Mr.
Weir: It is a pleasure, Mr. Cook, to serve
under your chairmanship on this
Committee. Climate
change is obviously an issue that has huge resonance with the public,
and I have probably had more letters and e-mails on it than on any
other subject over the past two years. Many organisations, including
Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid and Oxfam, have encouraged their
members to lobby on this issue. It was fairly apparent from the cards
that I received that some of my regular writers are members of numerous
organisations, and they sent me cards from them all.
The Bill
states that the target is “at least 60 per cent.” I
acknowledge that that gives scope for setting a higher limit after the
report from the Climate Change Committee is received, but why the delay
in agreeing the inevitable, which is that 60 per cent. will not be
sufficient? It is also worth noting that the Bill places no obligation
on the Government to accept that recommendation, although I accept that
politically it would be very difficult for them not to do
so. 6.30
pm There
is an inherent contradiction in the Conservative party’s
position, which was ably put by the right hon. Member for Suffolk,
Coastal. The argument seems to be that a scientific committee will
carry more weight than politicians and that people will accept it more
readily. The Ipsos MORI poll has been mentioned, but on many other
occasions—we could all come up with our own examples—the
public have remained utterly unconvinced of an argument, despite the
weight of scientific evidence. It is a fallacy to assume that a
scientific committee will carry much more weight than
this committee or Parliament would. As I understand it, the Committee on
Climate Change has been asked to recommend a target, but responsibility
for formulating and implementing policy to meet that target remains
with us. I suspect that putting the matter to a scientific committee
will not necessarily get around the
problem. There
is a further inherent contradiction: we might put in the Bill the
committee’s recommendation for 80 per cent., or whatever
it comes up with but, as has rightly been noted in interventions, the
Bill provides the Secretary of State with the power to amend that
target by order. I should perhaps ask the John Bercow question: will
that be subject to the affirmative or negative procedure? In any event,
however, there is no guarantee that the committee’s
recommendation, if accepted, would remain unchanged. Furthermore, the
final impact assessment makes it quite clear that economic factors
could be brought into play when deciding whether to amend the
target.
The Bill also
makes it clear that economic and social factors can be taken into
account when deciding upon the target. Under the Bill, therefore, the
decision will not be based purely on scientific evidence. That is where
the argument seems to fall down. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle
said that the Conservatives would accept the recommendation, but I
suspected that he was slightly hedging his bets even on that, because
of the provision allowing it to be amended. There is no guarantee that
it will not be amended. Everyone seems to be hedging their
bits.
I believe that
we have to opt for the 80 per cent. target. Much has been said about
the report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which is
eight years old. Its chairman, and two former chairmen, have written to
the Government saying that they support the 80 per cent. target.
Friends of the Earth has also pointed out that although the
commission’s target included all sectors, the
Government’s proposal excludes aviation and shipping, which
accounts for between 7 and 10 per cent. of current emissions. If that
is correct, the target eight years ago would have been higher, if those
emissions had been included. However, we will come to that
later. The
WWF pointed out in its briefing that the IPCC concluded that to keep
increases below 2° C, worldwide emissions must be reduced by 50
per cent. by 2050, and a study by Ecofys concluded that the UK needed
to achieve a reduction of between 80 and 95 per cent. If that is
correct, even if we accept 80 per cent., we will be at the very bottom
of the recommended range, so we might have to go higher. Even the
Minister would probably accept that 60 per cent. is unlikely to be
enough. I wonder if, like the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, the
Minister is waiting for someone outside the political process to say,
“This is the target that you need to go
for.” It
does not seem to make any sense to put the figure of 60 per cent. in
the Bill when we all realise that the true figure must be much higher.
Whatever the figure in the Bill, it must be regarded as a floor to be
exceeded. I would argue that we need a realistic figure for that floor
to make a real attempt at tackling climate change.
As has already
been said, we need to send out a clear signal that we are serious about
tackling climate change. The Government are rightly proud of the fact
that this is the first Climate Change Bill with targets and that the UK
is showing leadership on the issue, but that will be
true only if we show clearly that we are aiming for targets that truly
tackle the problem. If we incorporate into law a target that is clearly
inadequate, we will be seen to have shied away from tackling climate
change head on, which would be disastrous. We should recall that one of
the reasons why countries such as China and India would not sign up to
Kyoto was that they took the view that, given that the industrialised
nations of the west had created the problem, they should not have to
pay the price. We must show that we are prepared to pay the price of
tackling climate change and encourage those countries to do more to
tackle it. Although this
may be the first Bill to have a target in it, others are committing to
targets for their own economies of at least 80 per cent. Norway, an oil
and gas-producing nation like Scotland, had proposed a commitment of
100 per cent. Germany has proposed 80 per cent. and France 75 per cent.
The Scottish Government are to introduce a climate change Bill with an
80 per cent. target, and even several US states, despite the
Americans’ status as the bogey man of climate change, have set
an 80 per cent. target. Whoever is the next President of the United
States is likely to be much more amenable to setting targets for the
whole of the United States than the present one, and I understand that
Barack Obama has committed himself to an 80 per cent. target.
If we do not
set this 80 per cent. target, we might find that rather than leading,
we are at the back of the pack. Whatever target we set, however, we
have to accept that measures will have to be introduced to meet that
target, and we face the real challenge of persuading business and our
constituents to take the actions necessary to achieve it. I suspect
that, in the long run, that will be much more difficult than agreeing
on what the target should be in the first
place.
Tony
Baldry: It is good to serve under your chairmanship,
Mr. Cook and I know that you will show your usual tolerance.
I am not a climate change scientist, but I am a lawyer and I have spent
the last 35 years of my professional life construing Bills. This Bill
has been very cleverly drafted to make it almost certainly judicial
review-proof. Whoever drafted it provided the fewest possible
opportunities for anyone to seek judicial review against the Government
for not delivering on the terms of the Bill. Interestingly, the bits of
the Bill from the Lords that the Government want to take out are the
measures that would actually provide some opportunities for judicial
review.
It is quite
clear that the Government are seriously concerned that there should be
nothing in the Bill that would ever provide opportunities for judicial
review. It is a process Bill; a Bill that is about a target and a
committee. That committee has to have credibility. Ministers say that
so far as the targets are concerned, the Government will simply take
the advice of the Climate Change Committee, but they will not. All of
us have been Members long enough to understand the concept of the line
to take. On Second Reading, the Minister was asked whether he would
accept the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee. As my right
hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal said, there was absolutely
no dissembling, and the Minister was perfectly clear that the line is
to take was, “No, there is no undertaking.” If there is
no undertaking, we are pushed back to the question of the extent to
which we trust Ministers. As
my right hon. Friend also indicated, we have to be concerned about
credibility, but I shall come on to that in a second. The longer I
am in this place, the more I become crabby, liverish and bad tempered.
I find that Ministers want more and more wriggle room. Let me give the
Committee a very simple example of that, based on my experience today.
I apologise that I was not here this morning. The reason—it is
relevant to trusting Ministers—was that I was visiting a site of
special scientific interest in my constituency on which the Government
wish to build an eco-town. I was there with the shadow Minister for
Housing and representatives of the local wildlife
trust. The
Minister for Housing had told Members of Parliament that none of these
eco-towns were to be built on green belt, but 25 per cent. of this
proposed eco-town is on green belt, so I have been chuntering to her a
fair amount. Earlier this week, she wrote to me to
say: “I
have previously stated that no homes will be built on green-belt land
as part of these eco-town proposals.”
The shadow Minister for
Housing thus said to the developers this morning, “I understand
you are not going to be building any houses on the green belt.”
They said, “We are not going to be building any houses, but we
are going to be building commercial development on the green
belt.” The line to take was totally accurate—there will
be no building of houses on the green belt—but there will be
commercial buildings on the green belt, so is it any wonder that I am
becoming increasingly liverish, crabby and distrusting of Ministers? In
the just over a quarter of a century that I have been in the House, I
have learned that one needs to tie Ministers down to the line to take
so that there is no wriggle room
whatsoever.
Mr.
Gummer: I wonder whether my hon. Friend remembers the
definition of truth that Cardinal Newman put forward: truth is measured
by what the audience hears, not the words that the individual utters.
In other words, it is what something means to the person who hears it.
That Minister meant my hon. Friend to believe that there was to be no
building on the green belt. I want to know from this Minister that the
Climate Change Committee will be able to recommend what it thinks right
and that this Government will accept
it.
Tony
Baldry: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. I
think that the Minister has probably been doing some maths during this
debate. Between now and Thursday, when the Committee next sits, I hope
that he will reflect that it might be sensible to review his line to
take on this, because this addresses the whole integrity of the Climate
Change
Committee. I
want to echo the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for
Suffolk, Coastal made: the whole thrust of this Bill relates to targets
and the work of the Climate Change Committee. This is a process Bill.
If Ministers are effectively going to say, “We are only going to
treat the Climate Change Committee as an advisory committee—no
more and no less,” what is actually left in the Bill? If the
Climate Change Committee is simply going to be some advisory committee,
the recommendations of which Ministers may or may not follow, it seems
to me that this is a pretty hollow Bill.
All members of the Public
Bill Committee can quote endlessly from the organisations that have
said that the target should be over 80 per cent. Practically every
moment, we see something from yet another organisation on our e-mail
systems. Let me give one example, chosen totally randomly from the
papers that I picked up this morning. The Royal Institute of British
Architects, the UK body for architecture, which has 40,000 members,
states: “The
evidence does suggest our greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by
80 per cent. We strongly believe that it is essential for the UK to
achieve an 80 per cent. reduction by
2050.” 6.45
pm I
suspect that not a single member of the Committee believes that we will
not need a reduction in emissions of at least 80 per cent. by 2050.
There is no dispute about the target; the debate is simply about the
mechanics. Unless Ministers are prepared to give an undertaking that
they will implement the recommendations of the Committee on Climate
Change, I cannot see how this Public Bill Committee, or the House as a
whole, can put trust in them. We will have only a process Bill that
allows Ministers maximum wriggle room to wriggle out of making any
difficult decisions. We should not have such confidence in
Ministers—this is too important for that. Unless the Minister
for the Environment is prepared to change the line that he takes on the
respect that he will give the Committee on Climate Change, the House
and this Committee will have to reflect on that when deciding how to
vote.
Martin
Horwood: I apologise for being absent from the Committee
for part of the sitting. I was attending an event involving older
constituents who had travelled all the way from Gloucestershire. I
thank you for being tolerant of that, Mr.
Cook. Some
difficult arguments are being made. The hon. Member for Banbury has
just made a strong case for the need to remove wriggle room. I was
disappointed by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who
normally makes a very strong case for the toughest green measures
possible, with which I agree fully. I believe that he is co-author of
the Conservative quality of life commission report, which
stated: “In
our view, the existing 60 per cent. goal is likely to prove inadequate.
Therefore our policy work will be guided by the premise that UK
emissions will have to be reduced by at least 80 per cent by
2050.”
Mr.
Gummer indicated
assent.
Martin
Horwood: The right hon. Gentleman is nodding. If that is
still what he believes, I find it amazing that he has essentially
argued that we should have in the Bill a target that he knows to be
wrong. The hard-won progress in the opinion polls made by the right
hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) for the Conservative
party has been based at least partly on the proposition that voting
blue means going green. That proposition could die in this Committee
Room if this critical test of our commitment to combating climate
change is failed by the majority of Conservative members of the
Committee.
Mr.
Gummer: I am sorry to say this, but the hon. Gentleman
will search for every means of trying to make party politics out of
things. I know that he will, because I have heard it before. I am not
prepared to do that, but I am prepared to say to him that the
Government have revealed a far more important issue: the nature of the
Bill. It does not matter what figure we put in the Bill. We will need a
reduction of about 80 per cent, and that is what the committee will
say, so the issue is marginal.
The
fundamental issue is whether the committee will be merely advisory, or
whether its decisions on key issues will be taken as a clear fiat that
the Government will implement. Unless the Government tell us that they
will treat the committee properly, two things will happen. First, they
will find it difficult to get support from Conservative Members on many
other issues on which we might otherwise be prepared to support them.
Secondly, and in a sense more importantly, I do not think that they
will have a Climate Change Committee. Its members will not sit on it if
they think that when they make decisions in the areas that are supposed
to be their competence, those decisions will be ignored by the
Government. That is much more important than anything
else.
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