Cancun Climate Change Conference

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and for early sight of it.

International progress on climate change is of the utmost importance to us all. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has been able to attend the House in person today, so that we have a chance to question the Government on progress. We must acknowledge that the agreements made in Cancun are an important step in the right direction, and, on behalf of the Opposition, I join the right hon. Gentleman in congratulating the Mexican Government on creating an environment in which the nations of the world could agree a common statement. The statement of intent that has come out of Cancun builds on provisions made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) in Copenhagen last year, and we all hope that it will pave the way for more ambitious aims in South Africa next year.

We welcome the establishment of a climate fund to help developing nations and commitments to take action on deforestation. We also welcome the acknowledgement of the gap between the promised emission cuts and the cuts that the science tell us are necessary. Does the Secretary of State believe that holding to an increase of below 2º is enough, given that scientists now say that an increase of between 2º and 4º is more likely?

We have a long way to go, and, as the Secretary of State said, it is essential that the Government take a lead internationally. The right hon. Gentleman has already suggested that the European emission reduction target should be 30% by 2020, and he recently issued a statement with Germany and France pressing for such a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Last week, the Committee on Climate Change reported in support of that aim. We are delighted that Spain is now on board. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether that is the extent of European Union support? He talks of pressing for measures in the EU, but will he say what practical steps he and the Government are taking in Europe? It might be said that the Government whom he represents are not of one mind when it comes to European relations, and we and the country need to know which point of view dominates the agenda. Will there really be progress by February?

The Secretary of State was involved in discussions and conversations on Kyoto. Is he able to give the House a better sense of how those negotiations went, although they were not an outright success?

The climate fund to assist developing nations is a welcome step, but we need assurances that funds will be in place. I welcome the Secretary of State’s aim to see rapid progress on the part of the transitional committee. Can he give us a timetable for that progress? We have agreements, but we need to make sure that actions are taken or else the agreements will not be a foundation for change. Will the Secretary of State also give us further details on how finance will be secured, because the developing countries need this life-saving finance and they and their citizens cannot wait?

Finally, we need to see leadership from Britain and Europe over the next 12 months, before countries meet again in South Africa. The Government must demonstrate leadership at home—here in the UK—and in Europe. We need the Government to commit to low-carbon growth and to show they can deliver before the opportunity has passed. Although we have had welcome announcements from the Government about implementing the green deal for householders, we do not know whether it will include a carbon reduction target. The right hon. Gentleman has also announced that he will go ahead with the green investment bank, but we do not know whether there will be enough money for it to do its job.

We lack detail, therefore, yet we hear from businesses of the need for certainty, and households in fuel poverty need support and certainty too. We need flesh on the bones, and we need action between now and the next conference in South Africa.

[Chris Huhne]

I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks, and I am delighted that there is, I think, a broad measure of political support from all three main parties in the House—and also from the nationalist parties, although none of their representatives is in the Chamber.

The hon. Lady was absolutely right to mention the continuing gap between what the science tells us is necessary to reduce carbon emissions and the pledges that were made in the Copenhagen accord and that are now incorporated in the United Nations framework convention on climate change process. The gap will be assessed as part of the work that will be set in train as a result of the agreements in Cancun, and the UN environment programme report was a useful first step in pointing that out.

I make no bones about the fact that we argued for, and would have liked, a clear commitment to a peaking of global emissions by 2020. The reality is that time is running out, and we need to be as precise as possible. We were not successful in achieving that clear and specific target, but we did have a clear commitment on peaking global emissions as early as possible and, obviously, we will move as quickly as we can towards achieving certainty.

Yes, it was welcome that Spain joined us. We have been working quite hard on the 30% commitment, including through some meetings in Cancun. The Minister with responsibility for climate change, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), had meetings with the incoming presidency, and I had meetings with the Spanish Minister and other colleagues. Apart from Spain, France and Germany, we also now have a commitment from Denmark, and I am confident we will shortly have a commitment from Sweden as well, with all of them broadly in the same place. We must recognise that there are difficulties, especially for some of the economies still in transition, particularly Poland, which rely very much on lignite and hard coal, and we can try to deal with that. The process is under way and it will be important to address that in the new year.

The negotiations on legal form were always going to be exceptionally difficult, and we knew we could not reach an outcome. For the UK, the key negotiating strategy was to make sure that we embodied in the agreement at Cancun a substantial amount of substance that we can then show at Durban next year. Hopefully, that will provide a real incentive to the progressive countries that want to do a deal and to some of the more reluctant countries, by showing that there is enough on the table to make them be a little more flexible than they have been thus far on, for example, whether there is a commitment in the Kyoto protocol or whether it is in the convention track—and, indeed, whether there is a legal commitment in the convention track, which I very much hope, so that we can, effectively, have two parallel sides.

The hon. Lady asked about the finance. Fast-start finance is under way, and I am very pleased to be able to say that the Government have already disbursed the fast-start commitments we made for this financial year, and they have also been identified for the next financial year. Therefore, that money, which was agreed at Copenhagen, is being paid out. On the broader objective of $100 billion a year, we had an agreement to take note of the work that the advisory group on finance had done. That means that a lot of the work—for example, on bunker fuels and the potential for raising finance from aviation—can be taken into account and will go forward to Durban. I am cautiously optimistic that this advance will be crucial in getting the developing countries to sign up next year. This agreement, by the way, is the first time ever we have had an agreement by the developing countries to reduce their emissions compared with business as usual. That is quite a step forward, although it would obviously be nice to make it legally binding.

I can assure the hon. Lady that there is no division in the Government on leadership in Europe. I know she is sceptical, but we have worked very closely with all parts of Government, particularly the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has done an outstanding job. The team in Mexico City and the FCO more widely have done an outstanding job in helping us to prepare for these talks. It is an agreed part of our strategy as a Government that we recognise that our power as a nation to achieve our national objectives in the area of climate change is immeasurably greater the greater the extent to which we work through our European partners and manage to get them on board. That has been a key part of our approach to this issue.