Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reason the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets are not within the scope of his Department’s recent request to the Committee on Climate Change to advise on the implications of the Paris Climate Agreement and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on 1.5 degrees for the UK's long-term emissions reduction targets.

We are leading the world in our response to the IPCC report – commissioning our independent experts, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), for advice on our long-term targets a week after publication of the IPCC report. The Climate Change Act 2008 establishes the functions of the CCC which include providing advice on the level of 2050 target, as well as providing advice in connection with carbon budgets. The CCC’s focus for this particular advice will rightly be on our long-term targets, including the costs, benefits and deliverability of more ambitious targets.

The UK carbon budgets already set in legislation are among the most stringent in the world, requiring a 57% cut in emissions by 2028 - 2032 from a 1990 baseline. The Government’s focus is on delivering those challenging targets as part of our Clean Growth Strategy. As part of their ongoing analysis on our progress, the CCC already advise on a decarbonisation pathway that takes us on a steeper trajectory than legislated carbon budgets (see the CCC’s Progress Report of June this year).

Under the Climate Change Act, the CCC will next advise us on carbon budget levels in 2020 when they set out their views on the sixth carbon budget (2033-2037).