Climate Change and Flooding — House of Commons, 2015-12-15
Topic: Environment
Graham Charles Stuart (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is right to make those points. Quite a lot of the progress that has been made in the past five or six years was built on that, but in the 13 years of Labour Government remarkably little progress was made. If we compare the investment environment in renewable and other green technologies in the United States, despite all the negative rhetoric, with the investment there has been in this country, we do not come out all that strongly The second challenge that faces the Government, after UK decarbonisation, is helping others to fulfil their national contributions to the INDCs and to build confidence at each national level to go further. Thus, when we have the review in five years’ time, we will be able to raise the ambition so that we are not heading, as now, for under 3°, but are genuinely able to head for a sub-2° world. There is a tremendous amount to be done in engaging with parliamentarians. I should declare an interest as the chair of GLOBE International. Colleagues from across the Chamber attended the summit of legislators in Paris the weekend before last. We need to engage more with parliamentarians. That is equally true in Parliaments such as ours where, despite today’s attendance, there are remarkably few colleagues with much interest in or knowledge of the subject matter. We have to engage more people so that they take more interest and ensure that we get the frameworks that deliver the investment. There is a huge role for the UK to play in developing countries through climate diplomacy and work with GLOBE and others to make sure that we engage with these parliamentarians, who, after all, pass the laws, set the budgets, and hold Governments to account. That is certainly what GLOBE aims to do through its chapters around the world I want briefly to say something about flooding, following my earlier intervention on the Environment Secretary. The threat to the Humber is real and growing, with rising sea levels. Last December, we saw a bigger surge than in 1953. If the wind direction and other factors had been slightly different, there would almost certainly have been loss of life. This is a growing issue and we need to find a long-term solution. My personal thought is if we leave it to Governments, who have to decide between investment in schools, hospitals and so on, and long-term investment in flooding, they always have a tendency, when not under the shadow of a recent flooding disaster, to cut back that long-term investment. Would it not be better to set a regulatory standard on which we could rely by handing it over to water companies, whose job is to borrow money from the international markets and invest for the long term at the lowest possible cost, to deliver an agreed standard? If we had a statutory standard with a duty placed on those bodies to deliver, and all the water tax payers of the country picking it up, we would not only save the Chancellor from the cost hitting the Exchequer directly, but could have in place lower-cost intervention, to an agreed standard, for the long term, and stop having these fervent and heated debates every time we have a flood disaster, which, given climate change, is likely to happen more often in future.