Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I am pleased to have the chance to wind up this important debate. Local government and the environment may not seem like natural partners but there are important linkages between their work: local authority leadership in promoting green space and in waste collection and disposal; local authority procurement and its impact on its own carbon footprint; and the ability to chart a course to lower carbon living, which is the aim of an increasing number of local authorities that have signed up to the Nottingham declaration and are linking up with local state and regional governments around the world to tackle global warming. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall use my speech to respond to the debate and, I hope, to share with the House my conclusions after the UN climate conference in Nairobi last week, which took some important steps in the battle against climate change and set the stage for further discussions about a global emissions reduction plan. However, in my view, it showed the gap between the scientific and economic evidence of the need for action and the fragmented and disjointed nature of global governance. We have heard a series of passionate, heavyweight and well-informed speeches; I associate myself entirely with the remarks of the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) about their quality. There were 28 speeches in all, and I shall not be able to cover the concerns of my old friend, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), about the human tissue Bill, or of my even older friend, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman)—who is no longer in his place, such a good friend is he—about immigration, or of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes) about drug treatment. However, I want to highlight a few issues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith), the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) and my hon. Friends the Members for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), for Huddersfield, for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) and for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) all called for a sensible approach to targets. They understood the difference between annual reporting and annual targets—an issue to which I will return in a few minutes. I also noticed the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford and the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) for new technologies. I will not end the career of the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) by saying anything nice about him, but he said something interesting about product regulation. My hon. Friends the Members for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) spoke knowledgeably about the need to cut emissions from housing. There was a common theme in all the contributions, however, which was summed up by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle) who explained that voluntarism is not enough; it takes regulation, investment, trading mechanisms and fiscal policy to make a difference. I recognise that many Members, including the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George), the right hon. Member for Fylde and my hon. Friends the Members for Scunthorpe, for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) and for Huddersfield, expressed a desire for a marine Bill and for progress on that important issue. As I explained at questions just before Prorogation, we are determined to make progress on the matter. The complications arise from a difficult set of issues to do with the devolution settlement, as my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe knows, but we will be making further policy proposals in due course. I wish I had been in the Chamber for the contribution of one my oldest friends—I knew him at university—the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field). In a very good-natured debate, he managed to offend absolutely everybody. He offended all the Londoners present by attacking the ““whim”” of the Olympics. He attacked scientists by saying that climate change was a hoax—or words to that effect; and he even managed to offend his own leader by coming out in favour of nuclear power. That may not be a sensible career course, but there is a rumour on the Labour Benches that the hon. Gentleman has been reshuffled, which I am sad to hear. It suggests that the sensible tendency in the Tory party is no longer in control. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) was a lone voice speaking up for the creation of a Mayor of London. He will remember that in 1997 there was no London-wide government, but the hon. Members for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) and for Cities of London and Westminster clearly hope to get rid of the Mayor of London in the future. But today, there is a Mayor, and he and future mayors will have more power under this Government, while preserving the balance of borough, city-wide and national power that lies at the heart of the 1997 settlement. My hon. Friends the Members for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby), for Plymouth, Sutton and for Hove (Ms Barlow) have all been passionate advocates of the role of local government in national life for a very long time. They will remember that, in 1997, there was no local government power of prudential borrowing, no provision for elected mayors and no delivery contract between local and central Government, which lies at the heart of local area agreements. From next year, those new powers will have added to them the power for citizens to hold services to account, new structures, including directly elected executives, and a streamlined accountability system. All hon. Members will remember that the last Government reorganised local government but in a way that caused most people to hate the process and that ended up in a half-baked outcome. In the Government’s view, rural England needs effective structures of political representation, real strategic leadership at county level and genuine neighbourhood representation at local level. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has invited local proposals to reform the two-tier system, not imposed a national plan. She has sought to support local leadership, not to squash it. I was the very interested in the comments about the benefits of unitary status made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall). The Leader of the Opposition promised never to oppose for the sake of it, but we are presented with the utterly bizarre spectacle of the Opposition seeking to deny to local people in rural England the right to propose practical locally designed plans to improve democracy and save money. It does not sound like a new Tory party to me. I agree with the hon. Member for East Surrey that the debate about climate change has reached a new intensity since the last Queen’s Speech, 18 months ago. My summary is that the science is now overwhelming, the economics is now clear, thanks to the pioneering work of Sir Nicholas Stern, and the politics, notably internationally, now needs to come into its own. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and with the Opposition’s agreement—I will make a written statement on this tomorrow—may I set out a few of the conclusions of the climate change talks last week? We went to Nairobi with three clear tests for the talks, the first of which was on adaptation, especially in Africa. Last Monday, I flew to Turkana in northern Kenya, near the Ugandan border. I met pastoralist farmers, herdsmen and women, who told me about walks—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) is mumbling from a sedentary position. He has a perfectly creditable record on this issue, and he does not need to talk it down. They told me about walks to water stretching to two, three and four hours. Those people and others like them need help in adapting to climate change now, and they need it not just through reform in their own countries, but through help from the outside world. I saw a Department for International Development project that was bringing water within reach, with new boreholes and new water supplies, giving those people the ability to forge an economic livelihood for themselves because they were not searching for water. The UN conference last week offered more hope in three ways: a five-year action plan agreed by the international community, major steps towards an adaptation fund and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General launched a UN drive to carbon-proof overseas development assistance. In this country, that is the course set out in the White Paper presented by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development last July. Our aids budget, which totalled £2.2 billion in 1997 and is now worth £5 billion, will therefore support development that anticipates and tries to prevent climate risks. The second outcome was the promotion of global flows of capital to support technology transfer. There was some progress—for instance, on making the clean development mechanism work for Africa. The CDM plays an important role in helping to spread low-carbon solutions, and we therefore welcome Kofi Annan’s announcement of a new plan to bring together UN, bilateral and multilateral agencies to dismantle the barriers to clean energy investment in Africa. The third test of the conference concerns the momentum towards global negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions. The UK’s position is clear, and I think that I am right in saying that it is supported across the House. First, there must be global agreement in time to ensure that there is no gap between the first commitment period, which ends in 2012, and new commitments for the second period. Secondly, we believe that the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is paramount. Richer countries must take the lead, but all countries have a part to play. Thirdly, the conclusions of the ad hoc working group on developed country targets, set up in Montreal last year, is important: it commits the international community to avoiding a gap after 2012, but it also talks of global emissions reductions and therefore the role of all countries.