Debate on the Address

What a pleasure it is to follow that thoughtful speech from the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), although I disagree with quite a bit of what he said. To finish—from my side anyway—the exchange that he kindly allowed me on nuclear power, I suggest to him that nuclear power is dinosaur technology. It has been around for 50 years and it has been subsidised greatly all over the world. There is nowhere in the world where nuclear power has been installed without huge public subsidy, and after 50 years it cannot be made to work economically, nor do I think that that will be possible. As the hon. Gentleman posited, that might turn out to be the case with many renewables, but the jury is still out. As the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) said, if renewables had received anything like the subsidy that the nuclear industry has had, we would have had the answer to that question, and I think that it would have been a positive for renewables. I must refer the hon. Member for Esher and Walton to an extremely important point that he did not touch on when he was, in a sense, trying to discover my position—conserving energy. I refer him also to an excellent paper by Dr. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain institute on the opportunity cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power, on many calculations, is bad for the environment and bad for climate change because the opportunity cost of spending the money that would need to be spent on new nuclear power stations could have greater effect in relation to cutting emissions were it put into renewables and, in particular, energy conservation. On the Queen’s Speech itself, I wrote to the Leader of the House four or five weeks ago—in my usual inimitable style, I suppose—suggesting that, after nine and a half years of a Labour Government, who have passed many excellent pieces of legislation, some good ones and a few poor ones, there should be no legislation whatever in the Queen’s Speech this year and that the Government should concentrate on implementing the legislation and the changes that we have already introduced, which have thus far made a considerable improvement to life for many, if not everyone, in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, and totally to my surprise, the Government did not accept that submission and we had a Queen’s Speech today with a large number of Bills included in it. If we have to have a Queen’s Speech—it seems that we do; it is the will of the Government to introduce yet more legislation—this is not a bad one. I want to focus on one aspect of climate change, adaptation, that never gets discussed in the House, and which, as some hon. Members present will know, is my bugbear. In one sense, I am building on remarks made by, for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) and the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), and particularly by my near neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey). Of course, cutting emissions is important, but I will not spend much time on that because all hon. Members are at least aware of the issues involved, although they might have different views on how to tackle those and what measures would be desirable. However, it is worth bearing in mind what has already happened and what will almost inevitably happen. Thus far, the United Kingdom has a great record on cutting emissions and on global leadership on the issue. Even in the UK, however, carbon dioxide emissions have risen in the past six years. The International Energy Agency predicts an increase in world energy demand of 60 per cent. by 2030, with an implicit 62 per cent. rise in emissions. The Prime Minister referred to the question of China, saying that if we cut our emissions—2 per cent. of the world total—to zero tomorrow, that would be taken up, if the current trajectory of increase in Chinese emissions continued, in less than two years. In fact, the time frame is 15 months.