David
Maclean: I will do a deal with the hon. Gentleman: I will
not speak on clause 2 if he will vote to keep in clause 1. I am not
being facetious. I will leave it to others who are infinitely more
experienced on carbon emissions, trading and targets to argue whether
the target should be 60 per cent. or 80 per cent. I approach this Bill
from the point of view of someone who negotiated at Rio in 2002 for 18
hot, sticky days. I was pleased at the end that we made that start at
the first Earth Summit. Getting an agreement on forests caused me the
most problems and led to the most intense debate. We saw tremendous
potential to make huge changes on world carbon emissions, if we could
prevent
deforestation. This
is not the place to get into technical details on that, but that is
where I am coming from. I strongly believe that if we keep clause 1, it
will make it easier for the Government to take action on forests and
other areas, because the principal aim will be doing things to reduce
the world temperature. That is not the sole reason for keeping clause
1, and we will not take the blame if the world temperature does not go
down, but we should
contribute. In
my opinion, other things, such as adaption and emissions trading, are
not mentioned strongly enough in the Bill, and I hope to move
amendments on those points in due course. I plead with the Minister
that it will not destroy the structure of the Bill to leave in that
principle, which would not make the Bill look idiotic and would not tie
his hands in any way. I would love to see the Minister read out the
“if pressed” bits in his notes, which usually include the
most spurious arguments for desperate Ministers. The Minister should
share his worries about the clause with us. I will return to forests
when I move amendments on the subject, but I plead with him to leave
clause 1 in the Bill, because it does no harm and a lot of
good. Miss
Anne McIntosh (Vale of York) (Con): It is a privilege to
serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook. May I take this
opportunity to congratulate the Minister for the Environment and the
Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the
hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford, on bringing forward the Bill? Given
the generous spirit of the Minister for the Environment, I am sure that
he would wish to pay tribute to my right hon. Friends the Members for
Suffolk, Coastal and for Penrith and The Border for the contributions
they have made, and to recognise that the UK climate change programme
has been going on since 1994. The last Conservative Administration set
the first
targets. I
will restrict my remarks to amendments Nos. 43 and 44 and set out why
we believe that they are necessary. I thank the hon. Member for
Northavon for moving amendment No. 43 as eloquently as he did. I would
like to draw attention not so much to what is in the Bill, as amended
by the upper House, but what the Government have left out. The hon.
Member for Northavon described the amendments as the route map towards
our ultimate destination. The Government have always said—this
has been said internationally—that the objective of avoiding
dangerous climate change is what signatories to the UN framework
convention on climate change, such as the UK, have committed themselves
to do.
The Prime
Minister, no less, said in November last year that the
Government’s “vision
has one overriding aim; holding the rise in global temperatures to no
more than 2 degrees
centigrade”. During
the Bill’s passage through the upper House, Lord Rooker
said: “The
UK remains committed to the European Union’s 2 degree
target”.—[Official Report, House of Lords,
11 December 2007; Vol. 697, c.
130.] That
target has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the European Union, most
recently in the European Commission’s 2007 communication
“Limiting Global Climate Change to 2° C: the way ahead
for 2020 and
beyond”. The
Minister will accept that that was at the heart of the previous
Government’s climate strategy, before being the starting
assumption for the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s
report in 2000. This is not something that has plucked from some minor
policy document pulled off the shelf. It has been central to the
Government’s climate change policy for the entire lifetime of
the Government, so why are Ministers so anxious about it appearing in
their flagship Climate Change Bill? My right hon. Friend the Member for
Penrith and The Border set out in some detail—he quoted from the
Stern review—the consequences of a 2° C rise in
temperatures. The Stern review warns that such a rise could lead to,
among other effects, a 20 to 30 per cent. decrease in water
availability in vulnerable regions such as southern Africa and the
Mediterranean, sharp declines in crop yield in tropical
regions—5 to 10 per cent. in Africa—and a high risk of
extinction for Arctic species. I do not know whether the Minister knows
that the crown princes of three Scandinavian countries—Denmark,
Norway and Sweden, I believe—are at this very moment looking at
what damage is being caused in the Arctic region. I am sure that we
would applaud such
action. With
a rise of 3° C, we would see 150 million to 550
million more people at risk of hunger, with between 1 billion and 4
billion more people suffering water shortages. Stern finds that some
models predict the collapse of the American rainforest. I am sure my
right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border will return to
this point at a later
stage. If
we moved to a 4° C increase above average, we could see a 30 to
50 per cent. decrease in water availability in southern Africa and the
Mediterranean, African crop yields falling by 15 to 35 per cent., and
entire regions, such as Australia, coming out of food production. Up to
80 million more people in Africa could be exposed to malaria. With a
5° C increase, Stern predicts the end of large glaciers in the
Himalayas, which would affect a quarter of China’s
population. Ms
Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab): I,
like other Committee members, have enormous sympathy with the principle
of what the hon. Lady says, but this debate is about not whether we
should be achieving the 2° C, but the extent to which the Bill
and the targets that it sets are dependent on what the UK can achieve
itself and how much is dependent on international negotiation, and thus
driven by our aspirations, but not the Bill’s legal
framework.
Miss
McIntosh: I am hoping that, in speaking to the amendments,
the Minster will say why the Government are wriggling on the 2°
C
target.
Mr.
Woolas: I have never wriggled on this. The Government are
not wriggling on the 2° C target, but objecting to a clause that
they argue is
meaningless.
Miss
McIntosh: I am grateful to the Minister for that
intervention, but the Government, through the Prime Minister and all
the preparatory documents, did mention the target on 2° C above
average temperatures. I wonder whether it was irregular to suggest that
the Minister was wriggling, because he is very robust and does not
shift from his
position.
Mr.
Gummer: Now that the figure is in this clause, does not my
hon. Friend agree that removing it would certainly give grounds for
doubt and that that would be a mistake? Would she also say to the hon.
Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, who interrupted her so
helpfully, that nothing in this clause says that Britain would not be
negotiating, helping, and seeking to get others to come along? It
merely says that we are pinning our colours to the mast, because people
will not come along with us if we do not do this ourselves
first.
Miss
McIntosh: It is important that Britain plays its role. As
my right hon. Friend so eloquently says—I paraphrase
him—we want to be in the vanguard of the environmental
revolution, just as Britain was in the vanguard of the industrial
revolution.
We want to
strengthen the Government’s arm, particularly when we come to
negotiations in Copenhagen next year. Following our debate on the
amendments, I hope the Minister will recognise that it is crucial that
we keep the 2° C limit in the
Bill.
Dr.
Whitehead: The hon. Lady appears to be suggesting that
there is some dispute or discussion about the 2° C target, as if
having the Bill without that figure would somehow remove a commitment
to the target. It would be great to put in the Bill that we would like
to save polar bears, and to stop plankton from rising to the surface of
the oceans and exuding excessive amounts of methane. Does she accept
that the target is actually about what happens as a result of
international negotiation? If negotiations go a particular way, the
UK’s performance on emissions will be in one category. If they
go another way, that will be in another category. If Barack Obama gets
elected, that will make a difference to those negotiations. Does she
not accept that if one puts something in legislation that does not
do—
The
Chairman: Order. Interventions are interventions, not
speeches. Please keep them
brief.
Miss
McIntosh: Obviously, the hon. Gentleman is very
knowledgeable on these issues. I have tried very carefully to follow
his argument.
It was the
Government who pitched this. Their own report—the Stern
review—set the 2° C target. For the purposes of
international negotiations, the 2° C aim has been repeatedly
reaffirmed by the European Union. We want to be part of the European
Union’s emissions
trading scheme. We want to follow the science. We are asking why the
Government appear to be perhaps not wriggling, but backtracking, from
their original commitment. I know that we
are on track to meet our Kyoto targets, but we also know that that is
in large part due to reduction in emissions during the early 1990s as
electricity generation moved from coal to gas. In 1997, the incoming
Government made much of the fact that they committed Britain to a much
tougher target in Kyoto—a 20 per cent. cut in carbon emissions
by 2010. That target soon became downgraded to a domestic aim. I am
sure that the Minister accepts that this could be seen as a subtle
shift in language to help to make the target an aspiration rather than
a promise. With the passing of time, the gap has widened between the
cuts needed to reach the target and the actual emissions. I commend the
graphs in the House of Commons Library document that set out this point
very clearly. Ministers have been forced to admit that the target would
be hard to meet but, strangely, the Government tried to assure people
that they were still committed to the target, but not expecting to meet
it. Now it is widely accepted that this target will be
met. Let
us consider another target: the 20 per cent. renewable energy target.
The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, signed up to that just before
leaving office. After making the commitment, the Department for
Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform suggested that the target
was hard to meet and that Ministers should explore statistical
interpretations that made it easier to meet. Perhaps if they stopped
changing the names of Departments, this would be easier to
follow. In
a sense, the Bill is the Government’s mea culpa and a sign that
they accept these criticisms. Ministers have often said that industry
is given confidence to invest in solutions if targets are known and set
in law, rather than just being targets in Government policy. That is
why the most important of all climate change targets cannot be left as
just a
policy. 11.45
am
Martin
Horwood: The hon. Lady has given an elegant reprise of
many of the arguments that we put in the many climate change debates in
the House. May I ask her the same question as I asked the
Minister—whether she endorses the principle of contraction and
convergence, as set out by the Global Commons
Institute?
Miss
McIntosh: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. In
principle we do. We follow the science. I am clear on that. We want the
Committee to propose binding targets. My hon. Friend the Member for
Bexhill and Battle will come to that in a moment.
I am
disappointed that amendments Nos. 43 and 44 should be moved from the
Opposition Benches. Ministers have a formidable civil service team and
access to parliamentary counsel to find the best wording to deal with
these concerns. We will happily withdraw the amendments if Ministers
assure us that this is the approach that they will take, and that they
will
revert—
Miss
McIntosh: Two degrees above. The science is there. It is
all in the Stern report. If the Minister can assure us of that, we
would be happy to withdraw the amendments. Instead, Ministers appear to
have decided
to scrap not just the amendments and what is enshrined in them, but the
clause. That leads us to suspect that the objections being raised are
not the real reasons that Ministers oppose the amendments, but a
smokescreen. The real reason may be that the Government are not
committed to a 2° C aim, but are using it as a slogan. I am sure
the Minister would wish to reassure me.
While no one
believes that the targets in the Bill are tough enough to be compatible
with the 2° C aim, and while the Government continue to battle
with their own Back Benchers to avoid toughening the targets, the only
reassurance we have that the 2° C aim will not be dropped like
the 20 per cent target, or statistically reinterpreted like the
renewables target, is to protect it by including it in the Bill. I
commend amendments Nos. 43 and 44 to the
Committee.
Mr.
Hurd: It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair,
Mr. Cook, and it is a pleasure to be debating again with the
Minister, with whom I have done business before on the Sustainable
Communities Act 2007. I know that he is a Minister who is prepared to
listen to the arguments and stand up to the frogs’ chorus of
“Better not, Minister” or, in that case, “Not
invented here, Minister,” and I hope he will take the same
robust approach to this important
Bill. I
speak as that rare beast in the Westminster jungle, a speaking Whip, to
support clause 1. This morning’s debate is a valuable
opportunity to focus on the purpose of the Bill. To me, this important
Bill has only one core value, which is as a robust framework Bill that
delivers exactly what the market says it needs—a clear and
credible sense of direction in terms of targets and eventually
underlying policy, that will allow the private sector to make the
investment that is needed and that will make the difference. It is not
Government but businesses and their customers—the private
sector—that will make the difference, and they need a clearer,
more robust and more credible framework.
The key word
is “credible”. The background to the Bill is a history of
missed targets and a lack of faith and belief out there that the
Government are serious about tackling climate change. Therefore,
arguably, the key value in the Bill is not the targets themselves, but
the process of accountability—the process of keeping the feet of
the Government of the day to the
fire. The
Bill is, to some degree, the start of a journey, a road map, as it has
been described this morning. The destination is important. The
Government seem to be happy for that destination to be framed simply in
the language of unilateral UK reductions of greenhouse gases. As we
have argued from the Liberal Democrat Benches in the Committee, that is
not enough.
We need to
explain why we are reducing emissions. We are not doing it for fun. We
are doing it because we feel an urgent need to control temperature
increases in order to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate
instability. We have a UK target in relation to temperature. The Prime
Minister himself stated it again in a speech to the WWF on 19 November
2007. He said:
“Our
vision has one overriding aim: holding the rise in global average
temperature to no more than 2 degrees
centigrade.”
That is the existing UK
target. It is embedded in the framework of an EU policy driving towards
exactly the same goal. There are good reasons for that, which have been
powerfully articulated in Committee.
All the
analysis that we have to date from Stern and the IPCC makes it clear
that the risks and costs of growing climate instability rise
substantially above 2° C. That has been adequately brought out
by the Stern report. It is perhaps worth pointing out that Stern also
noted that an increase above 2° C
will
“accelerate
future warming by reducing natural absorption and releasing stores of
carbon dioxide and
methane.” The
further we move above 2° C, the higher the risk of tipping
points and of accelerated global warming, which is arguably the real
threat we have to
counter. It
is also clear from the Stern report that the costs of dealing with
climate change rise significantly above 2° C.
According to the analysis,
“if the
temperature rises from 2° C to 3° C, the mean damage
estimate increases from 0.6 per cent. to 1.4 per cent. of gross world
product; but the ‘worst case’—the 95th percentile
of the probability distribution—goes from 4 per cent. to 9.1 per
cent.” Given
that the risks and costs fall disproportionately on the poor, we have a
moral duty. I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon on emphasising
that word, rather to the scorn of Government Members.
“Moral” is exactly the right word to use in this
context.
The 2°
C target is therefore a line in the sand. It should be our explicit
guiding star. The importance of this debate, rather undermined by
Government Members, is that that target is under threat because of the
global concentrations of carbon dioxide. All the analysis suggests that
it will be hard to keep temperatures below that critical threshold.
This is an extremely important time to restate commitments to that
goal. Surely it is too early to give up on it. That is why it is so
disappointing, not just that the Government are so reticent on the
matter, but that they are going out of their way to remove from the
Bill a clause that makes a link between UK targets and their
overarching goal.
That is
disappointing because the Government take pride in their leadership on
climate change. To be generous, some of that pride is justified. The
very fact that we are debating the Bill is a symbol of leadership. It
will be scrutinised by Governments across the world who are struggling
with issues such as how to set targets, how to make them meaningful,
how to revise them, and how to build in processes of
accountability.
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