Mr.
Gummer: My hon. Friend is right, but he does not go far
enough. I am never quite sure to whom the phrase “international
community” refers, but the issue is one for the world as a
whole. It applies to everybody. It is inconceivable that we should
start such a mould-breaking Bill by removing the sentences that state
what is in it, when those words say what we are all committed
to.
I hope the
Government will think again. If I were asked to vote on the clause, how
would I explain to my children, let alone the world, that I do not
think we should be trying to stop the temperature rising by more than
2°C? I have been bringing my children up to believe that for the
past 20 years, when it was unfashionable to say that that is the most
important physical thing we can do in life. How can I say that the UK
should not take these actions because we are afraid that everybody else
might not do it, when for all that time I, the Government, the
Opposition and the Liberal Democrats have been saying that we should?
How can I explain to them that I thought that it was in some way
dangerous? It is not; it cannot be.
Either the
Government have some miraculous understanding that is beyond the usual
understanding of mankind—of course the Minister is one of the
brightest Ministers on the Bench, and perhaps he will be able to tell us
that—or we are back in “better not” land. I say
very seriously to the Minister that when he is taking mould-breaking
steps, he should be careful of the drag effect of those for whom the
world is still as it was. We are lucky
to be living at a time when thought is changing faster than at any
period since the renaissance. This is an exciting time to be living. We
cannot meet the problems of today through the language or assumptions
of yesterday. The fact that the Government have recognised that by
introducing the Bill is crucial. I do not want them to fall below that
level, even though politically it will be great fun. I shall have
enormous pleasure going round the countryside saying, “This
Government don’t really believe in all this, you know. They were
forced to do it by an amalgamation between the Opposition, Friends of
the Earth and others. Now they have done it, we put in a perfectly
reasonable clause, and the House of Lords and the Government have now taken it out.”
The party political temptations, at the beginning of what is supposed
to be a consensus Bill, are enormous.
I want to
consider the Bill with no party political temptations. I want to be
able to say that it is a remarkable, consensual decision. I want to
point that out to people who have not yet come on board. I hope the
Government will not make it difficult for us, and that they will choose
at this late date to accept that the House of Lords was wise. I do not
think the Government will much like the clause to be subject to
ping-pong between the two Houses. They would not enjoy receiving the
Bill back from the Lords, and having to put the clause back, and
conducting the argument on the Floor of the House with unbelieving
young people, in particular, who will find it impossible to
understand.
No doubt the
Minister will make the best case possible, because he is a remarkably
good Minister. However, in his heart, he knows that he is wrong. That
will make it difficult in all those debates, because in his heart he
knows that most of it is wrong. I hope very much that he will start off
by showing his independence—his version of the great London
Eye—and say, “‘Better not’ may be your
view, but better do, because it is the better thing to do”.
Without that, this will not be the better Bill that it could
be. Martin
Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD): It is a pleasure,
Mr. Cook, to serve under your chairmanship, especially as
you have allowed us to remove our jackets, which was an appropriate
first step for a Committee considering climate change.
I thank the
Minister for his kind remarks about my rather less historic, but
innovative, use of a laptop computer in Committee. My father might be
proud of me, as he was one of those at Bletchley Park during the second
world war responsible for building the very first programmable
computer, Colossus. He might think it appropriate that I was helping to
bring the House of Commons kicking and screaming into the 20th century,
just as the rest of the country is moving on to the 21st. I should also
acknowledge that another hon. Member is breaking new ground with me on
the use of
computers. The
Minister said that there was a strong consensus on the purposes of the
Bill, so it seems
strange—
11.15
am David
Maclean (Penrith and The Border) (Con): I hate to carp on
about the matter, but just to correct the record, Mr. Cook,
my assistant sent a version of the Stern report to my laptop at 10.15
this morning, so I think that I set the record. I am
sorry.
Martin
Horwood: The right hon. Gentleman is doing rather better
than me. I discovered that my laptop was not properly configured for
the network, so I am unable to log on, an experience which is probably
familiar throughout
history. The
Minister started off by saying that there was strong consensus on the
purposes of the Bill. It seems strange, therefore, to start the
proceedings by trying to remove them. I happily support amendments Nos.
43 and 44, which were tabled by the hon. Member for Banbury and moved
by my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon. They rightly seek to
improve and clarify the wording handed down to us by our noble Friends
in another place.
Amendment No.
32 explicitly spells out that the UK contribution will, in part, be
calculated with reference to data from around the rest of the world,
but it does not pretend that the UK is responsible for it. We
anticipate the Government’s objections to the clause. They will
say that it is unworkable, because it seeks to take responsibility for
wider global emissions. We hope that amendment No. 32 makes it explicit
that that does not have to be the case. If the Government want to
improve the wording, we would be prepared to consider the matter during
the course of the
Committee. On
Second Reading, many of us argued that the targets on percentage
reductions cannot simply be a matter of scientific debate and argument.
We need to make a moral and political judgment about our fair share of
overall reductions. Therefore, it is very important that amendment No.
32 introduces the concept of historic responsibility and the principle
of contraction and convergence. It would be nice to hear explicitly
from the Minister whether or not the British Government accept the
principle of contraction and convergence and whether such a principle
will be part of the remit given to the Committee on Climate Change when
it works out the appropriate percentage reduction in carbon emissions,
because that principle is relevant to the principal aim of the
clause. Oxfam
made the important point in its submission on the amendment that the
concept of cumulative impact is already built into the structure of the
Bill. The whole nature of carbon budgets, as opposed to simple
numerical targets, reflects the importance of calculating cumulative
impact. We are trying to reflect that historic cumulative impact by
keeping the clause in the Bill to make it explicit that we are taking
our share of a global target. The global target of keeping global
temperature to within 2° C of pre-industrial levels is crucial.
I will not try to outdo the eloquence of the right hon. Member for
Suffolk, Coastal, but he is quite right to focus our attention on the
impacts of going above 2° C.
Those impacts
were spelled out very clearly by Sir Nicholas Stern in the
Government’s own report. He pointed out that above 2° C,
we are talking about
“significant
changes in water availability...possible onset of collapse of part
or all of the Amazonian rain forest,”
many species facing
extinction, “rising
intensity of storms, forest fires, droughts, flooding and heat
waves...The risk of weakening of natural carbon absorption and
possible increasing natural methane releases and weakening of the
Atlantic
THC”— thermohaline
conveyor. The risks associated with rising above 2° C of global
warming are extreme, and it is possible to argue that we are already
getting a foretaste of possible impacts with food shortages, which are
reflected in global food prices, and flooding, which is besetting
various parts of the world including America and this country—in
the future, it will affect many other areas. We are talking about a
very serious objective. To remove the very clause that sets out the end
goal, as opposed to the technical pathways that we use to get to that
goal, would be a retrograde
step.
Mr.
Gummer: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when the
Government argue the case for including an 80 per cent. target in the
body of the Bill, it would be much easier if they had pinned their
colours to the 2° C target at the beginning? In that case, it
could properly be said that the matter should be left to the Climate
Change Committee, because the parameters would be clear. If the
Government remove those parameters, there will be concern that they are
not as serious about the issue as they might appear to
be.
Martin
Horwood: The right hon. Gentleman is exactly right.
Removing from the Bill the final outcome, which we are all aiming for,
certainly makes the 80 per cent. target and other targets seem more
like a matter of tactical and political negotiation, rather than a
focus on what we really want to achieve, which is containing global
warming. It seems strange when we have consensus in the Room and across
the House of Commons as a whole about the objectives to begin by trying
to remove
them. A
lot of praise has been heaped on the Minister, which I am sure is
richly deserved. I know him of old, from the National Union of
Students, where one of his principal attributes was his mastery of the
grubby arts of political
tactics.
Mr.
Woolas: Is that a
compliment?
Martin
Horwood: Absolutely, in the Minister’s
case—he is a master tactician. I think that the Government would
be well advised to mount a tactical
retreat.
David
Maclean: It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee under
your chairmanship, Mr. Cook. It was also a pleasure to hear
the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal,
although one can never match his tremendous oratory. Last Saturday I
opened the Wigton hospital fĂȘte, where I managed to acquire
10 volumes, at a cost of £2 for the complete set, of
“Great Speeches from the Beginning of Time to the Present
Day”. I have a feeling that after this Committee there will have
to be an 11th volume dedicated to my right hon.
Friend. I
also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal
on his work on the London Eye. I hope that I am not revealing any
Cabinet Sub-Committee secrets, but I think that my right hon. Friend
argued
passionately that, rather than having a large plastic tent, we should
create a huge new pedestrian boulevard from the National Theatre right
down to Chelsea, including small shops, theatres and a new bridge
across the Thames. That would be a tremendous advance for our
environment, but it is not in the Bill, Mr.
Cook. I
cannot match the eloquence of my right hon. Friend, but I want to add
my little voice to those who are trying to persuade the Government to
let clause 1 stand part of the Bill. I also want to touch briefly on
aspects of amendment No. 32, which is relevant. Reading the Bill, one
might be tempted to think that it is merely a technical measure. We
could get bogged down in the committees, reporting procedures and the
setting and transferring of budgets. Once the Bill is on the statute
book, we might forget why we enacted it. What is the purpose of passing
this important measure? The purpose is not to create reporting
committees or to set up a wonderful Committee on Climate Change to
advise the Government. The purpose, as it says in clause 1, is to try
to do things that contribute to reducing world temperature. The clause
does not put an obligation on the Government to succeed unilaterally in
the United Kingdom in reducing world temperatures by 2° C.
However, it says that the efforts that we make in the Bill, and
everything else we do, should be part of that aim of reducing world
temperature, because that is what it is all
about. I
am fortunate because my technology worked instantly—I do not use
PICT. I plugged in my computer, the 3G card fired up at once and I was
sent a summary of the Stern report, which I shall
quote: “If
no action is taken to reduce emissions, the concentration of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere could reach double its pre-industrial level as
early as 2035, virtually committing us to a global average temperature
rise of over 2°
C.” Stern
refers to that crucial figure of 2° C, which was not plucked out
of thin air in another place. We are not arguing for that figure for
any reason other than Stern himself identified it. He goes
on: “In
the longer term, there would be more than a 50% chance that the
temperature rise would exceed 5° C. This rise would be very
dangerous indeed; it is equivalent to the change in average
temperatures from the last ice age to today. Such a radical change in
the physical geography of the world must lead to major changes in the
human geography—where people live and how they live their
lives.” The
Government rightly signed up to the Stern review and so have the
Opposition parties. Nicholas Stern continues to advise the Government
in a high role and key capacity. If Nicholas Stern picks out the figure
of 2° C as one of the key yardsticks, symbols or
totems for the amount by which we must try to reduce global
temperatures, I see no harm in putting that figure in the Bill, and my
right hon. Friend is right that that would not totally tie the
Government’s hands.
Possibly,
parliamentary draftsmen have highlighted the issue to the Minister. I
used to find during my days in the Department for the Environment and
the Home Office that parliamentary draftsmen and wonderful civil
servants always worried about things being added to their precious
Bill. Worries came from two quarters: such provisions might force the
Government to do things that they did not want to do, or they might tie
them to doing things that they might wish to do in future. I suggest
that leaving the reference to 2° C in the Bill would not tie the
Government’s hands, force them
to do things that they do not wish to do or make them solely and
individually responsible for meeting the world reduction of 2°
C. I
am concerned, as suggested by some of the amendments that I have tabled
for later in the Bill, with trying to flag up more overtly some of the
key things that Stern says that we must do if we are to succeed in our
aim. Stern goes on to
say: “Key
elements of future international frameworks should
include...emissions
trading”— well,
we have a mention of that in the
Bill. “Expanding
and linking the growing number of emissions trading schemes around the
world is a powerful way to promote cost-effective reductions in
emissions and to bring forward action in developing countries: strong
targets in rich countries could drive flows amounting to tens of
billions of dollars each year to support the transition to low-carbon
development
paths.” I
am content that the Bill addresses that point, and I hope that we can
strengthen it
slightly. Stern
also
states: “Technology
co-operation: Informal co-ordination as well as formal agreements can
boost the effectiveness of investments in innovation around the world.
Globally, support for energy R&D should at least double, and
support for the deployment of new low-carbon technologies should
increase up to
five-fold.” On
action to reduce deforestation—I find this point absolutely
critical—he
states: “The
loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global
emissions each year than the transport
sector.” We
will no doubt be having some intense discussions on the contribution of
transport, shipping and aviation to carbon emissions. If the Chair
agrees with the way in which I have drafted my amendments, hopefully I
will be able to mention deforestation and try to insert provisions in
the Bill on that, because I am disappointed that it is not mentioned
specifically.
Another of my
worries is that if we remove clause 1 we will not have a locus to make
stronger arguments about the potential loss of deforestation. I would
find it easier to argue that we should do more to prevent deforestation
around the world if we were to keep in mind that principal aim. I know
that that does not provide an exact legal locus, but it would make
matters easier from the point of view of our
argument.
Dr.
Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): I appreciate
that a great deal of the discussion this morning concerns positioning
relating to the Bill, but does the right hon. Gentleman accept that
Bills should be logical in their construction in addition to making
statements about how the world is or should be? In terms of a position
concerning 2° C, I wholeheartedly agree with him as regards the
overall goal that we should all be aiming for on global warming. Does
he agree, however, that if one simply stands by that, it is difficult
to talk subsequently about figures for the emissions of one particular
country because they have not been finally negotiated through
international agreements? If he sticks by his comments this morning,
will he voluntarily abjure any participation in the debate on clause 2,
which is about numbers and percentages? It seems to me that it is
difficult logically to speak authoritatively about both propositions at
the same time, and not reflect on the possibility that there may be a
contradiction between the two.
11.30
am
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