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Norman Baker: I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be given a very full answer by our shadow Chancellor when he winds up, but in the meantime let me repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping): aviation is currently untaxed, and we need to find ways of dealing with that. The Government have imposed airport passenger duty, which is very low and not terribly focused. There is talk of the Chancellor's doubling it, but I am not sure whether that is the right idea. We would like aviation fuel to be taxed, but we realise that that must happen, if not internationally, at least on a Europe-wide basis, which is not immediately achievable.
The Government's aviation paper mentioned a number of economic instruments, some of which should be investigated carefully. There may, for instance, be a case for taxing aeroplanes—on the assumption that they
are full—because that would give airlines an incentive to fill seats rather than running half-empty flights. There are a number of possibilities—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. I think the hon. Gentleman has said enough for the time being.
Mr. Challen: I was still waiting for the answer, actually. I was not sure where it was in all that. Perhaps we shall hear it at the end of the debate.
I am happy to say, as I said to the Secretary of State for Transport in the Environmental Audit Committee, that I favour a tax on aviation fuel. The £8 billion or £9 billion that is spent on subsidising the airline industry could be better spent on other things.
I have been talking about the individual. I suppose the individual elector might want to punish me for talking so explicitly about what has been described in a local paper as the right to cheap holidays, but I think there are ways in which we can help that individual elector to contribute to a reduction in environmental damage. In that context, I shall now shamelessly promote a meeting that I am hosting in Room 21 at 6 pm, entitled "The carbon consumer". Positive ideas will be presented, some of which originate from the Tyndall Centre, which has already been mentioned. It is a well-respected organisation that has been considering ways of cutting our carbon emissions.
One suggestion is the introduction of domestic tradeable quotas. I have a lot to learn about the subject, but I understand that they would operate rather as international emissions trading schemes do, while in this case applying domestically to individuals. That idea builds on something mentioned yesterday by the Bishop of Leicester in his maiden speech. He referred to contraction and convergence, first proposed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute. The idea of contraction is to reduce the amount of carbon emissions overall, while convergence is seen as a way of distributing responsibility for the reduction. Those are exciting ideas, and I hope that the Minister will meet me soon to discuss them, as they seem to me to constitute one of the few ways in which individual citizens can become involved in reducing emissions.
At tonight's meeting, I will also promote a scheme called "save as you travel". If it were adopted, people would be given reward cards—a concept that is familiar to the British consumer. They would be rewarded for using public transport more, by means of points, air miles or financial remuneration. The Treasury could support the scheme quite generously if it chose, by taxing aviation fuel.
I want to mention a third proposal that deals with the environment more generally. It is not an original idea, but one that I picked up during a visit to Ontario. There, an environmental bill of rights enables individuals to launch cases or complaints against any Government, corporation or other body, which can then be investigated and pursued vigorously with a remedy possible at the end.
Those are three policies that I think could deal with the problems of which we have heard today. I hope that the Minister will respond positively and seek more information about them, and that we can meet to discuss them.
2.44 pm
Mr. Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD): Many Departments have a role to play in the delivery of sustainable development when it comes to energy policy and environmental policy generally. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). We have a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and I know that the Minister wants to give a good account of what it and the Government have done, but I am constantly perplexed at the way in which the Government's responsibilities for delivering sustainability and environmental policy are split between so many different Departments. The Department of Trade and Industry, for instance, is responsible for supervising policy on electricity generation and the generation industry as a whole, while the Minister's Department is responsible for conservation and efficient energy use. The Treasury deals with fiscal regulation and such matters as the climate change levy, and our built environment is regulated largely by legislation from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. As the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Challen) pointed out, a significant proportion of our energy consumption takes place in the transport sector, and is dealt with by the Department for Transport.
As one who does his best to make connections between the various parts of Government policy and to evaluate them—as well as the views of many outside organisations that seek to engage with the whole Kyoto policy process—I feel that that diversity of responsibility, which is a polite way of putting it, often prevents the Government from delivering as effectively as the Minister would no doubt wish. If we are to have a sustainable environment in the future—plenty has been said about the need for that, and what should be done to achieve it—conserving resources and using them efficiently will be just as important as anything we do to generate energy. Conservation and efficiency constitute a more cost-effective way of improving our environment than any substitution of technologies for the generation and use of energy.
I was a member of a deputation attending an environmental conference in Berlin last week to discuss sustainability and the development of policy in both Germany and the United Kingdom. The conference was addressed by Lord Whitty, a member of the Minister's departmental team who, obviously, spoke on behalf of the Government. As ever, he made a well-rounded speech, featuring plenty of explanation of what the Government had done and intended to do. As I listened, I felt rather like repeating a line from a John Cleese sketch—the one in which he goes into the kitchen and says "I think I got away with it that time." The words were fine and the message was good, but the audience was not in a position to apply its critical faculties in order to find out what was actually going on.
A German participant in the conference said later "The difference between your Minister and mine"—the German Energy Minister had also made a speech—"is the difference between a 1 MW and a 12 MW man." Of course, that underlined the fact that our performance falls well short of the words that we use. I hope that the Minister, in responding to the debate, can give some reassurance that the Government are not only talking a good talk but are prepared to walk a good walk.
I cannot sit down without saying something about the small contribution that I am making through my private Member's Bill, the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill. I am happy to report that it has support from both sides of the House—from Government Front Benchers, from Conservative Members and from my own party. It tries to focus the attention of the building industry in particular on the fact that how we save energy is as important and cost-effective as how we generate it. Notwithstanding the rows that we have in this House about the applicability of renewable technologies—windmills or waves, for example—compared with nuclear energy, we need to remember that for every £100 that we can invest, we will take a bigger step towards sustainability by investing it in conservation and efficiency than by investing in any of the available generating technologies. My Bill tries to pick up on that point, and to make sure that in future our building stock is more sustainable and efficient.
The hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell said that we cannot make progress without everybody having to pay some of the price. However, if we improve the efficiency of our building stock, we will improve our comfort levels, reduce the number of people who die in the winter because their homes are too cold, reduce the bills that people have to pay and reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change. I want us to spend more time focusing our political energy on those factors that can produce a win in every dimension: a financial win for the consumer, a health win for our country, and an environmental win in terms of a reduction in greenhouse gases. I thoroughly agreed with 99 per cent. of what the hon. Gentleman said, but his point about progress constituted 0.5 per cent. of what I did not agree with.
The other 0.5 per cent. of what I did not agree with was the hon. Gentleman's proposal—assuming that I understood it properly—that we award public transport points, so that people receive a reward for travelling by bus. That is fine, but giving a reward of air miles would somewhat undermine his initial point.
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