Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I have just devoted quite some time to explaining—logically and persuasively, I thought—why that is not the case. Of course a judgment has to be made, and commentators, experts, the committee advising the Government and this House will make that judgment; it will be the stuff of the public debate on this important issue. The need to combat climate change presents enormous opportunities, as well as challenges. In this country, there is terrific concern for the environment; that is the case not only among my constituents, who are assiduous in sending letters and e-mails making the case for action to me and to the Secretary of State, but across the United Kingdom. I always remember Tam Dalyell telling a Labour party conference debate on the environment that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had more members than the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat parties put together. We also only have to look at how people take to recycling; they do so not because the Government tell them that it is a good thing, but because they know from their own values that wanton waste—of, for example, so much plastic and glass, with all the energy and resources that go into making them—is a bad thing. Most people care about their local environment, and about the planet, too: they care about poor people in poor countries; they care about the world’s ecosystems and flora and fauna; and they are distressed that human activity could drown whole coastal regions, condemn millions to drought and destroy wonderful animal species. Therefore, there is an opportunity to tap into, and mobilise, people’s genuine concern for their planet, and to show how the action that we can take together can make a real difference. However, anyone who is serious about tackling the threat of climate change must also address the political challenges. There is a danger that the measures taken get seen as the conspiracy of a class, and a political elite, to pull up the ladder after the better-off have climbed it; that was, I think, Crosland’s prescient worry about environmentalism. That danger is greater when the main parties are in broad agreement about the overall direction of travel. Last week, I was at a meeting where someone pointed out that, after the publication of the Stern report, he looked at the BBC website and found that the comments calling for action to save the planet were greatly outnumbered by those of people who were worried that this could all be just a ruse to squeeze more tax out of them. In the press, the contrast between the reactions of the broadsheets and the tabloids told the same story. A number of important implications follow from that. The measures taken must be seen to be fair: only a progressive political strategy will maintain a public consensus in support of the measures needed to tackle climate change. Flat-rate taxes and duties should be used cautiously and with overall fiscal neutrality, and we should examine carefully at every turn the impact of proposals of those on low and modest incomes, and mitigate adverse effects. We should also be wary of arguments in favour of taxing bad things to pay for good ones, because people are intuitively suspicious of arguments such as, ““We are implementing this tax to change behaviour, but the money will still somehow magically be there when the behaviour has changed,”” and because they will lead many to suspect that the real motive for the tax is not stopping the bad things, but funding what politicians think are the good things. We should invest heavily in measures that help people on low incomes to cut their fuel costs—as this Government have been doing—extending further and accelerating cheap or free home insulation schemes, as well as more generally raising energy conservation standards in buildings. We should make it easier for people to make their own personal contribution to tackling climate change—for example by ensuring much clearer labelling on, and explanation of, the equivalent energy-saving light bulbs, so that they know which bulbs to choose. We should have either a ban on wasteful bulbs or a tax incentive to buy energy-efficient ones.