Climate Change

I am very grateful for the Minister’s lengthy intervention. When I was in business, a target was a high point that one aimed for, not the lowest that one thought achievable. If what he says is right, I see no reason why he would not accept an amendment in Committee to increase the figure to at least 80 per cent. The truth is that there is too much complacency in government. As Sir Nicholas Stern makes clear, the Government’s repeated claim to be meeting their Kyoto target on overall greenhouse gases is a bit of a myth. Page 204 of the Stern report attributes the historic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the UK to the dash for gas. The real trend now is rather more worrying. An examination of CO2 emissions, rather than of the basket of greenhouse gases, shows that the Government’s record since taking office is an increase of 2.4 per cent. If we compare the provisional figures for 2006 with those for 2002, the trend since 2002 is an increase in CO2 emissions of 3.3 per cent., and an increase of 0.6 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions as a whole. We have to accept that the figures on which the Government are working are inadequate, and that in continuing to claim that they are on course to meet the Kyoto targets, they are displaying worrying complacency. In a sense, they are fiddling while Rome burns—along with, potentially, the rest of us. There were some interesting initiatives. I hope that the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment will make available to his own Department the carbon calculator that he referred to. A recent report by the National Audit Office on the Government estate states:"““There is widespread failure to meet targets for sustainable construction and refurbishment…Departments and agencies are not assessing the environmental sustainability of projects despite instructions to do so…Departments and agencies are failing to achieve the required assessment ratings…Eighty per cent of projects would fail to meet the required environmental assessment standards””." It is therefore no wonder that, as other Members have pointed out, DEFRA’s own record for its own estate shows an increase in carbon emissions and an 11 per cent. reduction in energy efficiency. The Minister said that that is because it is in a transitional stage—aren’t we all?—but the transition that the Government must make is from carbon complacency to urgent action. That attitude is typified in the briefing given to the Joint Committee on the Climate Change Bill. I should say at this point that we Liberal Democrats would not have bothered with that stage; the more urgent need is to get a Bill before this House. However, the Government suggested that the Joint Committee address the briefing, which asked what the main aims and purposes of the Bill should be and why it is needed. I thought that we had got beyond the stage of worrying about why the Bill is needed; surely we all know the answer to that by now. We need to inject a much greater degree of urgency. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) praised both the Prime Minister and Mrs. Thatcher, obviously two of his political role models. Mrs. Thatcher is a warning from history. Twenty years ago, she called the Conservatives the real friends of the earth and raised, in her own way, green issues high up the agenda, just as the right hon. Member for Witney is doing at the moment. However, in the subsequent 20 years, Governments of both colours have presided over spiralling emissions, a poverty of investment in renewable energy, increasing car use and increased aviation.