Action on Climate Change and Decarbonisation — House of Commons, 2022-07-05
Topic: Environment
Lee Benjamin Rowley (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) on opening the debate so ably and posing the questions he rightly did, given his responsibilities as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee Obviously, today is a quiet day in the eyes of the world, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said. It may be correct that they are elsewhere, but we will none the less continue to discuss, debate and focus on the important issues that I think this Government have been serious about trying to address. We have been serious about trying to put frameworks in place and show a clear direction of travel, and we do that in the knowledge that net zero is a challenge. It is therefore right to ask the questions and undertake scrutiny, and that is why I want to focus today on the long term I think the important thing when we talk about net zero is to start from first principles. We often dive straight into this debate, and there have been some very good contributions today, but I think that first principles are a good place to begin. Most people in this place and across our country accept that human beings have had an impact on the world, and that that has changed over recent centuries. We all share the desire to tread more lightly on this earth and consider it appropriate that action is taken to do that The Government’s choice, and the choice of the centre right all around the world, is to seek to harness the immense power of capitalism, the immense ability of individuals and the immense ingenuity of human beings to find a way, in conjunction with Government, to achieve a resolution that ensures that we tread more lightly and get to the end point that we seek. That is on the basis of clear frameworks, of creating the conditions for investment—we are in the process of doing that—and of subsidy where that is reasonable and proportionate The first thing in a big task, which is what we have in front of us, is to have a plan, and the second thing is to execute that plan. Over the last year, we have now set out that plan—the net zero approach. Yes, it has assumptions in; yes, it is setting targets; and, yes, there will be challenges, but the whole point of a plan is to demonstrate direction. For those hon. Members who somewhat avoided this point in the debate, the plan has been lauded in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and it was adopted early, demonstrating the commitment to trying to make progress. Now, the challenge is the execution of that plan I must remind hon. Members, particularly those who are extremely keen to see progress, as we all are, that we are nine months into a 29-year process. That means that there are issues, things will change and there will be progress reports; we will come back with a progress report in the usual way later in the year. It will be appropriate to look at the status, and some people will, of course, want to go further. However, we have the plan and we are executing it, and I think we are showing a consistent, calm and methodical approach to these very serious issues that recognises where we want to go and how we should get there I turn to some of the speeches and interventions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow introduced the debate, and I am grateful to him for his opening speech. He rightly holds us to account, and he is right that we live in challenging times—something that has to be considered in today’s discussion and in all our debates in this place. We have consensus about where we should move to. He is right to ask the question, but I hope he does not think that our attempts to move forward methodically, recognising that there are still challenges and that we still need to take time to work out how to approach things, can be described as waiting for something to turn up. I am sure he will not think that. Sector by sector, industry by industry, and element by element, we have to work out where the market or individuals will resolve the issues themselves, where it is reasonable and proportionate for the Government to subsidise the development and execution of solutions, and where other solutions may work Let us take aviation, which was considered by my right hon. Friend’s Committee a few weeks ago. We are still relatively early in the curve of knowing exactly what technology we will use. Working that out will allow us to quantify the cost of that technology, and to work with individual aerospace companies on how to approach the subject. Using a framework, a strong approach and collaboration, we must work through how to get to the end point that we want in aviation.