Climate Agenda

Lord Randall of Uxbridge Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Lilley on securing this debate. As he said, it is very useful and important that we have the debate and, because I do not want to be confrontational, I can tell him that the other day I actually agreed with him about Drax power station. We should work together to make sure that that “sustainable renewable” is exposed properly. I declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet and, tendentiously in this debate, as the chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation, as my noble friend Lady May indicated.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady May on an excellent and inspirational speech. I have to warn her: she says she was told that this Chamber is different because people here speak only when they know what they are talking about. I am normally the exception to that rule, I have to say. I also have to say that this debate, in its good-natured Chamber way—as we do here, as opposed to at the other end—has been more confrontational than I have come across, I think, since I have been here. However, my noble friend was an excellent colleague. I came to the House of Commons a few months after her and left a few years before she did, but she was also my boss at No. 10 when I was the environment special adviser. As a couple of my noble friends here will not be pleased to hear, I helped to get the net-zero Act through. There were various other things that I think were a great success, including the Environment Act and what we did on plastic reduction. One of the reasons I mention waste plastic is that the important thing was to take the public with us and, by and large, we did, although Covid interrupted that a bit, with masks being thrown down and everything else.

The important thing about this debate is that I do not think I have heard anybody actually deny that there is a problem with the climate changing and the impact that that is having on the world and all the different aspects we have heard about. I think the problem is actually down to how much we want to contribute, or what not taking action will do for ourselves. A lot of these things are actually inconvenient for us, as my noble friend Lord Lilley said. Yes, it is inconvenient. I feel a little ashamed when my noble friend Lord Willetts mentions air travel, because I enjoy travelling around and I feel a bit of guilt about it.

I have seen some things happen as I have been around the world. As many noble Lords will know, I have a great interest in conservation and biodiversity around the world and I have seen the impact of climate change on biodiversity and on our natural world in stark relief. A few years ago, I was in Senegal. Our birds who come here to summer winter and feed in Senegal and the Sahel, and it is almost a desert now, so it is no wonder that they are disappearing and their numbers are going down. These are all things we have to consider.

I am talking about the impact around the world. My noble friend Lord Ahmad made reference to the small islands that are going to disappear and the things that can be done. Do we sit back in this country and say, “It is not going to affect us that much”? It is affecting us—we have seen that in the weather, the rainfall and what it is doing for farmers and everything else—but do we sit back and say, “Well, it is a bit inconvenient, but is it going to make a difference if we do something in this country?” It might not make a huge difference, except, as has been said, in giving an example to others. As we want to be good neighbours in our own homes and set a good example to others, whether it is just down our road, in our town or whatever, I think that is what we have to be doing in the world. We have to show that we can back up what we believe in.

I think we have to go out, and I encourage my noble friends who do not see eye to eye on this to have the debate, because we want to get people to understand what they are letting themselves in for. I can tell my noble friends that my children are intensely worried about what is happening, and I am worried about what world I am leaving my children. As my noble friend Lord Deben said, that is what I think. If I am going to stay on these Benches, which I aim to, it is that sort of Conservatism that I want to be part of.