Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I found it difficult to choose a debate to which to contribute this week. The Queen’s Speech included Bills on issues such as child support, concessionary bus travel, consumer estate agents and redress, digital switchover, further education and training, mental health, offender management and pension reform, to name but a few, that all have their supporters in my mailbag. Some correspondents have suggestions, others want change and others are concerned about the effects of changes. In the end, I chose to speak in this debate on the environment and climate change, for reasons that will become obvious. I welcome the local government Bill, which will build on work done in previous legislation. It will strengthen and enhance the role and powers of councillors, especially in overview and scrutiny. It will also strengthen their links with the local community. Plymouth has been named as one of the growth areas and I welcome multi-area agreements, and we look forward to building our relationships with surrounding authorities without them feeling that we are empire-building. Mackey, the international planner, has developed a vision plan for Plymouth that envisages that its population will grow from some 250,000 to 300,000 in the next 20 years. Unlike some parts of the country, we welcome such growth and believe that we have much to gain from it in terms of developing a sustainable community. Last week, we launched our local economic development strategy to complement the strategy that Mackey has developed for us for our built environment. One of the key sectors of the growth strategy is marine sciences. The oceans make up some 80 to 90 per cent. of the earth’s surface and, at their deepest, are three times as deep as the highest mountain. They have absorbed more than half of the carbon dioxide that has been added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. There has been much talk of carbon capture and sequestration, and the oceans provide one of the key buffers. Plymouth has hidden its light under a bushel with regard to the scientific and economic activity involved in marine research, and we are set to develop that area. We have some excellent science that is being developed through the Plymouth marine sciences partnership, which is at the heart of the potential marine science cluster in the area. The PMSP was formed in 1999 to collaborate on research projects and develop the profile of marine science in Plymouth. It consists of five organisations, including the University of Plymouth’s marine institute, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom and the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science. Several of those organisations are involved in research that has a bearing on climate change. The Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom is a charitable company as well as a leading professional body for 1,200 marine scientists. It also conducts research, consultancy work and short-course teaching, which is classed as charitable trading. I visited the association and the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science when I shadowed a Royal Society scientist, Richard Kirby, a couple of years ago. I looked at the work he was doing through the foundation, which runs the continuous plankton recorder survey. That internationally renowned longitudinal survey of plankton levels in the north Atlantic and North sea, originally designed to predict where fish might be located, was started more than 70 years ago in 1931. Recently, the global warming agenda has driven the continued need for the survey as the incidence of warm-water plankton can be used as a proxy for climate change. Plankton are the basis of the food chain and the survey has shown how fish stocks have moved further north as a result of the effects of climate change on the oceans. Plymouth has one of the biggest and fastest growing fish markets in Europe and the fisheries in the English channel are very important to it. There has been much talk in recent years about the exhaustion of fish stocks, but in fact they have moved with the plankton, which are at the bottom of their food chain. The Plymouth Marine Laboratory is the second largest dedicated marine institute in the UK after the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton. The PML was formed in the 1970s and was formerly under the ownership of the Natural Environment Research Council. It was privatised in 2002 and is a registered charity that includes Plymouth Marine Applications Ltd. When I first knew the laboratory it was considering the problems caused by carbon sequestration in the oceans, but it is now considering innovative approaches to marine solutions to climate change. Just last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and I visited the laboratory and saw a project in which algae is grown in culture and processed and developed to capture carbon. It will be used with the new Langage gas-fired power station which is being built. The process also produces materials that can be used in sunscreens and skin care products and added to biofuels. That is a virtuous circle that shows that the science of the oceans, which has been little explored, could be very valuable. I am told by the scientists that there are as many as 60 million microbes—equivalent to the population of the United Kingdom—in a third of a glass of water. They have been little explored, but it is thought that they can make a huge contribution to solving some of the problems we face. Although I am disappointed that there was no marine Bill in the Queen’s Speech, I will take a keen interest in much of the climate change Bill. I hope that, following its successful passage we will see a marine Bill, in draft if not in its final form. We have had much debate about target setting, and I am sure that there will be more. We should not get into a battle on the issue, because our constituents take climate change seriously and want solutions, not arguments. I signed the recent early-day motion on target setting, but—as I told those constituents who urged me to sign it—I have some reservations about how far annual targets will get us. However, I agree that we need some form of measurement. We need a deep debate about that to come up with the right answers so that we are not tied down by an unhelpful bureaucracy; we need one that helps us in the process towards the ends we all want to achieve. A related point is the role of the carbon committee. At the weekend, some commentators suggested that the committee should be made independent, like the Bank of England. We could draw on that experience to some extent, but we should also look at the role played by the Low Pay Commission in helping us to bring the minimum wage on stream, without all the repercussions that the Opposition warned about, such as the high level of unemployment that did not happen. That comparison is relevant when we consider some of the controversial matters about which we shall have to encourage our constituents to come on board. They are certainly controversial in my constituency. Road congestion and charging is one such matter. The draft Bill will take us a bit further forward, but we shall need to encourage people out of their cars and on to public transport. Other Members have referred to aviation and so on. As chair of the all-party group on water, I want to touch on that subject in the closing moments of my speech. Water management and efficiency are, as others have said, closely related to climate change. The first two weeks of November saw only 10 per cent. of normal rainfall, although we may have made up for that over the weekend. There is a need for short and long-term planning and innovative approaches to help mediate between industry, the regulator, consumers and environmental interests, as well as to address the challenges of flood and drought, which many people think have their roots in climate change.