Climate: Behaviour Change (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, and his wise words. Like everyone else, I particularly congratulate my noble friend Lady Parminter, who I know feels that this area is very important, both in practice and in theory. I also congratulate the committee on its work. I congratulate too the Minister and the Government because the Minister has obviously been persuasive in that I have heard today that we have a net-zero objective for Ofgem, after many years of trying to persuade it. I was interested that Ofgem welcomed it, whereas, in the Energy Bill, we heard that it was against it—but there we are; it shows that things can change. I am sure that the Minister was very persuasive in that, so I thank him.

Coming back to the report, I echo very much the feelings and statements of many Members of this Grand Committee and this House that the overall view of the Government’s response is disappointing. Exactly as other noble Lords said, it goes through the list and says, “We’re doing it”, implying that they need to do no more—yet, in a way, it exposes those siloes of each of those areas within the department, not tying them together.

One of the things that we need to take into consideration—I do not think it was mentioned in the debate—is that, although we are being very successful, relative to the globe, at reducing our emissions, the vast majority of this so far has been because we have substituted gas for coal and, increasingly, renewables for gas. That has been easy because none of us have noticed it: we plug in our hairdryer, iron, washing machine or whatever, and they work just the same—we have not had to change anything whatever. Just maybe, despite the problems with the charging networks, we may have that opportunity with EVs as well, with the market and the convenience of EVs meaning that there can be a natural market change, like there was with iPhones, which we moved to without any persuasion from government. At that point, it gets a lot more difficult: we have to make changes that we will notice, which is why this report is so important.

I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said: technology will be an incredibly important part of this. But I do not think we know enough about that percentage split between behaviour and technology—he has obviously heard more evidence than me, and I am interested in that proportion. But, whatever it is, behaviour change will clearly be an important part of that mix, which is why I welcome that report. But, my goodness, we have to carry on with technology, which is why it is important that we get on with rejoining the Horizon programme now that we have the Windsor agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, mentioned the appalling level of R&D expenditure —we need to get that up generally as well. We need help with that for the next stage of decarbonisation.

I was particularly interested to read about the models that might already exist. I like the pensions one, although it is nothing to do with net zero. The Government successfully put in a process that was not obligatory: it sort of happened, and you had to positively say no if you did not want it. It has been very successful. This is one of those areas where you think about the future—maybe 20, 30 or 40 years ahead—when you are normally not too bothered about it. Unfortunately, with carbon, we already have those challenges.

The climate assembly was particularly important, and I ask the Minister whether we can proliferate those assemblies because, as I understand it from speaking to committee members, whatever their background, they have become great advocates of the cause because they were persuaded by the facts. It is also important to have a positive message about climate change. One big problem—I fall into this category—is that we can be incredibly pessimistic about the future of this planet. We all know the challenges of meeting the 1.5 degrees target. However, we need positive messages and to involve communities in particular.

I always mention this, but some 310 local authorities have declared climate emergencies. While some of that may be cynical or done just because it is fashionable, most of those authorities want to implement climate policies, but because of the incredible constraints on local authority expenditure and because those policies are not statutory requirements they tend not to happen much. That is one of the areas that we have to change. There should be more community and district heating schemes. My wife is a member of a parish council and has taken on the role of climate and nature advocate, but she has had to travel down the learning curve like thousands of others in similar positions. We are not spreading that knowledge.

Regulation is usually positive. Biodiversity net gain is a recent example and I congratulate the Government on that, but a main question around environmental regulation is enforcement. It is weak in the UK at the moment. We have been too slow on housing regulation, as others have mentioned.

I say to my noble friend that the one area about which I was slightly disappointed—it was mentioned also by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria—was the biodiversity crisis, which is not mentioned a great deal in the report, and yet, although connected to climate change, is an equal challenge.

To conclude, we and the Government—this country—are able to show the leadership in this area that we have done as regards technology in terms of delivering on climate change. This should be one or our national missions globally, to be the place that shows that behavioural change is important, can work and can ease all the difficult political decisions that our colleagues at the other end of this building have to make to bring forward this agenda. What I would ask the Minister most is to come back to a strategy of public engagement. We do not have that and are not near it. Chris Skidmore has said that it is essential. Where are we on that? What will its content be? Will it be anything like this excellent report?