Climate Change Act 2008 (Credit Limit) Order 2021

Lord Oates Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this statutory instrument, which could not have been clearer. Its clarity is the reason I oppose the order. It is clear that it is unnecessary, ill-advised and sends precisely the wrong messages about what we as a nation will do when the going gets tough on meeting our climate change targets. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and other noble Lords have said, and as the Minister pointed out, it is opposed by the Climate Change Committee, the Government of Scotland and the Government of Wales.

The Government have two arguments that they deploy in favour of these 55 million credits. First, they say they are on track to meet the fourth carbon budget, but they need to have flexibility just in case they do not. The Minister told us that 55 million credits were in place for the second and third carbon budgets. While I think there should be zero credits, in line with the views of the Climate Change Committee, the least the Government could have done is to begin to ratchet them down as a proportion of the budget. The Minister said that they represented 2.8% of the budget; he could have brought that down to 1% or 1.5%, but he and the Government have chosen not to do and are sending very worrying signals about what they will do.

The Minister said, as the Explanatory Memorandum points out at paragraph 7.5, that the UK is currently projected to meet the fourth carbon budget. The Climate Change Committee says that the Government are not on track to meet the fourth or the fifth carbon budget, so I wonder whether he can explain that discrepancy and who is advising the Government on their projections to meet the climate change budget.

The second argument that the Government use is:

“The ability to purchase credits could also enable the UK to support mitigation action in developing countries. A purchase of credits would contribute to the development of a global carbon market, which would reduce the global cost of action on climate change.”


This is of course an utterly spurious argument. Nothing would prevent the Government, if they set the credit limit at zero, purchasing credits and contributing to supporting developing countries in this way. This measure is a “get out of jail free” card for the Government when they start finding things difficult, and it is clear that things are going to be much more difficult politically if we are to meet our targets. We all know that. We know that the decarbonisation of our economy to date has been driven largely by the decarbonisation of the power sector. Although that has had impacts on the public, they have been indirect, and they are very different from what will happen as we move forward.

We absolutely need a signal of resolution from the Government and not a signal that they have a way out of this, not least because we are talking here about the fourth carbon budget, which, as I have said, the Climate Change Committee says we are not on track to meet. The fifth and sixth carbon budgets are much more demanding. If the Government are giving themselves wriggle room already on these budgets, it sends a very worrying signal.

There is an Arab proverb which I often quote in the context of climate change, because it is very apposite: commitments are cloud, but implementation is rain. This Government are extremely good at making commitments; they are extremely poor at bringing forward the actions needed to implement them. Not only are they bad at acting to implement them; they often do the opposite. Whether it is air passenger duty, coal mines or in other areas, not only do they not act but they do not signal the action that is needed. I hope that we can retain the cross-party consensus that existed when we set these targets, so that we can act to meet them. But we all need to work together and show absolute commitment to doing that, and we must not give ourselves wriggle room to get out of the commitments we have made.