Climate Change: Progress

Lord Offord of Garvel Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that the committee’s report refers to heat-related deaths rising in the UK as a result of what is happening to our climate. Since publication of the national adaptation plan 3 in July 2023, we have taken on board that point. The last Government published the fourth Health Effects of Climate Change (HECC) in the UK report in December 2023, detailing the risks. We have updated the NHS Green Plan Guidance in February 2025, setting out key actions each integrated care system and trust should undertake to strengthen their resilience to climate impacts, and we are very much on the case on this.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My Lords, surely in relation to climate change we must be pragmatic in this area and not dogmatic, so my question to the Minister is simply: why do he and his boss, the Secretary of State for Energy, refuse to listen to their closest advisers? Dr Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, says now that investment in oil and gas is required to support global energy security. Tony Blair says net zero is doomed to failure, and Gary Smith of the GMB says the transition to net zero has

“cut … emissions by decimating working class communities”.

Why does the Minister continue to focus on international gas markets when we have an abundance of domestic, cheap, accessible and clean gas under our feet, both onshore and offshore, that would allow us to be energy independent once again and reindustrialise our working-class heartlands? Surely now is the time for the Minister to go back to his boss and tell him to “Drill, Mili, drill”.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, if I may say so, that sounded like a very dogmatic question. The noble Lord would be forgiven for not thinking that, in government, his party passed legislation committing us to net zero in 2050. As for the points he makes in relation to jobs, he will know that, in February, the CBI published a report showing that the big growth in the economy in the last year or two has been in the net-zero green sector and that there are nearly 1 million people now employed in that sector—it is the fastest-growing part of our economy. On the Tony Blair Institute, I am a great admirer of Tony Blair, but I have disagreed with him on one or two issues. The report was a global assessment, and it recommended a particular emphasis on nuclear, carbon capture usage and storage and reform of the planning system; we are doing all of that.