Climate Change

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the Government, as the largest purchaser of goods and services in the country, should also be a net zero purchaser and provider of services? That means a root-and-branch change of the way that government— local, national and quangos—procure what they buy for taxpayers.

[Chris Skidmore]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and for the leadership she has shown on the Environmental Audit Committee. I will come on to how the independent Committee on Climate Change produced its response, but it set out clearly a range of scenarios involving a net zero transition and what action would be needed in industry, within society and among individuals to go from 80% to 100%.

We have set carbon budgets 1 to 5 to take us to 2032. Carbon budget 6, which will lead to 2037, will be set by June 2021 at the latest. It is important to recognise that we all have a role. Government especially have a role not only in legislating today, to ensure that we set the policy framework for achieving net zero, but in demonstrating each and every one of its Departments’ commitment to net zero. Her Majesty’s Treasury will conduct a review over the summer, as we move towards the spending review, of the impacts on business, society and across the public sector of the need to decarbonise swiftly and securely.

As part of that progress and the pathway towards net zero, we will be publishing an energy White Paper in the summer. A variety of different documents will be published, but I take the hon. Lady’s point; when it comes to the public sector, we will need to show leadership. We will need to be able to explain or change and to set out how all different areas of society will meet future carbon budgets—whether that is carbon budget 6, 7 or 8—on the road towards net zero.

Net Zero Emissions Target

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I do recall the green deal, and it is fair to reflect that as we take decisions and adopt policies in this area, not every one of them is going to work in the way that is intended. It is an area in which we are innovating, and my view is that we should innovate in technology as well as in policy. I hope that the House will not be too harsh when innovations are attempted that perhaps do not work out in the way that was predicted. However, my right hon. Friend is right to say that we need to give incentives to individuals as well as companies to participate in this roll-out, and through the clean growth strategy and the forthcoming energy White Paper, he will be able to see more of that in the weeks ahead.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I welcome this historic announcement by the Secretary of State and congratulate him and the Minister of State on this achievement. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that any transition must be a just transition for the communities that are experiencing this if we are to avoid the social devastation that we saw in coalfield communities such as mine, where the mines were abruptly closed in the 1980s and 1990s with no plan? Given that there is no accompanying policy to today’s announcement, may I suggest that he follow the advice of the Environmental Audit Committee’s report, published on Monday, which is to phase out taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuel exports so that we are not exporting carbon dependency into low and middle-income countries while preaching about our own virtues here at home?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. The work of her Committee will be important in scrutinising the policies that are set in place to meet our ambitions. I have not seen the report to which she refers, but it will be my bedtime reading this evening.

Climate Change Policy

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

Yes. One of the challenges that I have heard is that we need a fundamental reworking of the market-based system to solve all our problems. My recollection is that centrally planned economies historically had some of the worst records on environmental pollution, climate change and emissions. I have seen the power of the private sector investment that my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) referred to earlier, the technology and innovation that come from competition and things such as the auction system—I see the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who previously occupied the post held by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and who helped to design the system—which have sent the costs of offshore wind tumbling over the past few years. The market-based system does deliver, but we need Government to set ambition, to regulate where required and to convene where necessary.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

This statement is very timely, given that Marsden moor, outside Huddersfield, and Ilkley moor, outside Bradford, have been on fire—raging—this weekend. Today, there has been a machinery of government announcement that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is transferring greenhouse gas business emissions over to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and 12,000 companies will now report on that. In that new guidance there are just seven pages on water, three pages on waste, two on resource efficiency and biodiversity, and woodland creation, and the greenhouse gases associated with it, has been relegated to one page in annexe K. May I urge the Minister not to lose sight of the natural world? When the new greening government commitments are made in 2020, may I ask that every Government Department is properly accountable? Our audits have found that they are failing to meet them in both the policy sphere and in their own operations.

[Claire Perry]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady and the Environmental Audit Committee. She knows that I and others are very impressed with the work she does. She raises an important point. The whole-of-Government approach is so valuable. We can no longer just point to a silo and say that if we have solved that, the problem is solved. We have to advance on all fronts. I will look at what she suggests we review. If improvement is needed, we will deliver it.

Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

Who doesn’t like AOC? She’s fantastic. The green new deal was something we started when my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but that has now been removed from the Cabinet. That is an example of how the Government do not take this seriously enough—there is now not a Cabinet member whose sole purpose is to talk about climate change. It is not good enough. So my first question to the Minister is: are we planning to have a net zero emissions target for the UK, and if so when? I understand that the current target is 80% by 2050, which is not good enough.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady regret that in government the Liberal Democrats oversaw the scrapping of the Department of Energy and Climate Change—

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

No, we didn’t.

[Mary Creagh]

I thought they did, but perhaps I am wrong. It was a machinery of government change. I am happy to be corrected if that is not the case. [Interruption.] It was subsumed into the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. But we also saw the end of the green new deal and of the energy efficiency standards in homes, which means we have a carbon lag that will be more difficult—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. First, there is too much noise. Secondly, I appreciate that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) is being generous in taking interventions, but she is being generous with the time later in the debate when many people want to speak, and those who are intervening now might not be those sitting here for the whole debate. I encourage her to make some progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I applaud the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate. It is a great pleasure to be able to debate an issue that is one of many that are more important than Brexit, although some of my constituents disagree. What we are discussing is an existential issue; in a year or two, if I am optimistic, or more, if I am pessimistic, we will have moved on from Brexit—I promise.

[Mary Creagh]

You say that!

[Richard Benyon]

I can dream.

It is absolutely imperative that we tackle this issue of carbon emissions. The Pentagon, surprisingly for some, has looked carefully at the impact of climate change and our ability to tackle it. It refers to climate change as a “risk escalator”: it increases pressure on migration and imposes the huge cost of stabilising failed states, with the impact that that can have on the security of the world. No one should underestimate the impact that climate change will have and is having on all our lives.

I find it fascinating to look at the crucial nexus between environmental degradation and security. We face a huge challenge—not just because of the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and all that comes from those, but because of the wider context and implications of not tackling climate change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon). I advise him to keep his mobile phone switched on, given the news that the Fisheries Minister, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), has just resigned. The Government may be looking for a new Fisheries Minister, and it may be the right hon. Gentleman’s lucky day yet again. In the great tradition of reusing and recycling Ministers, I can think of no finer replacement.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I really cannot allow the hon. Lady to get away with that. If she thinks it is a privilege or a delight to be a Fisheries Minister at present, she must be dreaming in ways of which I know she is not capable.

[Mary Creagh]

I wonder whether the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth has resigned so that he does not have to answer the letter that my Committee has just drafted, which asks him about our progress towards becoming a so-called independent coastal state and how the negotiations with various regional fisheries organisations are going.

Let me now turn to the subject of the debate. Securing a sustainable future for the planet and our children is a responsibility that we simply cannot ignore. I welcome the chance to discuss this issue, because we have spent far too long discussing Brexit in the Chamber and not enough time discussing the thumping alarm that is being sounded all around us on our planet.

To achieve net zero, we must reduce our emissions rapidly and at scale in every area of our economy and in every area of our lives. Our Committee has talked about some of the personal changes that we can make, whether that means turning our backs on single-use plastics or considering how we can achieve, for example, a net-zero fashion industry. The report that we published last week took climate change into areas where it may not previously have gone.

[Stephen Doughty]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the personal things we can all do is look into where our pensions are invested and establish, for instance, whether they are invested in fossil fuels or renewables? I have been doing that, and I hope that we will give some thought to where our moneys are going in the context of the parliamentary pension scheme.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the things we did in our green finance reports last year was talk to the top 25 pension funds in the country and ask them what they were doing in this area, and of course we talked to our own parliamentary pension fund as well, and we ranked them as engaged, moderately engaged and less engaged. We need to shape and bend the entire financial system to invest in this new green economy and to ensure a just transition, because in areas such as mine, Wakefield, which were dependent on coal, we must not have thousands of people just being left on the dole. We need to skill up the current generations to meet the green future we want to see.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of our other great strengths is our great science in this country—the science base? Good policy based on great science really works.

[Mary Creagh]

I totally and passionately agree. We on the Environmental Audit Committee are privileged to have global thought leaders appearing before us and giving us the best available science. It is sometimes rather chilling, however; for example, Professor Jim Skea from the IPCC told us that our assumptions about how quickly we can decarbonise are perhaps over-optimistic and based on new technologies that have not yet been invented, so perhaps the discount rate for future technologies needs to be lower than at present. There are some truly profound moments in our Committee, and I am sure my hon. Friend would be very welcome to join it; we also have a couple of spaces for Conservative Members, so I hope we can get some volunteers following today’s discussion.

We have been leaders in this, and people still look to the UK for both thought leadership and policy action leadership. We provided that under the last Labour Government with the Climate Change Act 2008. A weakness in that Act has become apparent, however: there was no review process. We set up the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the Government—all well and good—but then it is up to the Government to heed that advice or to ignore it, which is less good, and there is no review process, so now if we do need to set this zero net emissions target, we will need to re-legislate, and I will be interested to hear from the Minister about the necessary policy mechanisms.

We have signed up to the 2015 Paris agreement and to the UN sustainable development goals to create a more equitable, sustainable world. Our Government will subject us to a voluntary national review at the UN this year, and I urge all Members of this House to participate in that process. It is about how we end poverty, violence and hunger in every aspect of our communities. Our Committee has looked at the hunger aspect, and I welcome the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics will now start to measure hunger in our country. Real sustainability comes not just with social justice, but with climate justice as well.

I want to talk about why net zero emissions matter. In October 2018, the UN’s leading scientists—some of whom were British—showed what could happen if we do not get to net zero. Extreme weather is already happening; the warming is already with us, as we are seeing with the tragic events on Saddleworth Moor, the heatwaves in the Artic last year and the fact that we have had the hottest February day on record. The Arctic is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the planet, and in February 2018 temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing during the polar nights, which is when the sun has not even started to come up; it was 30° higher than normal. When we talk about an average of 1.5°, that means a 7° rise at the North Pole. That is catastrophic for the melting of the sea ice.

We had a deadly summer last year, and we also had the highest number of excess deaths last year because of the beast from the east; we had 40,000 excess winter deaths in this country. So when we talk about climate, we are also talking about ourselves; we are talking about the fact that we are conducting a vast experiment on the only system on which our life depends. We do not know what we are doing; we do know how to stop it, but there is a kind of collective passivity around the action needed. When we see cities such as Cape Town in South Africa running out of water, and when we see power stations in Australia unable to work because it is too hot, we have to ask ourselves what a 1.5° or even a 2° warmed world will look like.

The IPCC also showed us what the difference is between 1.5° and 2°. At 2° sea levels will be 10 cm higher. That means 10 million more people will be affected by flooding and coastal erosion. That is what the difference between 1.5° and 2° means. At 2°, all coral reefs die. Our children will never see a coral reef at 2°. If we keep the increase to 1.5°, one third of reefs might survive. We have cold water reefs on our shores that we do not know about. We do not value what is beneath the ocean.

Our species are becoming extinct at a rate that has not been seen since the last global mass extinction. We have just been hearing about the insect Armageddon. Our planetary health inquiry found that rates of extinction are between 100 and 1,000 times higher than what is considered to be natural diversity loss. This affects our food systems, because if pollinator populations are devastated, we will have to pollinate our fruit trees by hand, as is already being done in parts of China.

Soil is the only carbon sequestration system that is known to work at scale and for free, yet we keep treating our soil like dirt. [Laughter.] That was my little joke. Soil is the Cinderella ecosystem. We like clean air and clean water, but what we should really like is dirty dirt. The more dirt that is in our soil—I do not mean bad dirt; I mean organic content—the better it is. In Paris, we signed up to increase our soil carbon content by four parts per 1,000, but I have not yet seen any policy to support that, either in the public goods debate around farming or from the Minister. I would be grateful if we heard something about how we will incentivise farmers to achieve that and to incentivise urban guerrilla gardeners such as myself to achieve it in our own homes. If I knew how to do it, believe me I would.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

This is actually a serious interjection, unlike the previous one. I completely agree with the hon. Lady that we have neglected the soil, even though it was clearly identified in the national ecosystem services review, but does she not agree that the move to payment for ecosystem services should enable successive Governments to engage farmers in precisely that kind of activity?

[Mary Creagh]

Indeed it should, but there has to be a baseline measurement, and somebody has to pay for the measurement and the monitoring. The tragedy is that, if we leave the EU, this type of global thought leadership that we are now getting to will be lost and will no longer be able to be transmitted to our friends and colleagues in the EU.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. In the Peak district, we have Moors for the Future, which is seeking to sequester as much as possible of the 580 million tonnes of carbon that is captured within peat. At the moment, we are seeing 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere each year because of the degradation of those peat moors due to climate change, industrialisation and lack of care. Will she welcome any commitment that we can get from the Government to finance those important projects?

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. I was walking on Lost Lad in my hon. Friend’s constituency at Christmas, and it is an absolutely wonderful part of the world. It is above the Derwent reservoir, and we could actually see the village of Derwent because the water levels were so low. The draining of our peat bogs has been a catastrophe, and we have to re-flood them. Globally, the top 30 cm of soil contains double the amount of carbon that is in the entire atmosphere, so it is vital that our precious peatlands—lowland and upland—should be protected for future generations. They are of global importance.

[Vicky Ford]

May I draw the hon. Lady’s attention to the amazing work being done on soil at Cranfield University, whose Soil and Agrifood Institute is the world leader? By investing in our universities, Britain is leading the thought on how to protect our soils not just across Europe but in many other parts of the world.

[Mary Creagh]

I passionately agree with the hon. Lady. I taught at Cranfield School of Management for seven years, although we never got too deep into the soil at that point because we were busy trying to start businesses. She is right to suggest that we have a long database of soil systems. A lot of people in this country like to collect things and keep them, and that is a great thing to have. We have samples that go back 100 years in some cases.

I want to talk about our carbon budget. The IPCC has calculated that a budget of 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would give us a two-thirds chance of staying within 1.5°C, and that a 580 gigatonne budget would give us a 50:50 chance of doing so. Those are not betting odds. If I were told that I had a 50:50 chance of something happening, I would not think those are great odds, so 580 gigatonnes is not a good budget to have.

This larger budget, 580 gigatonnes, is the equivalent of 10 years of global emissions at 2017 levels. To achieve that, the global production and consumption of coal must fall by 80%—again, we have done important and good things on that in our country—and the global production and consumption of oil and gas must fall by 50% by 2030. That is why I have come to the conclusion that fracking is not compatible with the 12 years we have left, and it is why I regret that it is being treated as a national infrastructure project rather than onshore wind, which has the power to give us the clean energy we need.

We know there is uncertainty, and we know there are tipping points. We do not know what will happen if we get to 1.5°, but we know that, for example, if the permafrost thaws, releasing methane, or if the sea ice collapses, these things can accelerate.

We can tackle emissions and deliver healthier cities, healthier people and a healthier planet. The Committee’s latest inquiry on planetary health is looking at how these complex systems deliver. We have seen exponential growth of wind and solar, and we are experiencing an industrial revolution. We have done things we thought impossible 10 or 12 years ago, for which I pay tribute to politicians on both sides of the House. The revolution is happening at the speed of the technological revolution, which is good. Big data will help us in this fight, too, but we will need renewable energy to supply between 70% and 80% of all global power by 2050.

In this country, we have done a lot on electricity, but the Committee on Climate Change has said that this progress has

“masked failures in other areas.”

We have seen very small reductions in agriculture and buildings-related emissions. At a time when Persimmon is paying its chief executive £75 million, we have to ask why we are subsidising the Help to Buy scheme. Why are we not subsidising ground source or air source heat pumps, as is happening in Sweden, to make sure we have zero-carbon homes?

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee is making an excellent speech, as would be expected. She mentions that very little progress has been made in agriculture. I know this is part of the planetary health inquiry to an extent, but nearly 10 years ago, on 25 March 2009, I had a debate—I think it was the first such debate in Parliament—on the impact of the livestock sector on the environment. I was laughed at and ridiculed by most people, but I still keep banging away at it. The public are now with us, and so many people are reducing their meat consumption for environmental reasons. Does she think it is time that politicians had the courage to grasp that nettle and make improvements?

[Mary Creagh]

I totally agree. There is always a danger that we get called a nanny state, but if nannies are good enough for people on very large incomes—naming no names—we should provide the nannying for people with less money.

It is encouraging how, in some ways, the public have got ahead of politicians, such as with the rise of flexitarianism. We are all trying to eat less meat because of our knowledge, particularly about processed meat and the risks from nitrites. What does a net zero diet look like? What does a net zero city look like? We will have to start mapping out these big changes. Where we lead, other countries will quickly follow.

My hon. Friend is right that we need to examine the livestock sector and work out how we cut its emissions globally and at scale.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and she makes an important point about the way in which individual behaviour needs to be complemented by Government policy. That is particularly resonant for me today, because today I have got rid of my car and have become entirely reliant on walking, cycling and public transport. I am able to do that only because Nottingham has invested significantly in public transport. Is it not really disappointing that transport is one sector that is not pulling its weight at the moment? There has been little change in the level of transport emissions since 2008. Do not the Government need to get their act together to enable more people to make greener choices?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I appreciate the importance of the hon. Lady’s point, but, sadly, her intervention is too long. And I am sure the Chairman of the Select Committee will soon be drawing her remarks to a close.

[Mary Creagh]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend is right to say that there has been a net increase in transport emissions over the past five years.

I want to conclude by talking about what we need to do and what policies the Government need to adopt. Government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the country. I have been banging on about the need for the NHS, which has a huge budget, to decarbonise its fleet rapidly. We have had the NHS sustainable development unit before our Committee; there is talk about doing this by 2028, but that is too late. We need electric vehicles in every town and city. There is no sense in midwives and district nurses going out and polluting the cities, and then talking to parents about treating their kids’ asthma—that is absurd. We need cross-government working on this.

We need to talk about the difficult-to-decarbonise sectors, particularly heavy industry and transport. We come back to things such as bus regulation here; mayors could have the powers to state where buses go. We have Stagecoach today saying, “The stuff in Manchester is outrageous,” but it is running profitable bus services. We need to force these companies to invest in new, cleaner vehicles. We also need to look at our energy systems. Some 31 million homes in this country run on gas. How are we going to get them to a clean gas source? Is it going to be hydrogen? Is it going to be air source heat pumps? How are we going to lag those buildings? This is not that hard, but we need to choose our policy sectors. When we choose our sectors and our actions, we can have a just transition. We can have that new green deal. We know that the mayors are willing to do this.

Finally, we need to make sure that our financial systems are looking at the risks: the physical risk from flooding; and the transitional risk from stranded assets in coal and oil and gas-fired power stations, which our pensions are currently being invested in. We also need to make sure that we have a stable policy environment. The Government can be a leader on this. The Minister has proven that she can be a leader, not least in the actions she took in heading off a no-deal Brexit in the past couple of days. We need to practise what we preach. Net zero is not the end; it is just the start of the next mountain to climb.

Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero]

That is why it is clear that the 50:50 surplus sharing arrangement put in place when the Government became guarantor needs to be renegotiated.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Ashfield and for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) for making such powerful speeches. Does my hon. Friend agree that, at a time when we have had 40,000 excess deaths, many of them old people—the highest level for 40 years in this country—and when we see pensioners’ income under attack from higher inflation and risks to their benefits, such as free TV licences, this is a wrong that must be righted by the Minister? These communities were devastated when their pits closed. These people lost income during their lifetime and are now being denied it in retirement.

[Gloria De Piero]

Absolutely, and the Government have made far more money than was ever forecast.

Sustainable Seas

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I begin by thanking the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to present the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on sustainable seas. I have a copy of it here, and it is our 14th report to this Parliament. We launched our inquiry last April, examining how our oceans can be protected from climate change, overfishing, resource extraction and pollution, and what more the Government should do. Human activities in both coastal and open waters have dramatically increased in recent years. The UN estimates that up to 40% of the world’s oceans are impacted by humans, with dire consequences, including pollution, depleted fisheries and the loss of coastal habitats. We have treated the seas as a sewer—literally—and that has to stop.

Plastic makes up 70% of all the litter in the ocean, with most of it coming from land, being transported by rivers and draining into the sea. If no action is taken to reduce plastic pollution, it will treble in the next 10 years. The amazing “Blue Planet II” programme showed us the consequences: a turtle tangled in a plastic sack; and the death of a newborn whale calf from causes unknown. Plastic litter and chemical pollution are everywhere in the ocean. These plastics are eaten by seabirds and they suffocate coral reefs; they break down into microplastics, which are eaten by sea life, which we then eat, potentially transporting chemicals into our human food chain. The long-term harm from plastic and chemical pollution is unknown because, as the Government’s chief scientific officer told us, we have not looked hard enough.

There is so much more that the Government should do to prevent our waste from reaching the ocean. We could start by not exporting our waste to countries with poor recycling infrastructure. Supporting Indonesia and Malaysia to reduce their plastic while simultaneously exporting the UK’s contaminated plastics to them shows the Government’s lack of a joined-up approach to reducing plastic pollution. The Government published their resources and waste strategy in December. It places much more onus on producers to pay for the cost of clearing up and treating waste, as was recommended in the Environmental Audit Committee’s reports on plastic bottles and coffee cups last year. But we cannot wait until 2042 to phase out avoidable single-use plastics, and the plastic bottle deposit return scheme, which was promised by Ministers in 2017, will not be ready until 2023.

The Government have signed up to the 14th sustainable development goal target to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds by 2025. So here is our plan. We want to see the Government ban single-use plastic packaging that is difficult to recycle; introduce a 25p latte levy on disposable coffee cups, with all coffee cups to be recycled by 2023; and bring forward their deposit return scheme and extended producer responsibility schemes before the end of this Parliament. The Government must also set out how they will create and fund the UK’s domestic recycling industry to end the export of contaminated waste to developing countries.

Climate change is causing a triple whammy of harm from ocean acidification, ocean warming and deoxygenation. This harms the entire food web and disrupts our weather systems. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showed us that a 2°C rise above pre-industrial levels will significantly harm biodiversity and fish stocks, and will destroy nearly all the coral reefs in the world. If we can keep the temperature rise to 1.5°, we will still lose 90% of coral reefs. Until we did this inquiry, I did not know that the UK has a cold-water reef in the south of England.

That is why we have to redouble our actions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and meet the Paris agreement on climate change. The Government must set out their plans to achieve that in the first half of this year and set a net-zero emissions target by 2050 at the very latest. Species affected by climate change include krill and plankton; if they are removed from the marine food chain, that could lead to a one-third collapse in the populations of predators such as polar bears, walruses, seals, sea lions, penguins and sea birds.

Britain’s overseas territories and their waters cover an area nearly 30 times the size of the UK, and nearly 90% of the UK’s biodiversity is located in their waters. They have the most unique and biodiverse areas on the planet, and we have a huge responsibility to protect them. We welcome the Government’s December announcement on the creation of a marine protected area for the South Sandwich Islands. We have also discussed with the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, who is in the Chamber, how the exploitation of minerals from the deep sea could begin in the next decade. The prime sites are around the deep sea hydrothermal vents, but those habitats are unexplored and unique. We heard from scientists that in a very small-scale study they found six hitherto unknown species. This is the great last wilderness left on earth; in fact, it may be where life on earth first began. Mining those sites could have catastrophic impacts—from local extinctions of as yet unmapped ecosystems and species, to the production of sediment plumes, which can travel long distances through the water column, smothering seabed organisms. Our report urges the Government not to pursue licences at active hydrothermal vents in their own jurisdiction and internationally, and to use their experience in regulating marine industries and their influence on the International Seabed Authority to impose a moratorium on exploitation licences in those areas.

We heard how so much of the sea—58% of it—is outside national jurisdictions, has little or no protection and is suffering from the tragedy of the commons: everyone goes there to graze their sheep, but there is nothing left at the end. Everyone goes there to take their piece, but no one is protecting it. We must lead international negotiations. The Government have signed up to the UN’s ambition to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030, but that will work only if our Government, alongside other nations, fund the satellite monitoring and enforcement mechanisms for those areas that we want to protect.

The UN is currently negotiating a high seas treaty. We call on the Government to seize this chance and push for a Paris agreement of the seas. Like the climate change agreement, it would contain legally binding targets and regular conferences of the parties to hold Governments to account, and designate marine protected areas and the funding needed to achieve them. We look forward to the publication of the Government’s international ocean strategy later this year. I hope it will include and build on our Committee’s cross-party ambitions.

We are an island nation. We care passionately about our seas and oceans. I commend the report to the House, and commend my Committee colleagues for such an excellent report.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for her statement, and her Committee for its superb report. I hope that other Select Committees will follow her example and make statements directly to the House. Page 48 of the report recommends a 25p coffee cup levy and that all coffee cups should be recycled by 2023. All our constituents can readily identify with that issue. It does not strike me that recycling coffee cups need be that problematic, so why do we need to wait four years for them to be recycled?

[Mary Creagh]

That is an excellent question. The Government’s resources and waste strategy states that they want the industry to work towards voluntary commitments and that they will introduce a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles, but that they are ruling out the latte levy, which we think would influence a very important behaviour change. We need to change the way in which we consume the planet’s resources and bend the curve of our plastic use. In the time between us writing our coffee cup report and last December, despite all the warm words from the coffee cup industry and all the available discounts, the number of coffee cups used went up by 500 million. The target increases every year as more people buy and drink coffee. Industry efforts are not working. The product is difficult to deal with because it has a plastic lining and a paper outer part, and it needs specialist collection and specialist disposal. Some companies are working heroically in trying to tackle the issue, but even if we get to 30 million or 100 million, there are still 3 billion coffee cups in circulation every year.

I agree passionately with the hon. Gentleman that it should not take another four years. The Government need to regulate, but I am afraid that they are reluctant to do so. It is interesting how far ahead of policy the nation and consumers are, and I hope that Ministers are listening.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

This is another excellent report by the Environmental Audit Committee and I am very proud to have been a part it. The underlying principle that such reports should always follow is that the planet’s resources are precious and should be preserved, not plundered, whether they be fish or rare minerals that could be found in hydrothermal vents. That should underpin everything we do. Does the Committee Chair share my concern that while the Government are treading water, the race for deep sea mining and the rise of other environmentally damaging economic activities in the seas are going ahead untrammelled, and that there is a risk that if we do not act quickly, we will not be able to put the genie back in the bottle?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is a fantastic member of the Committee and a real thought leader in many of the areas under discussion. As she said in Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions, she has been talking about the food system—“banging on” is how she put it, I think—and following the persistence principle for many years.

My hon. Friend is right about the race for deep sea mining. We are in a new wild west of exploration. The irony is that we are prepared to plunder and churn up the last great, unexplored wilderness—the equivalent of Yosemite national park and other brilliant places that people travel the world to see, such as our own Lake and Peak districts—so that we can have more “smart” phones. Those rare earth minerals are used in our smartphones and in some of our industrial applications. If we were better at recycling the rare earth elements in the 7 billion mobile phones, or however many there are, on the planet—I think there is at least one for every man, woman and child—we would not have to do that. A positive side-effect of the exploration is that we are finding out more about these unexplored areas, but the question is: what happens when we know they are there, and what will we discover? That is a problem.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for chairing the Committee and for her brilliant precis of a brilliant report. Needless to say, as a member of the Committee I fully endorse all its recommendations and am very proud of it.

I hope the hon. Lady will allow me to highlight two of the recommendations. The Government’s blue belt policy is probably our single biggest opportunity to protect a very large portion of the world’s oceans. The report rightly urges the Foreign Office to back full protection of the waters around Ascension Island. It is worth saying that the Ascension Island Council, as well as DEFRA, has made very promising noises, but the blockage seems to be the Foreign Office. The first recommendation, therefore, is for the Foreign Office to get going, agree with the Ascension Island Council and DEFRA, and provide maximum protection at minimum cost to an incredibly important part of the world.

The second recommendation is to build on the recent announcement of increased no-take areas around the South Sandwich Islands, to provide full protection for those extraordinary and pristine waters, much of which featured in the “Blue Planet” series. That view is backed by an almost unprecedented alliance of scientists, experts and non-governmental organisations. The solution will cost very little, if anything, in public money, but it will deliver huge results for nature, so will the Foreign Office get on with that as well?

[Mary Creagh]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who was instrumental in getting consensus around the recommendations to the Foreign Office. Ascension Island could benefit from a huge boost from tourism if it was designated. He is right that the Antarctic krill fishing industry is very heavily regulated, but, again, it is in danger of over-exploitation in order to feed our insatiable demand for farmed fish, including salmon. Increasing the no-take areas and protecting them properly is really, really important.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady and her Committee on a very good report. I was struck recently by the Simon Reeve series on the Mediterranean, which highlighted, in particular, the vast areas of plastic greenhouses around Almería in south Spain, where they produce enormous quantities of vegetables and fruit for European supermarkets, including those in this country. I have written to all the supermarkets in this country, but I am not convinced that proper measures are in place to guarantee that the supply chains are meeting high environmental and labour standards. Those chains make use of migrant labour from Africa and have awful working conditions. Does she share my view that the supermarkets have a real responsibility here?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, and I share his concern about the plastics that come off the greenhouses where our tomatoes and cucumbers are grown, which are discarded and then literally chucked into the sea. We treat the sea as a waste disposal unit, and it is not. There is more that supermarkets can do in tackling the full carbon footprint of the fruits and vegetables that they import and making sure that they stamp out any abuse and any forced and slave labour in their fruit and picking supply chains. We know that that they is an area where forced labour and child labour are prevalent.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady and her Committee for this excellent report. May I also mention the excellent work that is done by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, which is based in my constituency to both identify the problems and come up with solutions? Based on its work, the UK can be a global pioneer in the sustainable stewardship of our seas?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a former and much esteemed member of our Committee, for that question. I saw the CEFAS ship on a visit to his constituency when I was shadowing the DEFRA brief. He is right that we have world-leading marine biologists and marine scientists. The world looks to the UK for our brilliance and thought leadership on the subject. One criticism that we have of Government is that they have stopped funding our long time series around ocean certification measurements. One key recommendation is that we need to measure the acidity of the ocean. We know what it was going back decades, but we need to have more monitoring sites around the UK, so I hope that he will help us in pushing the Government on that task.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee for her leadership on this report, which built on our report on plastics. Does she agree that Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials did a great job in trying to make the Weddell sea a marine protected area, but that they need to redouble their efforts with the Chinese, Russian and Norwegian Governments? However, our work on plastics is well behind. We do not have a compulsory deposit return scheme guaranteed, and the target for eliminating single-use plastic is not until 2042. We need to have both those things in place much quicker.

[Mary Creagh]

Again, I appreciate the input of my hon. Friend and neighbour into the Committee and this report. He is right: we need to speed up our ambition. The scientists have warned us that we have 12 years to tackle climate change. It is no good putting targets in place for 2042—that is far too little, far too late. We heard about some of the interesting foreign policy discussions that are going on around Antarctica, particularly some of the negotiations with the Norwegians and the Russians. Clearly a lot of politics is involved in the oceans, and we have to be mindful of that.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

May I also add my thanks to the Chair, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), and the Committee for bringing this report forward? You were very clear that these must be quick questions, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will be succinct.

I live on the edge of Strangford lough in my constituency. Ards and North Down Borough Council has managed to get a grant to carry out an environmental project at the mouth of the narrows of Strangford lough, where the ebb and flow of the tide is, to harvest the litter and plastic that flow through there. That might be a small project in the bigger picture of what we are talking about today, but small projects collectively make an immense difference in the long run. What assistance is there for councils across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to involve themselves in projects that, singularly, do not do a terrible lot, but collectively make a big difference? Can the hon. Lady tell me whether grants are available?

[Mary Creagh]

That sounds like an absolutely brilliant initiative from Ards and North Down Borough Council. I think that the hon. Gentleman also has an oyster fishery in Strangford lough, the produce of which I have enjoyed on several occasions. I am not aware of what funding is available, but I am sure that officials will write to him on that issue.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and congratulate her Committee on its excellent and challenging report. It is likely that much of the plastic entering the oceans has been collected supposedly for recycling. Does she agree that, at the very least, this country needs to institute comprehensive and rigorous checks of all recyclable materials exported for processing? We need to put our own house in order as well as demanding an international agreement to protect our seas from the dumping of supposedly recycled material.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend the shadow Minister is absolutely right. We do have to put our own house in order. We know that most of the plastics enter the ocean from, I think, five rivers in Africa and Asia. There is no point in our carrying out heroic clean-up work here at home if we are then going to export the material to far-away countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand that do not have the right infrastructure in place and whose own populations are now rebelling against being consumed in a mountain of our contaminated plastics. We need to do more, and there is much more that we can do. The Government can start by carrying out better enforcement. There are some great waste exporters, but there are also some criminals in the waste sector. The Environment Agency carried out just three unannounced inspections in 2017. That is not enough. When we sent in the National Audit Office, it found that the audit systems and processes for waste export did not tally, so someone somewhere is playing the system, and we need to crack down on it here at home.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

I do have a question, but, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to genuinely thank the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and her Committee for once again producing what I really feel is an excellent piece of work. She has heard me speak before about the work that this Committee does in looking across Government and across boundaries. We saw it with the “Greening Finance” report, which had some superb recommendations around understanding risk from a regulatory perspective, particularly for pension regulators, and she will know that the Government have responded to that. I genuinely thank her and her Committee for their work. It is an extremely high-quality Committee, with some very talented and able colleagues and very good Committee staff.

It is ironic, is it not, that this House is almost empty, but that it was packed when we were debating the next three years in Europe? There are very few of us here today to understand what is happening to 70% of our planet. This report joins up the challenge of climate and environmental sustainability across land, sea, air, and, of course, the very important littoral zones. That is what we need to do and are doing, and this is a superb report.

The Government, of course, are listening. The hon. Lady will know that she has made a number of recommendations that are relevant to my Department, as well as to the Foreign Office and DEFRA. I am off after this to have a meeting with one of the DEFRA Ministers. The hon. Lady knows, I think, that she is pushing at an open door with this Government, and we will continue to do whatever we can to support these recommendations.

Finally, I do have a question for the hon. Lady. So much of what she says is relevant to both our overseas territories and our Commonwealth partners, which, in many cases, are small island states facing down a barrel of disruption—literally—from climate change and ocean pollution. Has she communicated the findings of this report to those countries and organisations? If not, how can we as a Government facilitate her in doing so?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the Minister for her kind words and for her many appearances before our Committee, giving evidence on a variety of different subjects. I have also been neglectful in not thanking our brilliant Committee staff, who have worked so hard on the various Committee reports that we have produced, and on this one in particular.

The Minister is right; here we are in an almost empty Chamber, with people at home saying “Why is nobody talking about this?” Obviously Brexit it taking up so much time because it is urgent, but this is also urgent and important. We debated whether or not to launch the report on this date, but we decided that we needed to talk about the other important stuff as well as Brexit.

The Minister is also right that our Commonwealth territories are on the frontline of illegal activities, including illegal fishing, which is depleting their domestic, more sustainable fishing practices. They are at all sorts of risk, not least from the changes in weather systems that come from ocean warming, which made the hurricanes that sadly hit them last September much more powerful, slow-moving and damaging.

We have not communicated this report to anyone in the overseas territories, although the Committee has met representatives of some countries, including parliamentarians from Belize in October. Perhaps I could meet the Minister at the back of the Chair to discuss how we can get the report out to a much wider audience in the Commonwealth and overseas territories.

UN Climate Change Conference: Government Response

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Thank you very much indeed for that guidance, Mr Betts, and for your courtesy in calling me to speak. I am aware that I arrived a little late, but I was doing some media on the report on sustainable seas by the Environmental Audit Committee. I was over the road to do that, before running here through the rain.

May I begin, Mr Betts, by saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship today, and to have such a brilliant and committed member of the Environmental Audit Committee as we have in my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin)?

Safeguarding the future for the planet and for our children is one of the defining challenges of our generation. The climate change conference—COP24—was a real opportunity to take decisive action in this area. I will very quickly focus on the scale of the challenge, the solutions that are already available and, of course, the finance that we need to put behind any action.

I will start with the Arctic, which I and the rest of the Environmental Audit Committee visited last year. We saw for ourselves the unprecedented extreme weather that the Arctic faces. The climate is a closed system, so when we warm the ocean, the climate redistributes that heat through the winds, the currents and our weather. We are performing a giant experiment on ourselves, our planet and our oceans, and it really is a very dangerous experiment.

In 2018, the Arctic experienced its third winter heatwave in a row. During winter polar nights—so no sunshine—there were temperatures of 28°C in the Arctic this year. We know that the average temperature rise of 2°C disguises the extremes in temperature that we see at the North Pole. For example, a 1°C rise at the Equator means a 7°C rise at the North Pole, and the temperature in the Arctic has already risen by 5°C, which has huge impacts on the mammals that live there, and of course on the humans who live there, even down to the way that they build their houses.

In this country, we had the “Beast from the East” in March 2018. We were proud to launch our inquiry into UK heatwaves with the snow lying thick on the ground. The Committee Clerk turned to me and said, “Chair, nobody wants to give evidence about heatwaves when there’s snow lying on the ground”, and he was right. But we struggled through that and launched our heatwaves report in 35 °C of searing heat, and we had the hottest ever summer in England. These are extraordinary times. I was walking in the Peak District above Sheffield, Mr Betts, up Lost Lad hill, and I looked at the Derwent reservoir, which was only 75% full, and the village of Derwent and its church spire were now visible.

The world’s leading scientists have warned us that we have just 12 years to avoid devastating climate change. They gave us a report that spelled out the difference between a 2°C rise and a 1.5°C rise. Under a 2°C rise, we lose all the world’s coral reefs; under a 1.5°C rise, we lose “just” 90% of them. That shows the damage that is already baked into the best-case scenario. Of course, in the UK heatwaves raise the spectre of heat-related deaths, such as those in 2003, when there were 2,000 excess deaths in just 10 days. We have never known so much and we have never realised before just how much we have to do.

Our Committee produced a report on greening the finance system and we heard that the carbon bubble presents a huge systemic risk to our investments and our pensions. It presents liability risks, as oil and gas companies are potentially sued; some of them are being sued by the state of New York for some of the damaging issues that came with Storm Sandy. It presents physical risks to us, including the risk of tidal and coastal surge, and of course the transitional risk. If someone’s pension is invested in an oil and gas company and that company cannot get its reserves out of the ground without reaching 4°C, 5°C, or 6°C of warming, their pension is essentially valueless.

We need to move very quickly to green the financial system to avoid a carbon bubble bursting in an unmanaged way. We also need to move much more quickly to mobilise green finance into our economy: into solar, wind, and the new technology that we need.

The two tried and tested examples of carbon capture and storage come from nature: soils and forests. We conducted an inquiry into soils and globally the top foot of soils—the 30 cm of soil around the Earth—holds double the amount of carbon that is in the atmosphere, and more than all the carbon held by all the forests and the oceans combined.

Soils are absolutely critical and I am really glad that the Government signed up to the 4 parts per 1,000 initiative last year. What concerns me is that we do not have a route map to achieve that goal. We have got some great scientists in the UK; they know what the soil content has been over the last 50 years. We need to start paying farmers, through the common agricultural policy, or whatever succeeds it if we leave the European Union, to make sure that we measure, monitor and increase our soils’ carbon content.

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North about withdrawing the finance for feed-in tariffs and the difficulties that the green deal has had, including the problems that people have had with it, and the scrapping of the energy efficiency measures in our homes. If we want climate solutions, we must also have climate justice, which means keeping people warm and safe in their homes.

The climate conference was held in Katowice, a coalmining region of Poland. Can I make a bid that, if the UK holds the climate conference in 2020, we hold it in the coalmining region of Yorkshire, which is an example of how we can swiftly move to the new green economy and create jobs in the process? I am sure that Sheffield, Mr Betts, Wakefield and Leeds would be happy to argue the toss over who should win that bid.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call Alex Sobel to speak, but only for four minutes now, I am afraid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Thank you for your guidance during the debate, Mr Betts. I am delighted to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), and indeed all my hon. Friends who have spoken so eloquently in the debate.

When the Minister responds, I am confident that she will remind the House that the Government was a progressive voice in Poland. That is true. Along with other members of the High Ambition Coalition, the UK pledged to step up our ambition by 2020. It is easy to be a progressive voice when what is needed is progressive action, but progressive action requires political will. Repeating a promise that every nation made in Paris three years ago does not show political will. What was needed in Katowice was a clear commitment to deliver on the ratchet process that Paris put in place.

The Minister and I have many political differences, but I say to her in all sincerity that if in a few minutes she were to rise and use the platform of this debate to pledge that the UK will reach net zero emissions before 2050, as Labour has committed to do, I would not play politics. I would welcome her announcement publicly, because it is the right thing to do. Of course, it is a pledge that must be backed by a coherent plan, but in my view it is necessary if we are to chart a way that is even remotely compatible with keeping below the 1.5°C threshold.

I also suggest to the Minister that she may care to reflect that there is also a very good political reason for her to make such a pledge. Failing to do so would make a mockery of her bid to host next year’s conference of the parties. Labour wholeheartedly supports holding COP 26 here in 2020, but as things stand we have serious reservations about whether the Government are up to the task.

We should look at the condition of the UK’s climate diplomacy team, which was referred to earlier. In 2009, under Labour, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had an army of climate staff—277 strong. Seven subsequent years of Tory austerity halved that. Then the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) became the Foreign Secretary, and the number of officials working full time on climate fell to just 55. I ask the Minister what discussions she has had with the current Foreign Secretary about restoring that workforce of climate diplomats.

Climate diplomacy matters now more than ever. At COP24, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait refused to welcome the IPCC’s report. Our climate diplomats should have known that in advance and taken active steps against it. When they finally made their position public, our Government should have offered criticism. They did not, just as they did not when President Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the United Nations framework convention on climate change.

Leadership means speaking out. It also means acknowledging our responsibilities as the nation that ushered in the fossil fuel era. Rich nations like us have evaded calls to support the victims of loss and damage. Can the Minister tell the House what we, the fifth richest country in the world, are doing to address loss and damage in the most climate-vulnerable nations resulting from our addiction to fossil fuels? That would be climate diplomacy that could genuinely bring about change at a UK COP.

This year the Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage is up for review. It is the perfect moment for the Government to make us the first developed nation to provide additional financial contributions to address loss and damage. The latest figures show that climate aid reached $70 billion in 2016—still short of the 2020 target of $100 billion, which COP24 agreed would rise from 2025.

Will the Minister provide an assurance that the UK will take on its fair share of that increase? Will she confirm that she has had discussions with the Chancellor or the Chief Secretary about how they will increase the UK’s contribution towards international climate finance in the next spending review? I am not asking for figures; I am simply asking whether those discussions have taken place in Government. If not, will she accept that they are a necessary precondition to any credible bid by the UK to hold the COP?

Of course, the last thing I want is a trade-off that reduces still further Government finance for tackling climate breakdown here at home. As has been said, investment in our low-carbon economy is at its lowest level in a decade, down 57% in 2017. Will the Minister acknowledge publicly that, according to the independent assessment of the Committee on Climate Change, her clean growth strategy does not get us back on course to meeting the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, and will she explain why, for all her protestation about the effectiveness of energy policy not being simply about how much money the Government spends, she still thinks that the 75% capital allowances for the fracking industry are a sensible use of public money?

I ask the Minister not whether she has read the IPCC report—for all our differences, I acknowledge that she is a diligent Minister and know that she will have done—but whether she will state publicly that she agrees with it. Will she explain to the House why, having read it, she can conclude that the Government’s current policies constitute a sensible response to the climate crisis that it outlines?

[Mary Creagh]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I cannot, because of the time.

We need radical, transformative action, and we need it now. The IPCC report demanded

“rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”—

a far cry from what the Government are offering.

Denial comes in two packages. I do not accuse the Government of denial of the science, but there is another sort: denial of what it will take to stop climate change. Among the many speeches by world leaders at COP24, I was most affected by the words of the 15-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg:

“We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.”

Those are the words of the next generation. I hope that the Minister will heed them and act accordingly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Britain needs about £22 billion a year of investment in clean energy to meet our legally binding EU renewables targets, but my Committee heard that, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, investment has collapsed over the past two years. Given that the Brexit White Paper says that the Government believe that there is no need for a common rulebook on environmental or climate change rules, what confidence can investors in offshore or onshore wind have that the Government will support low-carbon energy if we leave?

[Greg Clark]

We are very clear in our support for that in the clean growth strategy and, as the hon. Lady can see, in the level of investment that is being made right across the country. It was very clear in the White Paper that followed the Chequers meeting that we had made a commitment to the highest of environmental standards.

Environmental Audit Committee

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time today for me to present the Environmental Audit Committee’s recent report on greening finance. We launched our green finance inquiry in November to examine how the UK could mobilise investment in clean energy and encourage greater consideration of climate risk in financial decision making to avoid a carbon bubble. We held hearings with investors, asset owners, experts, financial regulators and Ministers. We also wrote to the 25 largest pension funds in the UK—responsible for nearly half a trillion pounds of assets—to see whether and how they are incorporating climate risk into their investment decisions.

The situation is vital to us all. The Committee on Climate Change estimates that we need to spend up to 1% of GDP, or £22 billion a year, to meet our carbon budgets. The Environmental Audit Committee found a dramatic collapse in low-carbon energy investment since 2015 that threatens the UK’s ability to meet its carbon budgets and tackle climate damage. Last year, Britain generated twice as much energy from wind as from coal, but green investment is faltering. In cash terms, investment in clean energy fell by 10% in 2016 and 56% in 2017. Annual investment in clean energy is now at its lowest level for 10 years. Is that a trend or a blip? It is too early to tell.

The Government must publish further details in time for the 2018 Budget on how they intend to secure the investment they need to meet our carbon targets. Providing clarity on the future of fixed-price contracts for renewables will be key to ensuring a pipeline of projects. We also need continuing access to development finance. The UK Government should negotiate to maintain the UK’s relationship with the European Investment Bank to provide funding for riskier, early-stage green infrastructure projects in the UK.

Let me set out how we want to see a green thread running through the investment chain. The 2008 financial crisis revealed the dangers of short-termism in our financial system. Climate change already poses material threats to our economy, our investments and our pensions. Seventeen of the 18 hottest years since records began have occurred since 2001. That means more droughts, heatwaves and wildfires and more extreme rainfall and flooding. Those risks will grow. In the time it takes today’s young people to reach retirement, the physical risks from sea level rise and more extreme weather will grow. That will affect investment in food, farming, infrastructure, home building and insurance, to name just a few.

Companies that do not make a timely low-carbon transition could also face costly legal or regulatory action. Some companies will be left behind by firms with cleaner, more efficient new technologies. Fossil fuel companies could be left with stranded assets in an overvalued carbon bubble—oil and coal deposits that they cannot burn—if we are to keep global temperature rise to less than 2° C. They also face increasing liability risks. The city of New York is taking legal action against five fossil fuel firms to recover the costs of protecting the city from flooding from rising seas caused by climate change.

The direction of travel for the global economy is clear from the Paris agreement and from what scientists are telling us about the risks of climate change. Despite that, the short-term horizons of many financial institutions, businesses and investment managers mean that sustainability risks are not always factored into financial decisions. The quarterly earnings cycle and structure of remuneration for investment consultants and fund managers encourages the pursuit of short-term returns rather than long-term considerations. Institutional investors can be prevented from acting on climate change due to confusion about the extent to which pension trustees have a fiduciary duty to consider environmental risks. KPMG’s 2017 corporate responsibility survey found that almost three quarters of large companies worldwide do not acknowledge the financial risks of climate change in their annual reports. More than half of institutional investors surveyed by HSBC said they were receiving “highly inadequate” information from companies about their approach to climate change.

The disclosure of climate-related risks would help financial markets work more efficiently. It would enable UK institutions and investors to position themselves ahead of the market to benefit from the low-carbon transition. My Committee is calling on the Government to clarify that pension schemes and company directors have a fiduciary duty to protect long-term value and should consider climate risks. Pension savers should be given opportunities to engage with decision makers about where their money is invested. Ministers must make it mandatory for large companies and asset owners to report their exposure to climate change risks and opportunities by 2022.

The UK’s existing framework of financial law and governance could and should be used to implement climate-related risk reporting. The Government should issue guidance making it clear that the Companies Act 2006 already requires companies to disclose climate change risks where they are financially material. Companies with high exposure to carbon-intensive activities should already be reporting on climate risks in their annual reports. UK financial regulators such as the Financial Reporting Council, the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority should amend their codes, rules and guidance to require climate-related financial disclosures. Companies and asset owners need time to develop how they report, but only if reporting is mandatory are we likely to see comprehensive and comparable climate risk disclosures. Embedding climate risk reporting in UK corporate governance and reporting frameworks could negate the need for new legislation. However, if regulators fail to implement that, there may be a need for new sustainability reporting legislation, such as France’s climate reporting law: article 173.

To those who ask whether we must do this, I say yes, we must. Climate change poses material financial risks to our pensions and our investments. To those who ask whether we are doing this, I say yes. The transition to a low-carbon economy presents exciting opportunities in clean energy, clean transport and tech that could benefit UK businesses. And to those who ask whether we will do this, I say that London is the centre of global finance, so let us make it a global centre for green finance.

I commend the report to the House.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee on, as always, doing a sterling job of steering us through the inquiry.

The Overseas Development Institute said in its evidence to our inquiry that the UK’s clean growth strategy is “undermined and contradicted” by our continued support for fossil fuel production overseas through UK Export Finance, which has been averaging £551 million a year in recent years. Does my hon. Friend agree it undermines our international climate commitments and our efforts to decarbonise our economy if we continue to support fossil fuel investment by British companies overseas?

[Mary Creagh]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s always excellent and assiduous attendance and contributions. She is a real trailblazer and we are lucky to have her on our Committee.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Overseas Development Institute has stated that our international approach is being undermined by UK Export Finance, and there is a case for this House, perhaps through a joint meeting of Select Committees, to examine where we are investing overseas, because, first, they may not be smart business investments and, secondly, they are undermining our stated international policy commitments.

There is perhaps a role for the Select Committee on International Development. The UK Government are doing brilliant work through the international climate fund and the UN. That work must not be undermined by businesses that are selling old technology, instead of taking this opportunity to leapfrog and, for example, put solar panels on mud huts in South Sudan, which is something I saw at a conference yesterday. There is an opportunity to leapfrog and not to make the same mistakes we made in our electricity generation.

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point with which I can only passionately agree.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on another excellent report.

I am a bit surprised there was no contribution by the green investment bank, now the Green Investment Group. The bank was set up by Government to look at sustainable investment. I know it has been privatised, but surely it has some ongoing role in trying to get sustainable investment. Will my hon. Friend comment on what has happened to that organisation?

[Mary Creagh]

I did not have time to go into our examination of the green investment bank. Our previous report in the 2015 Parliament recommended a green share in a special purpose vehicle, and I am pleased that has been taken up by the Government. The green investment bank was set up in 2012 to address market failure in this area. The question is whether that market failure still exists, and the answer is yes. Do we still need an investment vehicle to create confidence and to create that pipeline? The answer, post Brexit, is emphatically yes, which is why I mentioned access to European Investment Bank finance. Had we known Brexit was going to happen, would we have taken the same decision to privatise the green investment bank? Perhaps not.

Macquarie got the green investment bank, which has now been rebadged as the Green Investment Group, and there are still market failures. There is market failure in green transport, and our Committee heard there is no intermediate body to broker between the City of London and locals authorities that want to decarbonise their local housing schemes and council housing through low-carbon combined heat and power plants. The bank could have been that bridge.

We looked at how the process of privatisation was very disrupted and took longer than we expected, and we are concerned the Green Investment Group is investing in less risky projects. Of the four projects it has financed since privatisation, one is in Ireland, one is offshore wind in Sweden, one is in India and, of course, one is in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, for which I can claim absolutely no credit—obviously it was an excellent decision.

The Committee has an anxiety about where the Green Investment Group is going to go and whether it will focus on easier-to-finance, safer and less risky overseas projects now it is part of an international bank and lose its focus on green investment in the UK. It would be a tragedy if it does that.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

I did not intend to ask the hon. Lady a question, but this gives me an opportunity to thank her and the Committee most sincerely for an excellent report. Again, I salute her leadership in this area.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the fact we still have a very substantial, multi-billion pound commitment from the Green Investment Group to invest in exactly the sorts of low-carbon innovation she and I both want to see is a sign of reassurance that the group will continue to access funds, in this case global funds, to invest in the UK and Europe?

[Mary Creagh]

I certainly hope that will be the case but, as we mentioned in the report, the Bloomberg figures show there has been a huge collapse in green investment in the UK—it has gone down from about £26 billion to £10 billion. We questioned the Minister on whether things are cheaper, whether there is policy uncertainty and whether there is Brexit uncertainty. I am pleased the Green Investment Group is promising to do that, and we look forward to seeing some of this project pipeline coming through, because we need £22 billion a year. This year we are on £10 billion, so we need to get that ramped up very quickly. I look forward to hearing more about how she will make that happen from a policy point of view.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I very much welcome the report, in which I played a small part. My hon. Friend will know that, globally, the fossil fuel subsidy is some £5.3 trillion, the size of the French and UK economies combined, yet 80% of fossil fuels cannot be exploited if we are to avoid irreversible climate change and to fulfil our Paris agreement. Uranium supplies will run out in 10 years once we start using nuclear to meet 12.5% of global energy needs.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should take market leadership on investing in projects such as the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon and the wider lagoon network, which will provide 100 years of long-term sustainable and predictable energy, and that value for money should be seen in the round, alongside the climate risks identified in the report?

[Mary Creagh]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work and leadership on our Committee. He is right to say that we need a stable policy environment in order to create a pipeline of low-carbon projects. The Committee found that the policy environment has been a bit destabilised by changes to feed-in tariffs and the early closure of some competitions, and things like that.

My hon. Friend is also right to say that low-carbon electricity, particularly new forms of generation, often has high up-front costs but very low operating costs. Obviously once we get it up and running, it will be up and running for the next 50 to 100 years. We need to hear from the Government, sooner rather than later, on what their green growth plan will mean and on the policy environment they will create to enable some of these innovative projects to be brought forward.

In the report, for example, we criticised the cancellation of the carbon capture and storage competition. Carbon capture and storage is tricky, risky and innovative, and companies had invested up to £60 million in research and development on those projects only for the competition to be closed with no notice. We do not want to see the same thing happen to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon.

Bill Presented

Violent Crime (Sentences) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Keith Vaz presented a Bill to increase the minimum custodial sentence on conviction for possession of a knife or other offensive weapon for an offender aged 18 years or over and to increase the minimum period of detention and training order for a person aged 16 or 17; to set a minimum custodial sentence on conviction for an offender in possession of a knife or other weapon and intending to commit any offence or having such a weapon available to use in committing murder; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October, and to be printed (Bill 222).

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

15. What recent steps he has taken to support the development of renewable energy sources.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

21. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of investment in the renewable energy sector.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

The development of renewable energy is a tremendous UK success story. Thanks to our significant investment and the support of all of us, renewable capacity has quadrupled since 2010. Last year, 30% of our electricity generation came from renewable sources.