Climate Change — House of Lords, 2019-01-24
Topic: Environment
Rupert Bertram Mitford (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is quite a rare event for me to speak from the Front Bench. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for giving me this opportunity. I must look back in time to when we did many of these debates on the Climate Change Act 2008—we looked at increasing the amount of reduction needed in carbon dioxide—which was one of the cornerstones of the climate change committee I have been working on this area for many years and was one of the founding members of the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group. The words of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, brought back happy memories of the debates we had where it was thought by many in this House that sunspots caused climate change. I find it interesting that the debate has moved on so considerably that that sort of viewpoint is very much in the minority and the real effects of climate change through manmade action are very rarely questioned It has been a very wide-ranging debate. The discussion started by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, on land management—echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, about how we should use soil, echoed in turn by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—is one of the areas that we will have to think about very carefully indeed As an aside, I was talking to the gravedigger at my local church, who had found that the soil was incredibly dry at the base, which is almost unheard of in Northumberland. We should look at that, because one of the times when people start talking much more readily about climate change is during a drought. We are looking at a drought situation coming up—I declare an interest as the CEO of the Water Retail Company and we have been looking at selling water in summers when there is a drought. This could be a problem with Brexit. Four types of chemical are used and they are volatile and short-lived. If we have a hard Brexit, it might cause even more problems if we cannot get those chemicals The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, talked about the engineering issues around flooding. Most of the country’s drains are designed for 1950s rainfall. Now that we have flash floods, we are seeing situations such as happened in Hull, where flooding took place on top of a hill, because we do not have the drainage to deal with present rainfall—which is a slight worry A couple of days ago, the Minister called me a Jeremiah over my view of the death of the nuclear industry. I take issue with him, given that we are down to perhaps one new build from four. What I said may be true of a Jeremiah, but I am much more taken with chapter 29, verse 11, which talks about hope in the future and moving forward. In that spirit, one of the most hopeful things to come out in the past couple of years which could affect how we deal with climate change in this country has been led by the Minister’s own department, BEIS. It was brought about by David Cameron and George Osborne. The Minister might remember the fantastic expression, "Get rid of all the green crap", which led to the Government reassessing how they subsidised renewable energy—they were going to sweep away all the renewable energy. That led to the decision to get rid—from April—of the carbon reduction commitment and greenhouse gas reporting. That will be replaced by a new regime, the nattily named streamlined energy and carbon reporting, or SECR—which does not really flow off the tongue. However, when it comes into effect, it will apply to 10,000 companies—in fact, any company listed under the Companies Act 2006 will have to undertake the assessment once a year. This is quite incredible. The final guidance, which the Minister’s department will probably issue at the end of January, and the SI that went through in July last year state that, each year, companies will have to record all their energy consumption, all their carbon emissions and all principal energy efficiency measures. That will be quite an interesting list. I declare a further interest as the chief executive of the Energy Managers Association and many of my members will be dealing with this. We will be looking at creating tools to help companies to do this However, this fabulous piece of reporting does not even stop there. Present reporting regimes such as ESOS—the Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme, which covers the period to 2019—require only a report to be made to be signed off by a director, but the new report will have to go in front of the auditors. I have just been going around many auditors talking to them about how they will audit the reports for all their companies. They will have to look at how they audit all the individual measures. The report then has to go in front of the board for sign-off. It is particularly interesting that LLPs, which were not part of the original ESOS, will be brought in. I liked the measure which requires a named member of the LLP to take the report to the rest of the members. If that named member gets the figures wrong, they can be sued by the other LLP members. That has a real effect. However, the real kicker on the end of it, which I must say is genius from the Government, is that those companies will have to put all this information into their company report. That is a public document that must be listed with Companies House. The problem we have always had is that we have talked about the Paris accord, the agreements and what we are looking to achieve in carbon reduction, but these have always been commitments by the Government. This will be a way of measuring the ability of every large company in the country not only to record the carbon energy it uses but to list all its energy-efficiency measures and make sure that a director is responsible for them. For the energy managers, this is nirvana, this is heaven, because finally directors will be responsible for dealing with energy efficiency, which has always been a Cinderella subject Of course, as many noble Lords will notice, the best form of energy is that which is not used at all, especially in carbon terms. I welcome very much the way that this is being brought forward. It means that if directors do not take these measures, there are sanctions, which could include a prison sentence. Of course, that will probably never happen, but we will end up with something that I do not think has taken place anywhere else in the world, which is a legal obligation on all the largest companies in the country to come forward with a measurement of their own use of energy, but also what they are doing about it. I hope the Minister will grab this with both hands and take it forward, because it is the most fabulous way of bringing forward energy efficiency in large companies, and if we are to tackle climate change severely, that is where we will have to do it. If we do go to COP, that will give two years of evidence of what all the companies in our country have been doing I could go on at great length about all the issues, because there have been so many raised that need to be addressed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, that the trouble with climate change, and one reason people do not take it seriously, is that if we really believed in climate change we would not take flights on holidays, we would not take that second hot bath, we would decide that our impact on the environment is very large. That is one reason people do not go down this route. One of the difficulties with climate change is that it is such a large subject that people shut down and think, "There is nothing I can do". But as the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said, we have to take people with us and I hope that the Government, especially with SECR, will do just that.