Climate Change

I am afraid that I will not because, sadly, those are simply two remarkable exceptions. What about air passenger duty? What about vehicle excise duty? The list goes on. Unfortunately, the Brown chancellorship is not green. The next Conservative Government will not increase the tax burden on hard-working families but rebalance taxation so that the polluter pays and the non-polluter pays less. However, we do not simply need a programme of green taxes; we need a green programme—full stop. I am pleased to say that the Climate Change Bill will go some way towards tackling that. We warmly welcome it and will work as constructively as possible with the Government as it passes through the Commons to make it a better and more effective measure. However, it provides only a framework for action rather than action. Given Labour’s miserable record in achieving medium-term CO2 targets, we need annual targets in the Bill to keep the Government and any future Government on course and held to account. It is ironic that a Chancellor who has never shied away from placing ever more reporting and regulatory burdens on business balks at the idea that his Government might find themselves truly accountable annually. There is no alternative. We must start making a difference in this decade and begin achieving our stretching targets. It is our shared responsibility to the next generation to act now, not pass on our failures to our children. Labour cannot put off all the difficult decisions to some distant or unspecified date. As much as Conservative Members champion the private sector—we want the power of the markets to be fully utilised in the fight against global warming—Labour cannot simply rely on the emissions trading scheme to save its record from years of inertia. The Government cannot simply rely on the ETS and, as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said, ““leave aviation untouched”” for the best part of a decade. That is not tenable. Labour cannot cross its fingers and hope that nuclear power alone will provide all the miracle answers. However, the Government would be right to examine the way in which we generate and use energy as a source of huge savings in carbon dioxide. With or without nuclear power, we believe that there is huge potential to cut CO2 in the domestic energy sector. By and large, the sector has remained pretty much unchanged since the Chancellor was a boy in the early 1950s. However, we will unleash a new energy revolution and harness the huge efficiencies made possible by uniting our demand for both heat and power only if we decentralise to the most local level. Decentralised energy runs counter to the Government’s instinctive centralising tendencies. It goes against the grain of the Chancellor’s old, 1980s mindset. However, the answers to 21st century energy problems lie not in a drawer in Whitehall but in our local communities. We need the Government to hack away at the red tape and overbearing regulation that currently inhibits decentralised energy. We need the Government to make it not only easier but advantageous for new local payers to enter local electricity markets, whether they are large businesses such as Tesco, public sector institutions such as schools and hospitals or simply a family trying to do their bit through photovoltaic roof tiles. We need to be far more ambitious in targeting energy saving, and innovative in providing solutions. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) is right to say that we need to make energy service companies a reality in the United Kingdom. To do that, we need to change the culture of the Government’s regulators to put the reduction of CO2 emissions at the centre of their mission. It cannot simply be an add-on. We need the Government to empower local communities to make a difference, to set new standards locally, to blaze a trail and thus allow local communities to go further than the clunking fist in Whitehall currently deems fit. If we are to make up for lost time and start to make strides in the next decade towards an enterprising, low carbon economy, we need genuine leadership at the centre and local delivery. As last Thursday’s massive gains of nearly 900 seats in the English local elections show, when people want something delivered locally—cleaner streets, warmer homes or local action against climate change—they will vote blue and go green.