10-point Plan: Six Months On — House of Lords, 2021-05-19
Topic: Environment
Christopher Suenson-Taylor (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister and his department for the energy Statement. This is the scatter-gun 10-point plan: six months on—the repeat. We have a climate emergency, the most pressing issue of our age, which the Conservatives call hyperbole. They cannot bring themselves to declare and sign up to the size of the challenge. The Statement says the Government are already delivering on it, yet in the next sentence says the plan is projected to create so many jobs and mobilise so much investment. These are targets without delivery, rhetoric without reality and wishful thinking. This is underlined by the point in the Statement that says the Government "have enshrined the UK’s sixth carbon budget in law" However, this is yet to happen. The statutory instrument has yet to go through your Lordships’ House for approval. We will not oppose it, but merely point out that the Government have yet to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, mentioned in the Statement, which refer to years sooner than those referred to in the sixth carbon budget The climate emergency is real. What these scattergun headlines miss is a comprehensive overall plan, with priorities and route maps along the way to meet in a systematic way the challenges we face. I congratulate the Government on starting to face the task since announcing the scattergun headline plan six months ago. The gestation is slowly evolving. The Government have at least published the energy White Paper, The North Sea Transition Deal, and have begun to recognise the further missing strategies as ingredients that need to be addressed and delivered if this plan is to be comprehensive. The response to the climate emergency is nowhere near being oven ready I thank the Minister for recognising in this Statement that we still need a heat and building strategy ahead of COP 26. We still need a transport decarbonisation plan. More than ever, we need a national retrofit and fuel poverty strategy with skills training, now that the green homes grant scheme has been abandoned and its funding withdrawn, rather than being allocated elsewhere. Where is the Treasury’s crucial net-zero review, due in the autumn last year, then promised this spring? Can the Minister give us another target? When will it see the light of day and set the overall size and context of the financial commitment needed? Germany has invested £38 billion in a green recovery, France £31 billion; and in the US President Biden has committed $1 trillion of his green infrastructure plan to green initiatives Will the Government commit to bringing forward the £30 billion green recovery fund Labour has called for? Do Government now accept that the UK is facing a climate emergency, and do they believe that this scattergun 10-point plan is really meeting the scale of that emergency? According to the climate change committee, the Government’s emissions target needs £50 billion of public and private investment every year by 2030, but the scattergun plan promises only £54 billion of public and private investment over the entire next 10 years put together. Has the Minister seen this analysis and how does he propose the Government make up the shortfall The Government’s emissions target will require huge changes, including the full decarbonisation of our power sector by 2035 and half of new cars sold by 2025 being electric. Can the Minister lay out in precise terms how the scattergun 10-point plan will achieve this? Will he commit to publishing his modelling? Given that petrol and diesel cars cannot be sold from 2030 onwards, what plans do the Government have to ensure that those on low to middle incomes are not priced out of electric car ownership The Government and the nation have a long way to go. Industry will play its part. As recently stated, much of the technology that will be needed to achieve net zero has yet to come into existence and be readily available. Hydrogen will be a key part of the energy mix and key to the decarbonisation of heat, as well as the solution to rail transport, especially for freight. There is a massive opportunity for Britain, with our fantastic scientists, our brilliant workforce and world-leading businesses. We need a Government with ambition and real commitment who get the task done, matching the ingenuity and inspiration of the British people. The Minister has shown great bravery in announcing his scattergun plan—the repeat—so soon. The Government are second to none at self-congratulation. Labour has put some clear red lines through much of the rhetoric and has a sharp message across the bottom: "Good but must do better".