| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Dalyell: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is high time that we developed a sensible policy towards Iraq, which probably has the largest oil reserves in the world?
Mr. Chaytor: I endorse my hon. Friend's comment.
The time has come for us to see the Government's climate change programme in action. I have a number of questions for my hon. Friend the Minister, in the hope that he will be able to clarify certain matters.
First, will he confirm that the reference to the domestic target for C0 2 reductions included in the White Paper on sustainable development does not represent a shift in the Government's position away from the general election
manifesto commitment and from the Prime Minister's statement? Are we still committed to the 20 per cent. target and will the climate change programme include a clear statement showing how we can achieve it? Secondly, will the Government adopt the underlying principles of the contraction and convergence model as the basis for future international negotiations as they seek both to ratify the Kyoto protocol and to achieve international agreement for the years beyond 2010?
Thirdly, will the Minister tell us the latest thinking on the most effective means of recycling revenues from the climate change levy? How will it be used to avoid harming the development of combined heat and power and a viable renewable energy industry? Fourthly, does he accept recent research by Colin Campbell and others that has been adopted in the International Energy Agency's planning assumptions? Does he accept that that creates added impetus for urgent action for a planned and phased withdrawal from our over-dependence on fossil fuels?
Mr. Peter Brooke (Cities of London and Westminster):
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) for making this debate possible. I am delighted to be able to speak briefly. I am not a scientist and it is five years since I last spoke in a science debate. I doubt whether non-scientists should speak in science debates more than once in a lustrum. I may be the sole survivor in the House of a seminar on climate change that was mounted by the then Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher, 10 years ago at 12 Downing street. The sole American observer present said at the seminar's conclusion that he doubted whether any other country could have assembled as much political authority and scientific knowledge in a single room.
The hon. Gentleman issued a valuable brief in advance of his debate and I am grateful to him, although I do not intend to speak on that brief. I wish to telegraph a series of largely unrelated points. Winding-up speeches may follow the example of Burke, for whom all the arguments were marshalled in advance like soldiers, although that is generally more suitable for opening speeches. Alternatively, they may follow the example of Fox, who could extemporise at the drop of a hat and genuinely respond to a debate. The Government contain winding-up speakers of both types. On the whole, Foxes make better winding-up speakers and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions,
the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), with whom I frequently discuss matters on a wide variety of subjects, will follow the example of Fox.
Mr. Dalyell:
For the benefit of the ignorant among us, would the right hon. Gentleman tell us what a lustrum is?
Mr. Brooke:
I hesitate to seek to educate the hon. Gentleman, of whom I am very fond, but I said that I had spoken once in five years on science. A lustrum is a period of five years. It is the matching word for decade.
What I have said about wind-up speeches is relevant to environmental change, a subject on which at the end of conferences and debates policy makers from all countries tend to sound as if they had prepared their concluding remarks in advance and then fitted the facts of the conference around them. I said that I would telegraph some points. First, integrated assessments are all very well, but they are only as good as the sum of their parts. Secondly, the buying of surplus from poorer countries--what treaties call flexibility--may not prompt investment by rich countries in energy saving.
Thirdly, the most ambitious targets for energy saving are being set by countries, including the United Kingdom, that have the lowest public sector expenditure on research and development in this area. We had quite high public sector expenditure on R and D during the 1970s, when there was the oil threat, but it has receded. The countries that invest the most in public sector R and D, such as Japan, may have identified a global commercial opportunity that underlies that investment.
Fourthly, new energy sources are grand, but they may bring ancillary problems. For example, as much solar energy could be created in Egypt in a space one two-hundredths of the area covered by the Aswan dam and its hinterland, but the storage problem would have to be solved. There is a moral lesson there: we lost out on the on-land wind issue in the UK seven years ago because the environmental factors were not embraced at the same time as the technology.
Fifthly, 95 per cent. of population growth in the next generation will be in cities. Sixthly, we are confronted by massive problems of biological invasion through trade, air passengers, military mobilisation and mail. Some54 million air passengers enter the United States, and 180,000 are biologically infested. Of the 80 million Mexican road passengers, 201,000 are biologically infested. Of 40 million Mexican foot passengers, 55,000 are infested. Of 95 million road passengers from Canada, 322,000 are biologically infested. Four per cent. of parcel mail is infested.
Air passenger growth of 15 per cent. means that passengers may be a much larger problem than freight, although the Asian long-haul--I mean longhorn--beetle, which is the greatest current threat in the UK, enters in wooden pallets that must be replaced by plastic. The Mediterranean fruit fly has already been eradicated 17 times in California at a cost of $111 million, but climate change can alter the entire global map of Mediterranean fruit fly incidence.
Seventhly, cloud distribution, with its uncertainties, could have twice the impact of CO 2 . We do not yet understand the basic science and we need much more understanding of water vapour in cloud water feedback. Eighthly, few ecological experiments are taking place.
The soil experiments in the ecotron under the auspices of the National Environmental Research Council are demonstrating how much we still have to learn. I do not want to enter the debate on soil and genetically modified foods, but soil is a Cinderella and I believe that we have no soil legislation. The ecotron experiments show how effects vary markedly depending on whether the CO 2 is ambient or elevated.
Finally, let me mention three unrelated public policy issues that emphasise the complexity and consequences of these matters. First, the Master of the Rolls is interested in the establishment of an environmental court. It may be imagined that such a court could survive with a handful of environmental experts, but a minimum of a dozen would be required.
Secondly, the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs will meet in private this afternoon to discuss the problem of fuel smuggling into Northern Ireland. The facts are stark. The terms of Kyoto mean that the UK has a reduction target of 12.5 per cent., while the European Union average is 8 per cent. The Republic of Ireland need not reduce at all, but can increase by 13 per cent., making a 25 per cent. difference between the Irish and ourselves. It is no wonder that there is so massive a discrepancy between fuel taxes in the two jurisdictions.
Smuggling is a natural consequence, and law-abiding citizens in Northern Ireland are being turned into law-breakers unless they wish to go out of business. I say gently to the Minister that the Government's response currently verges on the casual as the Treasury and the Northern Ireland Office seem to seek to distance themselves from the predicament, implying that the problem is the other Department's responsibility. So much for joined-up Government.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |