Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
RT HON
DAVID MILIBAND
MP AND MR
HENRY DERWENT
19 JULY 2006
Q280 Mr Chaytor: The government has
established short term targets in all the major areas of policy,
health, litigation, criminal justice. Does your department have
a series of targets for emission reductions?
David Miliband: We have the 20%
goal by 2010.
Q281 Mr Chaytor: That is an overall
government target. Does your department have its own target as
a contribution to the overall government target?
David Miliband: Do you mean from
our estate?
Q282 Mr Chaytor: From your estate
or from your area of influence.
David Miliband: No.
Q283 Mr Chaytor: Do you think it
would be helpful if individual departments were more target driven
in terms of emission reductions? Would it have the effect of less
passing of responsibility? Would it sharpen the focus of the emission
reduction effort?
David Miliband: It is not very
joined up government. On the one hand you say to me, "Engage
with Douglas Alexander on transport; engage with Ruth Kelly on
housing; engage with Alistair Darling on energy but, by the way,
we are going to separate out your contributions."
Q284 Mr Chaytor: Your Public Service
Agreement targets are separated out. There is a line of accountability
through the PSA system but it does not seem to extend to responsibility
for climate change.
David Miliband: Quite a lot of
sectors overlap departments. I suppose there are two arguments.
One, should departments have their own targets and, second, should
they be sectoral targets. My approach to this in a rough and ready
way is, if we talk about 60% reduction in CO2 by 2050,
you are talking about everyone making a two-thirds reduction.
Your starting point should be every sector of the economy needs
to make a similar, proportionate contribution to it. That is not
a new golden rule; it is not a departmental target but, as a rough
and ready starting point, we all have to make pretty fundamental
changes. There is discussion in government about the structure
of PSAs in the future and whether or not they should be cross-cutting
PSAs and how that should work.
Q285 Mr Chaytor: Following your logic,
should agriculture have its distinct target?
David Miliband: I addressed this
at the Royal Show a couple of weeks ago. People do not realise
this but 7% of total greenhouse gases come from farming. There
was a Defra study in 2004 which showed that there was a net environmental
disbenefit of agriculture of minus £400 million. What I said
was it is very important to raise the environmental contribution
of farming through things like food miles and their reduction,
through things like the biofuel production, the CAP reform and
the Environmental Stewardship. I have made a passionate case that
farming is important to the future of the countryside because
of its economic and social role but it is also important for the
future of the country in helping all of us live within natural
limits. Every part of government has to make a contribution. One
of the first things I said on becoming Secretary of State was
we could not meet these targets unless every part of the British
economy and society made a contribution. When I asked you earlier
about the government estate, I thought you might be asking about
whether as departments we had responsibility and whether Defra
was using hosepipes or not.
Q286 Mr Chaytor: We do not want you
to answer that question because we know the answer. We are more
interested in the PSA system. Do you think there is scope for
adjusting the PSA system to reflect emission reduction objectives?
David Miliband: There is scope
for adjusting the PSA system, full stop. That is what the government
is doing. It is examining, 10 years on from the first spending
review, how the structure can best work. It is important to distinguish
between indicators that are used for management purposes and targets
that are there for accountability. Those are separate things.
I think the time is right for thinking hard about what is the
right structure; what is the balance of cross-cutting and departmental
objectives. I have a reasonably open mind about that. What I did
make clear in my previous department—I do not suddenly forget
or disbelieve because I have moved departments—is that we
have to think very hard about how national targets are translated
into local action and about the capacity for a locality to cope
with different targets that come through different silos. There
are big issues there and that is no less true for the environment
as for anything else.
Q287 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the
different sectors, which are the most intractable sectors in terms
of delivering objectives?
David Miliband: I do not have
an index of intractability but we know that the household sector
is 27% of emissions. The transport sector is more or less a third
of emissions. The business sector is more or less 25%. You are
almost at 100% pretty quickly there. I have not thought about
it in terms of intractability. It is interesting that the percentage
of greenhouse gases accounted for by the business sector has fallen
in the last 15 years, partly reflecting technological progress.
It is interesting that some people in the energy supply industry
and in business say there is big scope for energy efficiency in
business that is not being tapped at the moment. They have half
hour metering in business but energy efficiency offers from energy
supply companies have not been a big thing. In the household sector,
some of the quite radical changes foreshadowed in the review offer
quite a lot of tractability rather than intractability.
Q288 Mr Chaytor: In terms of transport,
if transport is at about 30%, why does it have such little attention
in both the Energy Review and the Climate Change Programme review?
They are both documents of about 200 pages and yet transport gets
eight pages in the Energy Review and 13 in the Climate Change
Programme.
David Miliband: But feel the quality;
do not just feel the length.
Q289 Mr Chaytor: Is it the significance
of the sector or its position on tractability?
David Miliband: I do not have
the figures in my head but the figures on the relative energy
efficiency of cars show quite significant rises in energy efficiency
in the last 10 years and that is important.
Q290 Mr Chaytor: The question is,
if transport is a third of our total emissions or not far short,
we have just published two major documents which are outlining
how the government is going to reduce emissions and move to the
60% target; and yet transport features in a very insignificant
way in both of these documents.
David Miliband: The Energy Review
was an energy review rather than a transport review so that may
be one explanation. In respect of what we say about biofuel, the
introduction of aviation into the EU emissions trading system,
in respect of what Douglas said to you and has said to others
about emissions standards, voluntary or mandatory, from cars,
that is a substantial agenda.
Q291 Mr Chaytor: You do not think
a specific target for the Department for Transport would help?
David Miliband: As I said earlier,
I have not thought about dividing up the 60% 2050 target. There
is quite a lot of consensus about the interim targets question.
I have not thought about whether you should divide up the 60%
target between government departments in quite that way but it
is going to be critical that every sector of the economy and society
makes its contribution to reaching the 2050 goal.
Q292 Emily Thornberry: The Climate
Change Programme and the Energy Review talk about the idea of
there being a carbon budget possibly. What is the current thinking
on that? Then I want to go on to ask about how you are going to
make the public more carbon literate.
David Miliband: In respect of
carbon budgets, I am making a speech to the Audit Commission today.
It will appear on my blog as soon as I stand up to speak.
Q293 Mr Vaizey: There has been some
recent criticism of the blog.
David Miliband: The blog would
not be achieving its goal if no one was criticising it. It would
definitely be extremely suspicious if it was only having applause.
I am making a speech today at the Audit Commission annual lecture,
talking about the idea of an environmental contract. What does
that mean? How is that in substance and scale of similar challenge
to that created in the social contract in the 20th century and
an environmental contract for the 21st century? I am talking about
the international aspect of it which David Howarth was asking
about and reflecting on some of the global equity issues. I am
addressing the business side of it, which is how do you make sure
it is fair to British business. I am also addressing the personal
side, which is what is the contract with the individual. I tried
to sketch out a thought experiment of the idea of personal carbon
trading, which I think is something you have looked at. What that
provides is a benchmark test of policy. This is obviously an extremely
radical idea, the idea that in your wallet or handbag you would
have a credit card for carbon as well as a credit card for pounds,
pence or euros—if you were going to the continent, you would
need them for your summer holidays—and what it would mean
to save those carbon points or spend them, what the distribution
or other effects would be. The reason for having that thought
experiment is it does dramatise the different ways of living and
working that we are going to have to think about. There are big
problems associated with an individual carbon budget—maybe
big challenges would be a better way of putting it. The government's
famed competence and omniscience in matters of technology and
computer software may be one aspect of that. There are a whole
range of issues associated with it. Given that we all agree that
we have to look at all the policy options, it is right to have
the idea of a personal carbon budget there as something that we
are exploring and testing other proposals against.
Q294 Emily Thornberry: Would it penalise
the poor?
David Miliband: I will address
this this afternoon. My instinct is it will be progressive rather
than regressive. The people who are driving the biggest Chelsea
tractors, taking the most aeroplane flights and have the most
homes et cetera are least likely to be those who are poor. If
anything, it is likely to be redistributed towards the poor and
the elderly rather than against them. There has been some interesting
work by the Tyndall Centre looking into this. I think there was
a publication in December 2005 about some of the technicalities
of it. Obviously a lot of work would need to be done and you would
not want to create something that was regressive but my instinct,
without having done the maths, is that it would not be regressive.
In fact, it would be progressive.
Q295 Joan Walley: We have just got
to the heart of it all, have we not? If we are looking internationally,
nationally and locally, it is really all about how we engage with
people to get everybody in the business community, in the local
community or local government or people to accept the targets.
I want to press you a little more on this idea about carbon cards,
carbon trading. How do you see carrying out any kind of pilot
on it? At a time when we have not come across the real extent
of climate change—although we have perhaps the hottest day
of the year today—how are you going to change the hearts
and minds of people so that they are wanting to be sufficiently
informed and educated in order to be able to take up this challenge
at a time when perhaps we do not need it just yet?
David Miliband: There are two
preliminary points. One, the science that I have read over the
last 10 weeks is much more alarming than I realised and most people
realise, even though I thought of myself as moderately environmentally
conscious.
Q296 Joan Walley: Is that all on
your blog? Do people out there realise that?
David Miliband: I will come to
that. I know my limits. Secondly, not only is the science more
alarming; the problem is much more short term. This is not just
something for our grandchildren or our great grandchildren to
worry about. It is happening now. The hurricanes last year cost
$160 billion, the floods, et cetera. 30,000 people died in Europe
in the heatwave in 2003. The problem is now and the longer we
postpone action the costlier it is going to be. It is important
to have that on the table. The Energy Review laid out this prospect
of the idea of a carbon allowance and said we would investigate
it. What I am doing today is the beginning of the investigation.
This is rooted back into the comprehensive look that the Energy
Review took.
Q297 Joan Walley: How are you going
to investigate it?
David Miliband: The Energy Review
is the basis of this. Thirdly, what I have set out to do today
is to provoke a debate about it, to conduct the thought experiment.
It is premature to start talking about pilots. What we have to
do is study how it will work and debate it. I think that is what
I am trying to promote today. We will see how that goes. Obviously
we will have to study it ourselves. However, you were asking a
bigger question which I think you want to get to. The truth is
David Attenborough making the programmes that he did has a bigger
impact on the hearts and minds that you are talking about than
me making a million speeches or writing a million words on my
blog. I am absolutely conscious of that. My sense is that there
are great resources (a) in the scientific community, of which
Attenborough is a good example and (b) among young people. Whatever
else the National Curriculum has done, it has certainly created
a cadre and a generation of environmentally conscious youngsters.
That is an important thing. The last thing, sad to say, is that
often it takes crises to make people think something odd is going
on, and whether hurricanes, et cetera, are part of that we cannot
afford it to be a real crisis. One of the things, just in brackets,
that is quite amusing is I start my speech today by talking about—and
I do not know how many of you know about this—the "Great
Stink" of 1858 when the House of Commons had to be evacuated,
which led to Parliament passing a special bill in 18 days for
Joseph Bazalgette to create the London sewerage system which exists
today. We do not want to wait for a great stink to promote action
or more action. It is important to remember that the whole CFC
debate came out of a crisis about the ozone layer although that
was a simpler problem, in a way, to solve than climate change.
I am sorry, that was too long and rambling an answer.
Q298 Joan Walley: I just wondered
whether or not you had had any meetings with Lester Brown in the
Washington Institute in terms of the work that he has done on
Plan B and his whole philosophy that we need to be responding
much more quickly than we have so far?
David Miliband: I am sorry, I
will add him to my summer reading list but I have not read or
met him.
Q299 Joan Walley: The other thing
I wanted to ask was in terms of the whole way in which we can
translate this into action because whether it is your speeches
or your blog or whether it is David Attenborough, that is one
thing, but it is how it translates into everyday actions. For
example, your cross-departmental role from Defra how that relates
to things like, for example, Warm Zones and all the energy efficiency
work that is being done. I am not so sure that some of the work
that is being done at the moment to combat fuel poverty is as
environmentally sound as it could be in terms of the heating that
is being put into homes so, and it comes back to the point that
Emily made, it will not be the poorest households having to pay
the biggest price. It seems to me that this whole debate is about
how you marry the economic aspects of it or the social justice
aspects of it with the way in which you can have regard to the
environment as well. Whether it is the PSAs, if we do not embed
the environment into it we are going to end up with policies that
are not going to get the actions that we need for the whole climate
change issue. That is your role and has that been sufficiently
cross-cutting?
David Miliband: I will come back
on that but one of your colleagues is bursting to come in. Do
you want to come in on this?
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