Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

The good news is that all the devolved Administrations and the Westminster Government have worked incredibly hard on the low-carbon transition. It is a joint project; we calculate on a joint account. Of course, the taxpayer subsidies that have gone into so much of the energy generation system, helping Scotland with its transition, have come from UK taxpayers and UK tax policy.

I cannot speak for the diary of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but I am always delighted to meet groups of people, as is the Environment Minister. As I have said, we worked really hard today to try to get our diaries to mesh with the plans of the groups coming here and we offered various meetings, but apparently they were not available at those times. It is a total pleasure to meet people to discuss these issues. Like so many other Members, I am sure, I only have to go home to hear my own children telling me what more we need to do and asking whether they should take part in the protests. I say to them, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to tell mum what you want over a cup of tea?” but it is more fun for them to protest. We genuinely have to listen and move on this issue, and we will continue to do so.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

It is a testament to my constituents—young, old, of no religion, of any religion, whatever shape and size—that they have come to me about the environment. This is an overridingly important issue for everybody. Sustainability should be at the heart of every Government Department, and cross-party should be the name of the game. If we can do one really positive thing to reverse climate change, it will be to reduce our emissions to net zero, and to do so fast. I take my hat off to the Minister for going to the Committee on Climate Change and for asking for its advice on how we could possibly address this more quickly than our targets. The committee’s advice was that we could not do so by 2050. I am hopeful that it will change its mind. Will she please update us on that and will she tell us when aviation and shipping might be included, as they need to be?

[Claire Perry]

To answer in reverse order, there has been progress made on aviation and shipping. That continues to be an international challenge because flights and ships leave and take off from different places, but there is work accelerating on it, and indeed some investment going into low-carbon fuels, which could be hugely important. I will happily update the House when we have received the net zero report and talk about the various aspects in that. We are investing in the first net zero industrial cluster in the UK, with £170 million of funding from the industrial strategy challenge fund. As my hon. Friend has reminded me, it is not just the young who are protesting: one of the most effective and wide-scale campaigning organisations in the UK in this area is the Women’s Institute, which has over 9,000 climate ambassadors. This is a problem that affects all of us, and the solution will involve all of us.