Fourth Carbon Budget

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Huhne]

I certainly do. I think this presents an enormous opportunity for the future. There will be enormous numbers of jobs in energy saving and in the other low-carbon goods and services, and that will be the case right across the country. There will be no bias towards one region or another—no bias towards London and the south-east, for instance—because homes, and therefore the industrial opportunities, exist everywhere.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Secretary of State has explained why he is resiling from the Committee on Climate Change advice to forgo the carbon trading option, but is he proposing to sidestep any of its other recommendations? Also, do any of his concerns for ensuring the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries and for signalling certainty to investors extend to feeling regret about the adverse impact of the Chancellor’s raid on the CRC scheme?

[Chris Huhne]

We have not accepted a number of the other detailed recommendations in the committee’s report, but the trading one is an obvious example. It also asked us to set a target for 2030, and we do not see the need for that. I am not a great believer in intermediate targets when we have a very clear overall carbon budget, but given our commitment to a target figure of 1,950 million tonnes for the overall carbon budget for 2023 to 2027, nobody should be in any doubt about the thrust of our policy or our determination to meet our target. I have a very strong preference for achieving what we are actually trying to do, which is to cut carbon emissions, rather than for setting a whole group of intermediate targets, but that we will do.