Climate Change Assembly UK: The Path to Net Zero — House of Commons, 2020-11-26
Topic: Environment
Barry Strachan Gardiner (Labour, Centre-left): Please do not worry, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is not my speech that I am holding. You and I have seen a lot of reports since we came into the House, and I have here the "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment", the "UK National Ecosystem Assessment", the "State of Nature" report, "Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming", the "Clean Air Strategy 2019", "Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK", "Reducing UK emissions: Progress Report to Parliament" and "How carbon pricing can help Britain achieve net zero by 2050"—just a small selection of what is on my shelf. Do we really need another report? Yes, we do All those reports are politicians telling the public what needs to be done. This Climate Assembly UK report, "The path to net zero", is the public telling the politicians what needs to be done. About time too! Some fantastic principles have been used to get there. The report is 552 pages long—it is a big read—but it is underpinned by fundamental principles: education and information, fairness, freedom of choice, protecting nature and restoring our natural environment, strong joined-up leadership from Government and a joined-up approach. That is what makes it different I want to go straight to recommendation 1: "We want the transition to net zero to be a cross-political party issue, and not a partisan issue" I take it that everyone in this Chamber is in agreement that we need to achieve that. If anything that I say to the Minister sounds like a criticism, it is not because I want to play party politics. I want to co-operate with the Minister, to work with him and to achieve what we have all set our face to achieve I want to focus on how the report looks at joined-up government. In that respect, I recommend to everyone yet another report, the National Audit Office report on "Achieving government’s long-term environmental goals". It states that the 25-year environment plan "brings together a number of government’s environmental commitments and aspirations in one place, but it does not provide a clear and coherent set of objectives…and…government has yet to set a clear course for the development of a coherent and complete set of environmental objectives, and for a full set of costed delivery plans" The report goes on to say that "government has yet to set out whether or how it will clarify long-term ambitions for the five environmental goals that it has not designated as priority areas…and…that neither Defra nor HM Treasury yet has a good understanding of the long-term costs involved in delivering the Plan as a whole…Defra is developing governance arrangements to help manage the links between different environmental issues", and has set up the "two oversight groups", but: "In July 2020 the Implementation Board started work to assign responsibilities for managing the links between goal areas, although it has not yet agreed what the most important links are." Furthermore, the report recommends that DEFRA "maps out the most significant interdependencies between the goals in the 25 Year Environment Plan and sets out how decisions about any significant trade-offs will be made, and by who", and states: "Government’s arrangements for joint working between departments on environmental issues are" simply not good enough. There are "no clear indications of senior ownership outside Defra and its arms-length bodies for the Plan as a whole…and…no regular, formal arrangements at all for Defra to engage other departments" I now go to page 539 of the Climate Assembly report, where it states that 78% of people engaged in the assembly agreed: ""There should be a Minister with exclusive responsibility and accountability for ensuring net zero targets are met and government departments are co-ordinated in their efforts and achievements to meet their targets" The Minister must act and do that.