Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point on that very important issue. On the real problem of aviation taxation, it would be most fair to tax proportionately more those who fly most often. We should also invest a lot more money in research to minimise emissions, and not only in the fields of energy conservation and electricity generation, but of transport, including aviation. In the whole climate change debate, behavioural change and technological advance are often presented—especially in the United States—as alternative ways of addressing the challenge, whereas the reality is that we clearly need both. The Government should continue to press very hard for action jointly with other countries. There is clearly an imperative for concerted international action, which must fulfil the requirement set out by the Chancellor that the burden of climate change should not be allowed to fall on the poorest people in the poorest countries. The Stern report has important key messages for international collective action, including what Sir Nicholas calls ““the urgent challenge”” of a transparent and comparable carbon price, and building on the institutions of the Kyoto protocol. The challenge is to put in place an effective cap on greenhouse gases, while minimising the distortion and bureaucracy that the system and its policing might impose. The further development of cap-and-trade arrangements for CO2 and other greenhouse gases looks to me like the best way of doing that. One of my constituents, Mr. Oliver Tickell, has developed a scheme for combining a global cap on emissions under the United Nations framework with an ascending auction of global emission rights. He has set it out clearly on a website called Kyoto2.org, and I commend it to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and other colleagues. So I greatly welcome the Government’s commitment to the climate change Bill. Along with tax measures, public spending and international initiatives, it can be a decisive step toward a sustainable environment. One striking thing about the Stern report was not just its setting out the appalling economic cost of failing to tackle climate change but the, by comparison, relatively modest cost of doing something about it, so long as we take the right action now. I look forward to a Bill with the ambition, reach and powerful measures needed to do just that.