Carbon Budget Order 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-07-19
Topic: Environment
John Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Committee on Climate Change. I remind your Lordships that the committee has a statutory requirement to provide the most cost-effective way of reaching the statutory commitment of cutting our emissions by 80% by the year 2050. I also remind your Lordships that that is not as ambitious an end as the Paris climate change agreement demands. Therefore, far from being ahead of other people, we have a sensible programme to reach somewhat less than will have to be reached under the climate agreement My noble friends Lord Lawson and Lord Ridley do themselves a disservice when they suggest that, because Britain has so small an amount of emissions, we do not count. Yet in their arguments for Brexit, their whole point was that Britain counts on its own. I merely suggest that if we say, "Well, other people can get on with it, but we won’t", we let down future generations in a way which I hope my noble friends will sometimes be concerned about. They are seeking to stop this generation protecting the next generation, which is why the Climate Change Act has been, and remains, supported by all parties. That is why it is so important to have a system of budgets, as we have, so that everyone understands where we are going and the speed with which we hope to go there. I have no idea whether the new arrangements will be better than the last as regards Ministers, but I warn my noble friend Lord Lawson that he has underestimated the commitment of Greg Clark as Secretary of State. I do not think he has read what Greg Clark said about his commitment to climate change, or the commitment to oppose climate change which is clearly on the record from our new Prime Minister. As the independent chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, I shall keep both of them down to their words. However, I merely remark that there is no way of dealing with these situations unless business is part of it—so I am not instinctively opposed, particularly as infrastructure, too, has to deal with these issues. I am pleased to see that the chairman of the infrastructure commission has made it clear that he will seek to deal with infrastructure within the context of the carbon budget I remind the House that we have reduced our emissions significantly, largely in the power sector. These are not exported jobs going somewhere else; we have done it. Sometimes I wish that my noble friends would appear at the presentations from the Committee on Climate Change. They would find that many of the things they have said are just not true. We have shown that there is no offshoring and that the poor are much more damaged by climate change than any other section of the community When my noble friend Lord Lawson refers to the poor, I remind him—I have looked carefully at his Budgets—that the poor did not feature large in those Budgets. But those who care about the poor, and the people who talk about the poor because they work for the poor—all those international organisations, from Save the Children right the way through to CAFOD and Oxfam—are quite clear that climate change is the biggest danger to poor people that exists, and therefore we have to deal with it in a cost-effective way Of course there is some argument about whether we should have this little bit of flexibility. However, it is flexibility based on the principle that some of the forecasts may not be accurate, because it is a long way ahead, and in those terms the Committee on Climate Change has accepted that that should be so I could of course answer each of the points that my noble friend Lord Ridley has made, but I do not want to cut out my other noble friend who sits next to me, so I will finish by saying this. Brexit is important but not central. This is our Climate Change Act—the Act which leads the world and which makes Britain the sort of leader that my noble friends thought we ought to be when they talked in the Brexit debates. I think that Brexit is a terrible mistake, but I know that the Climate Change Act puts us in a position genuinely to make a proper contribution for the next generation, and it is there that the jobs will be I end with a very simple point. Economic self-harm would be not having the Climate Change Act. That is what you would do if you did not want new jobs and green jobs, if you did not want to sell abroad because you have green products and if you did not want to be the kind of country that leads the world. Self-harm is denying the Climate Change Act. I am proud that all-party support has today enabled the Government to implement the fifth carbon budget as proposed by the Committee on Climate Change.