Lord Prescott
Main Page: Lord Prescott (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Prescott
My Lords, I welcome the Statement. As someone who was a negotiator at Kyoto, I fully recognise the legal framework and commitment to targets. I recognise that the Government are accepting the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendation of 50 per cent to 80 per cent change by 2050. That is clearly a very ambitious target. It concerns me that the Government were committed to a legal framework that collapsed at Copenhagen. I worry that they are setting themselves a target for which they might be cheered at the moment but, when they do not achieve it, they will face derision from the NGOs and others. Is the Minister aware that the committee pointed out in its report that it had made such a recommendation to avoid the ups and downs in the global negotiations concerning climate change? It is more than an up and down. What took place at Copenhagen—and was confirmed at Cancun—is a complete reversal. There is no longer a legal framework that will be agreed to for at least a decade; it is now a voluntary one with voluntary targets. What worries me—and I see that the Minister has left the back door open—is that if Europe does not confirm its 30 per cent target, and I do not believe for a moment that it will, we will be faced with changing our position and face derision rather than cheers, which tends to undermine confidence in global negotiations.
Lord Marland
There is no one more experienced on this issue than the noble Lord, Lord Prescott. He adds great value on the subject in this House. Describing the past is extremely interesting because I was at neither Copenhagen nor Cancun. The reality is, as he knows, that we have to set an example—as he did himself—and an aspirational target. We have been accused of not leading the way in Europe; now we will lead the way. We cannot have it both ways. We will put our aspirations down on the table as we did in Cancun. I pay great tribute to the Secretary of State, the right honourable Chris Huhne, for the way in which he brought the climate change issues back on to the agenda at Cancun, which, as the noble Lord rightly said, fell apart. Clearly, our fallback position is 20 per cent. We are comfortably going towards that 20 per cent. We feel that we can up the ante and show Europe how to do so, and 2014 gives us the fallback if we cannot achieve it. Those are our aspirations. I think that he would, broadly speaking, applaud them given the position that he tried to lead us to.