Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Luke Pollard
Main Page: Luke Pollard (Labour (Co-op) - Plymouth Sutton and Devonport)Department Debates - View all Luke Pollard's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions
Luke Pollard Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
This debate, secured by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), is timely. We need to restate that climate change is real and that the climate emergency, which Parliament has declared, means we must do things differently.
The climate emergency declaration that this House passed is not just a statement of intent, but a challenge to business, Government, society and individuals, and it comes with a basic question: “Now that Parliament has declared a climate emergency, what are you doing differently?” If the answer is nothing, that is not good enough. If the answer is that which I have heard from many corporates, that is, the same insufficient amount as they were doing before but with more topspin, that is not good enough. If the answer is that we will park the action many decades away so that we do not have to take action now, that is not good enough.
More spin will not do it. More of the same will not do. We need bold and determined action, which means being more ambitious and swifter in our action, and more honest with the people about the massive changes to the way we live, work, travel and consume that will be required to hit net zero, by 2050 or any other date. It also means that we need the Government to put as much effort into the climate emergency as they put into Brexit. Will the Minister pass on to his Treasury colleagues that the autumn Budget must be a climate emergency Budget as much as it is a pre-election Budget or a Brexit Budget? It must cut through on every single aspect of addressing the climate emergency; nothing less will do.
That also means that as MPs we need to readjust our own campaigns. My campaign to see the M5 extended from Exeter to Plymouth means that we must bring forward the date of getting rid of diesel and petrol engines, to ensure that only electric cars use that extended road. The campaign to reopen Plymouth airport means that rather than having planes using aviation fuel landing there, we must have electric aviation.
Those are big challenges that require big and bold investment by Government. We need that investment now, because pushing it down the line will only make achieving net zero by 2050—or by 2030, as I would like, and as the Labour party has proposed, with the brilliant green new deal motion passed at our conference—harder to achieve. Let us have swifter action now and more honesty from Ministers about how much change is required to get there.