Climate Change Policies

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a number of statements before she has even heard what the Prime Minister has to say later; perhaps she might want to read what the Prime Minister actually announces and revise her statements in light of that.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has provided a list of things that all of us have been proud of in the past, but the point is that is the past. This announcement is a tragedy for this nation because that leadership that we had globally, of which we all were proud, is about to disappear. The Prime Minister is likely to say that the target of net zero still exists, which is a fabrication. We know from the Climate Change Committee, the Government’s own adviser, that we are already behind that in terms of policy. This will kill that objective.

We have the IRA in the United States and the green investment plan in the EU. We are now retreating from international investment. The question I ask the Minister is where the investment will come from to get us to net zero, but the question I really want to ask is how come any Ministers are still in the department for net zero. They should have all resigned this morning.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As the noble Lord knows, net zero is a legal commitment imposed on us by Parliament; it is the duty of Ministers to meet that commitment, and we will do so. As I have said, we are currently overachieving on carbon budgets 4 and 5; carbon budget six does not start until 2033. I have sat down with policy officials, and we are confident that we are on track to meet that as well. We are attracting record amounts of inward investment into this country. I talked earlier about the windfarm industry; we could talk about hydrogen or CCUS—the UK is world-leading on all those policies and many global companies are rushing to invest in the UK. Our difficulty is prioritising some of that investment.