Clause
1Climate
Change
Steve
Webb: I beg to move amendment No. 43, in
clause 1, page 1, line 5, after
‘that’, insert ‘between 2008 and 2050
total’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following:
Amendment No.
44, in
clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave
out ‘the level necessary to contribute to’ and
insert ‘a proportionate share of total global
emissions of greenhouse gases compatible
with’. Amendment
No. 32, in
clause 1, page 1, line 9, at
end add— ‘(3) The target for
the UK contribution to limiting global average temperatures shall be
calculated with reference
to— (a) historic levels
of emissions of greenhouse gases by the
UK; (b) projected levels of
emissions growth among other countries;
and (c) such other factors as
the Secretary of State considers
relevant. (4) The Secretary of
State shall lay before Parliament within one year of the coming into
force of this Act a report setting out the basis on which the target
for the UK contribution has been
calculated.’. Clause
stand part.
Steve
Webb: In the absence of the hon. Member for Banbury, I was
keen to move amendment No. 43 in order to discuss the important matters
that it raises, and I am grateful to you, Mr. Cook, for
giving me the opportunity to do
that. Amendments
Nos. 43 and 44 focus not simply on the destination
point—2050— but also on the route map, because, as was
discussed on Second Reading, we cannot simply chug along as we are and
then suddenly cut emissions in 2049, which is clearly not what we want.
My understanding of what the hon. Member for Banbury was driving at is
that we need to give much more attention to the profile of our
emissions over the next 42 years and not obsess solely on the
destination point. Clearly, the more that we save in getting to that
destination, the better it will be. Additionally, the earlier that we
save, the better it will be in terms of the climate change impact of
any given amount of emissions. It is therefore important to discuss the
amendment. My
hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham and I tabled amendment No. 32
because we anticipated that the Government would want to take away
clause 1. As ever, we wanted to be helpful. We tried to table an
amendment that would give the Government what they want. I understand
the points that the Minister is likely to make about how the UK cannot
change global temperature by acting on its own. We can play our part,
but we cannot achieve a specific outcome on our own. I understand that
saying that the goal of the Bill is to achieve something for the planet
when we are a small percentage of it raises
issues. The
purpose of amendment No. 32 is to ask how we move from what we know
about what the planet has to do to what we know about what the UK has
to do. Amendment No. 32 is our probing attempt to put contraction and
convergence, which are jargon, into the legislation. We want to know
whether the Government accept that aggregate contraction and
convergence on emissions per head should be central to our approach. If
they accept that, when do they think that that should take place? The
obvious point for that to happen, given the focus on 2050, would be
2050. If we had a formula and reporting obligation, as set out in
subsection (4), we would know how the Government have gone from
whatever science tells us about the global target to what the UK target
should
be. It
has been suggested that this Bill should not include a purpose clause,
because we do not do that kind of thing in this country. That is
essentially what people have said—to quote the right hon. Member
for Suffolk, Coastal, “It is not
British”. I
am sure that the Minister is familiar with the Sustainable Communities
Act 2007, section 1(1) of which states:
“The
principal aim of this Act is to promote the sustainability of local
communities.” At
the time, which was only last year, the House felt it appropriate to
include a purpose clause, so there is good precedent. Likewise,
legislation in this country over the years has given principal aims to
bodies. For example, the Environment Act 1995 sets
out “the
principal aim of the Agency...in discharging its functions so to
protect or enhance the
environment.” There
is no inherent reason why UK legislation should not have a purpose
clause. The advantage of including a purpose clause in this Bill, which
is how the Government
introduced it in the first place, is that without it we will just have a
number. As the legislation stands, that number will be plucked from the
atmosphere before the Climate Change Committee acts. It is not apparent
from the Bill where that number will come from. Although there are
mechanisms to update the number, the processes are not as transparent
as they should be. Amendment No.
32 addresses how we set the UK contribution to reducing global
emissions. If the science tells us that a certain cut in global
emissions is needed to avoid the temperature rise that will lead to
dangerous climate change, then the UK should not merely achieve the
global average but go further. We give two reasons in the amendment why
it should. “We”—the United States and some other
developed countries—are a big part of the problem, and a lot of
the emissions in the system are from us. It is often stated that
Britain is responsible for only 2 per cent. of emissions, but in a
sense we have moved a lot of our emissions offshore. For example, a UK
consumer who buys a consumer durable produced in the far east creates
emissions elsewhere, so it is clearly an understatement to say we are
only a tiny part of the issue. Not only are we a bigger part of current
emissions than that figure suggests, but we are particularly
responsible for historic emissions. As we caused a disproportionate
part of the problem, we therefore have a responsibility to be a
disproportionate part of the
solution. The
second part of amendment No. 32 addresses the question whether we can
say to the rest of the world, and particularly to rapidly developing
countries, that we have had the fun, but they cannot have it? It is
clearly morally unacceptable to say that we have had rapid growth and a
high standard of living, but they cannot have those things. I have
promised not to use the word “moral” too frequently over
the next two and a half weeks, but the Bill is about not only science,
but—.
Siobhain
McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab):
Sanctimony.
Steve
Webb: It is not about sanctimony, but it is not only about
science. I am not sure that I was meant to hear
that.
Siobhain
McDonagh: I was not supposed to say
it.
Steve
Webb: Or think it either, hopefully.
Seriously,
there is no right answer to British emissions, as the Bill stands. The
Bill includes a general purpose clause and a figure, but it does not
state how the British figure comes from what global science is telling
us, which is the purpose of amendment No. 32. Science will evolve, and
it gives us a figure for the required global cut in emissions. The
British figure has to be higher than that for the reasons that I have
stated, and as the science develops, we want the Government to be
transparent about how the two are linked not least because the British
number may need to change as the science develops. The next element is
setting out how that linkage has been made in a
report. The
whole Bill could fail if it does not include a purpose clause stating
what the number in the Bill is designed to achieve. We will obviously
have a substantive discussion about the right number when we discuss
clause 2, so I will not stray into that save to say that
without a purpose clause, the number could fail to achieve the objective
that we all want for the Bill. We are trying to avoid dangerous climate
change, but we know that the number in clause 2 is at best likely to
fail to achieve the purpose of the Bill. That is why we think we need
to be upfront about where the number comes from and to recognise our
international duties. Drawing those
threads together, amendments Nos. 43 and 44 focus on the
profile of the emissions, which is entirely right and proper, and I
hope the Minister will have something to say about that. Amendment No.
32 tries to introduce the concept of contraction and convergence and
deal with the Government’s perfectly reasonable points that the
UK is not the world and that putting something in UK legislation about
world targets creates problems. If we were to amend clause 1 to say how
the UK contribution is calculated and linked to the world problem,
however, we would move towards the same objective that the
Minister’s rather more direct approach—removing the
clause altogether—is designed to achieve. I hope that, rather
than removing the clause, we can leave it in and amend
it. 11
am
Mr.
Gummer: I support amendment No. 43 simply because it
clarifies what most of us already understood, which leads me to why I
am particularly keen to discuss clause stand part and why clause 1 is
crucially important. Clause 1 is important for the same reason that the
Government want to get rid of it—we either put Britain’s
responsibilities in the context of the world or we do not understand
what we are talking about. Such responsibilities are inevitable in the
world context. Right from the beginning, we must accept that if the
whole world goes down the route of “After you,
Claude”—if I may use an old-fashioned phrase, which the
hon. Member for Northavon thinks that I am keen on using—we will
continue as we have done since Kyoto, and even before that, by actually
not doing anything at all.
The nature of
this Bill is in clause 1. The nature of this Bill—this is why
the Government should be congratulated—is to say to the world
that we, at least, are a country that takes the matter seriously and
that we will act in a way that is incumbent not only on the Government
but on the Opposition. It is interesting that the commentators have not
noticed that the Bill has a real effect on the Opposition as well as on
the Government, because it will not be possible for an Opposition of
any kind merely to oppose things that the Government want to do in
order to fulfil the purposes of the Bill without providing a practical
and real alternative. That makes the Bill very valuable: for the next
two years, it will have that effect on this Government and this
Opposition, and when we change round in two years’ time, it will
be very important when the situation is the other way round. It is
crucial that we are all caught by the Bill. If that is the case, I want
to be caught by the truth, and clause 1 is an important part of the
truth, which is that we have to commit ourselves to act, whatever
anybody else does. Unless we do, and thereby inspire others to do it as
well, we will not achieve the necessary change sufficiently
quickly. I
cannot say that I am overwhelmed by amendment No. 32, but some aspects
of it are worth repeating. It refers
to “historic
levels of emissions of greenhouse gases by the UK.”
It is an unfortunate fact
that most of the greenhouse gas effects and climate change that we are
experiencing today is the responsibility of European nations, and the
biggest section of that is the responsibility of the British. It takes
such a long time for such effects to work through, so our industrial
revolution in particular is having an effect that we can see today. So
those who say, “Oh, we only cause 2 per cent. of the emissions.
We don’t need to worry. Others should do it first,” are
wrong not only in a moral sense—I am not ashamed of using the
world moral, because there is a lot of morality in this matter, which
is needed in a practical sense—but because we caused the problem
and should therefore clean it
up. Historic
levels of emissions created our wealth. We are rich because we have
polluted and therefore we have a responsibility, historically, to pay
the price. Paying the price means that we must recognise that as we led
the world into the industrial revolution, we must now lead the world
into the low-carbon economy. I have absolutely no doubt about that,
which is what we are here for. If I may use another word for which I
shall no doubt be attacked, we have a vocation to do that. There is no
doubt in my mind that that is what we have to do, which is why I appeal
to the Minister not to get rid of clause 1. I do not think that he
really wants to get rid of clause 1—I think that this case
involves the things that civil servants do to Ministers. I was a
Minister in similar circumstances, and I know what civil servants say.
They have a two-word phrase, “Better not, Minister.” They
cannot quite tell you what might go wrong, but “better
not”. Charming though the civil servants no doubt are on this
Bill, Ministers must never let themselves be led astray by
“better not”, because “better not” is a
defence against some untoward
happening. I
have read the clause again and again, and I cannot see anything
untoward. It says clearly that Britain recognises that our actions
should be seen in the light of what the world ought to do, whether the
world does it or not, unless there is a grossly disproportionate
economic cost in doing that. I think that is rubbish. We gain by being
ahead. We will alter the economics by taking forward the green
revolution, as we need to do. I cannot see what the problem is, unless
one still holds the Lawsonite view that that is damaging to the
economy.
The
proposition is the right thing to do, the right thing to do for
Britain, irrespective of what other people do. If that is the case, the
principal aim does not harm us. Instead, it enables us to pin a notice
on the door stating clearly, “Here we stand, this is what we
believe.” And the reason we are doing it, with the first such
Bill in the world, is that we intend to stand here until we are joined
by the rest of the world when it sees that its own future depends upon
doing these things.
I am
passionate about debating the clause because I do not want the
Government not to live up to their highest aspirations. I have not
always been polite to the Government about a range of things. I cannot
say that I am entirely happy with their performance to date, but on
this issue I do not want them to fall below the standards they have set
themselves. This is the moment for the Government to come up to the
bar. We are doing
something groundbreaking, and we are doing it with the overwhelming
support of the whole House of
Commons. Mr.
Gummer: I said overwhelming. I have no doubt that we could
find five dissenters, and I bet there are one or two people skulking
away in other parts of the House who did not happen to be there at the
time. But the Bill is a remarkable achievement, and the Government must
be given credit for it, as must the Opposition. That means that we must
excel ourselves, and not suddenly draw back with an intake of breath
and listen to the “better nots” of this world.
I remind the
Committee of the wonderful London Eye on the other side of the river.
When I gave temporary planning permission for that, every single
official opposed it. I had more visits from the “better
not” brigade than any previous Minister. I said there was no
point in being Secretary of State if I could not occasionally back
something I thought was right. Now the Eye is the most popular memory
of the millennium, and nobody will ever take it down.
This is the
moment for the Minister to do that on a much more important matter. It
is not a moment for “better not”. It is the moment to
say, “Yes, we are going to nail our colours to the mast, nail
that notice to the door, as happened in Wittenberg. Here we
stand”. If the Minister makes the change by the use of his
majority, he will be belittling the Bill from the beginning. That would
be a
pity. Mr.
Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): Does my right hon.
Friend share my concern that if the Government are seen to be going out
of their way to remove any reference in the Bill to an existing UK
target and EU policy of 2°C, it sends the most damaging signal
to the international community at an extraordinarily delicate time of
international
negotiation?
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