-ordination in bringing renewable electricity onshore. The current situation is a mess. It is another good example of the failure of BEIS and MHCLG to co-ordinate effectively with each other and with local government. This must be fixed.

My noble friend Lady Sheehan highlighted the insanity of the maximising economic recovery policy in the North Sea sitting in the same department that is supposed to be responsible for our net-zero policy. That makes absolutely no sense.

We saw a similar lack of joined-up thinking in the Treasury’s approach to the Financial Services Bill, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, spoke about. Despite the fact that the way the financial services industry allocates capital will be critical to whether we will be able to tackle the climate crisis, there was no reference in the Bill to climate change, and it was only thanks to the noble Baroness’s leadership that a cross-party group managed to persuade the Government that they had to amend the Bill so that regulators had to have regard to the net-zero target. Sadly, we were not successful in pressing an amendment that would have required the regulators to review the risk ratings applied under the capital requirements regulation to lend into fossil fuel activities, but this is another area where we will need a joined-up approach at national and international levels.

This has been an important and informative debate. We have learned much from noble Lords about the gap between commitments and delivery. The noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, made the point that the Prime Minister often seems keen on making big announcements, but the noble Lord asked—I think rhetorically—whether the Government actually have a delivery plan for net zero. The answer, sadly, is no.

I have a bigger worry about the Prime Minister’s approach: he is very happy to make categorical commitments one day and to betray them the next. We saw that on the 0.7% commitment and the promises made to Northern Ireland over Brexit. I have a real fear that, after COP 26, we may well see it on climate change. I hope it will not prove to be the case and that cynicism has momentarily got the better of me. However, even if the Prime Minister does not plan to abandon these targets, without a credible plan to meet them the effect will be the same.

When I spoke in the debate on the energy White Paper, the Minister was, dare I say it, a bit grouchy that I was not as positive as he would have liked. I therefore draw my remarks to a close by welcoming the leadership shown by the Government in committing us to a nationally determined contribution of a 68% reduction in emissions under the Paris Agreement by 2030 and their commitment, announced yesterday, to adopt the recommendation of the Climate Change Committee’s sixth carbon budget to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035.

There are many challenges but, as other noble Lords have pointed out, there are many opportunities for our economy as well, if we have a clear action plan from the Government. I finish by quoting an Arab proverb, which warns: “Commitments are clouds. Implementation is rain.” The earth is crying out for the rain.