Climate Change

Members will be pleased with the overall tone of this debate, which has demonstrated a great deal of agreement on the direction of travel that we should all be going in, even if we cannot all agree on whether we should indulge wealthy urban 4x4 owners in their chosen mode of transport. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) opened the debate in a spirit of friendly competition by reminding us that the only Conservative national election manifesto yet produced under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) scored zero out of 10 for green initiatives, according to Friends of the Earth. My hon. Friend also rightly warned us against Government complacency and the drift in Government policy, which Conservative Members also mentioned, toward the toleration of 550 parts per million as an acceptable carbon dioxide concentration target. The Stern report had very cautionary words to say about that, although in a sense, that report has been part of the problem in tolerating that figure. Stern pointed out that according to the Hadley Centre’s assessment, a worldwide figure of 550 ppm gives rise to a 69 per cent. probability of exceeding 3° of global warming. Elsewhere in the report, Sir Nicholas pointed out the possible consequences of such an increase, such as the onset of collapse of part or all of the Amazonian rain forest, many species facing extinction, rising intensity of storms, and forest fires, droughts, flooding and heatwaves. Those dramatic and apocalyptic consequences will begin to kick in quite fast. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh said, given the feedback mechanisms that are liable to accelerate global warming, we might be in an uncontrollable situation much earlier than we thought. I caution the Government to move away from the idea that 550 ppm is an acceptable target; it is in fact an extremely high-risk one. What we need is ambition. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh said, we need to give the UK first-mover advantage and to bring real urgency to all Government Departments. We need an annual action plan and a dedicated Cabinet Committee to bring together the worthy ambitions often heard from DEFRA Ministers—I count the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) as a past distinguished example—but which often do not seem to translate to other Departments. The Treasury certainly failed to introduce anything particularly convincing in the recent Budget. The Department for Communities and Local Government, moreover, has failed to promote energy efficiency to anything like the time scale necessary. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) pointed out, it talked out a Bill that would have guaranteed the ability of local councils to set energy efficiency and microgeneration standards higher than the national standard. That was a shameful performance; the DCLG allowed its control-freak tendencies to get the better of its green instincts. We have seen nothing from it as imaginative as the warm homes package that we Liberal Democrats suggested—[Interruption.] Members may laugh, but I should like to see something equally imaginative from the DCLG; however, nothing has been forthcoming. Ours is a really radical proposal that would release funds over a long period, guarantee householders lower bills and release the funds required to tackle the energy efficiency of existing housing stock, as well as new homes. That policy area badly needs to be addressed. Nor have we seen anything from the Department for Transport that really addresses the problems associated with vehicle excise duty and the expansion of aviation. We still perhaps face the toleration of extra runways at Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow airports, even though—in addition to the taxation measures that we have debated today—the constraint of supply of aviation spaces is another way to limit aviation’s growth. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh also emphasised the important role of the public sector. We Liberal Democrats suggest using the decent homes standard as a vehicle to offer a green revolution to the least well-off in our society—as well as to the homeowners whom we often talk about in these debates—by, for instance, promoting community renewable energy on a much larger scale. The Minister for Climate Change and the Environment replied to my hon. Friend by claiming that there was great cross-party consensus on the urgency of this issue. Some of the initiatives that he described we have supported and would indeed welcome. I would certainly welcome the free household smart meter displays that the Minister appeared to commit to in his speech, but it is therefore a mystery as to why he will not commit to a more ambitious target in the Climate Change Bill. Why is he still talking about including a target of only a 60 per cent. reduction in emissions by 2050, given that he said in his own speech that the Government were ready for 70 per cent? We Liberal Democrats consider 80 per cent. or even higher to be the realistic and necessary target.