Action on Climate Change and Decarbonisation — House of Commons, 2022-07-05
Topic: Environment
Kerry Gillian McCarthy (Labour, Centre-left): I am mightily relieved to see that the Minister is still in his place. I hope he manages to hang on until 7 o’clock; he might find he is the last man standing on the Government Front Bench. If he does want to tell the House about his resignation when his time comes, rather than tweeting it, I am sure we would be delighted to be the first ones to know. There are times when we speak in this Chamber and we feel that the eyes of the world are upon us. I think it is fair to say that this is not one of those occasions, but it is an important debate, and I thank the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, for securing it I wish there was a bit more to discuss. As we have heard, last week the independent Climate Change Committee delivered its annual verdict on the Government’s climate strategy, or what there is of it. I think the Chair of the Select Committee let the Government off a little lightly in his quote from that report, which was an absolutely damning read. It talked about major failures in delivery programs and stated that "we are not seeing the necessary progress", and "the Government is failing in…its implementation" It also said that the current strategy will not deliver net zero. The committee concluded that the Government have credible plans for achieving only 39% of the emissions reductions required. This comes less than a year after COP, when we still hold the COP presidency and ought to be showing international leadership. It is not just the Climate Change Committee saying that the Government have fallen short. The Public Accounts Committee report published at the beginning of March said that the Government still have "no clear plan for how the transition to net Zero will be funded", or "how it will…replace income from taxes such as fuel duty…and…has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses and government itself." It went on to say that the Government have "too often pursued stop-start strategies which undermine confidence for business, investors and consumers in committing to measures which would reduce carbon emissions, especially when some green alternatives are still significantly more expensive than current options." We heard that from a few speakers. I think the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) talked about how businesses need the confidence to be able to invest, how they need a sense of direction from the Government and how they need to know that they will be backed up We heard from the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee that the global situation requires a rapid recalibration of the Government’s strategy, and that waiting for the right technology to turn up is not a strategy in itself. Again, that is a plea for a clearer sense of direction from the Government. He said—I hope I am quoting him right—that the Government prefer to delay substantive action to a future date, post election. We might find that comes a bit sooner than we were expecting when he made those comments, but let us see. I would certainly say that the time for action is now We have seen that day-to-day spending in BEIS has increased by 71% since the last supplementary estimate. That has mostly been driven by this increase of £11.6 billion for the energy bill support scheme. As has been said by several people, including the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) and the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, this is not a net zero measure unless it is linked to ending investment in fossil fuels, which we know it is not. I expect that we will shortly hear criticisms on that front. It was quite damning how the right hon. Member for Kingswood said that it was simply not true to say that this is a net zero measure. He talked about using false figures in our accounting; I thought those were strong words, but they are true. Once that figure is discounted, we see that little money is going on the most important measures that should be being put in place to deal with emissions. Several people mentioned the need to insulate and retrofit homes, which would simultaneously slash emissions and bring down energy bills. That should have been an urgent national priority as energy costs soared. As has been said, if we invested in that, it would bring down energy bills year on year.