Debate on the Address

My Lords, it seems a long time since the Stern report came out, just over a year ago, and a huge amount has happened during that time. Sometimes we forget that it was the Prime Minister who commissioned the report and, in many ways, we should give credit for that. The report is some 600 pages long. At first, it was not even printed; it was available only in electronic form in order to conserve resources. Although it has received quite a lot of critique in terms of future discount rates or proportions of GDP that will be required to get things right, generally it is seen as an area where we can judge programmes and, in particular, environmental progress and plans. A lot has happened during that time. This year, we have had four reports from the IPCC leading up to the conference in Bali in December. Clearly, I did not go through all the evidence that was available at the various meetings but I went through the summaries, and, if one consistency came through, it was that the indicators and warning signs of climate change were not just more evident and certainly more human-based but their effect was accelerating. Keeping climate change within reasonable bounds is ever more urgent and challenging, and I should now like to judge the contents of the Speech in terms of the Stern report. We should also remember that the Stern report emphasised that we did not need to panic over our measures. It said that they needed to be consistent and to use a range of instruments but, if we got on with the job of cutting emissions early, we would be able to solve this issue both nationally and—as was concentrated on in the report—globally. Many of us expected that, with the new Administration, energy and the environment would be put together in one department, but what happened before the Summer Recess represented a completely lost opportunity. Those two necessary areas of government and policy were not put together as they should have been, as they are clearly required to be twinned in order to co-ordinate and work towards a proper and effective climate change policy. The fact that we are discussing those issues on separate days in our debates on the Queen’s Speech shows a great weakness. Clearly, as is the case universally, we on these Benches welcome the Climate Change Bill. However, again, we must remind ourselves that it will only, by way of a climate change committee, set targets and goals—important though they are—and it is also an enabling Bill in terms of additional emissions trading systems. But it does not create any action in its own right, and therefore we must be very careful about the amount of emphasis that we put on the Bill. It is very important and it is a start, but it does not get us to the point of solving any specific issue. We on these Benches say that scientific progress over the year since the Stern report means that the targets in that Bill—60 per cent by 2050—are already effectively out of date. We see an 80 per cent reduction by 2050 as essential, maybe even beyond that. Although the Prime Minister has said that one of the first tasks of the Climate Change Committee will be to look at those targets and see if they should be amended, the mechanisms and timetable mean that that would not be until 2009. The 60 per cent target was not agreed by a committee; that particular bullet should now be bitten, and we should change the target in the Bill itself. We should also remember with some humility why targets do not always work and have not been seen to work. Two of the Government’s main current targets in this area have been 20 per cent CO2 emission reductions by 2010—which is not expected to be met—and 10 per cent renewable energy by 2010, which the Government themselves do not expect to meet. Targets do not have to be met: the term does not mean that. That is why we must have an emphasis on action rather than just on frameworks, enabling legislation and targets for climate change. On carbon dioxide emissions, we are well ahead of our Kyoto target. With the early 1990s dash for gas, however, the House will know that emissions have gone up since 1997. With the new emissions trading systems proposed in this Bill, there is great concern in the carbon trading industry that the quantity of carbon there for trading might make markets very difficult indeed. There is a way around that: those emissions trading systems are right and should be applied to other sectors, but they certainly need to have the currency of the EU ETS, and the same sort of accounting mechanism allowing them to have a much wider market and to work. However, standards on products and other areas are missing from climate change policy and the gracious Speech. Much of this is dealt with under single-market legislation in Brussels, so it is not possible to change it unilaterally within the United Kingdom. The area that concerns me is not my particular field: housing. Although we would clearly very much welcome concepts such as eco-towns and eco-cities, I do not understand why, as a nation, we still have building standards for ordinary, individual houses and buildings that have much lower insulation and energy standards than many of our European partners. Although we have plans to catch up with those in the next decade, there must be far more urgency in that area. The Bill and government policy do not include green taxation anywhere. We have had a slight change on aircraft passenger taxation, but, when we must use all the levers to change climate policy, that particular lever has been left out. On transfer technology and research and development, I do not see any promise of major research, stimulated by emissions trading, outside the private sector. That might be good, but we do not have a real research and development programme to help us move to these technologies which we need to change our targets. We support the Climate Change Bill, but it must be beyond the targets which need to change. We must include not just domestic but also international aviation, and shipping. The budget periods are too long, but we must move on to action that shows that we are becoming a less carbon-addicted economy. I will mention the Energy Bill briefly, although it has not really been considered today despite being essentially tied up with climate change. Again, I would be surprised if we are able, through the current legislation and programmes, to play our part in the European targets for renewable energy. I welcome the legislative framework for carbon capture and storage. A number of international treaties have to be sorted out in order to use that technology under the sea. However, we must not look upon carbon capture and storage as being the single silver bullet that will help us to meet our carbon emissions target while being a big user of fossil fuels. I welcome the Government’s proposals on smart meters in order to put power in the hands of consumers, but they have to be real smart meters, not the basic type that has been suggested in the past. It is a shame that the marine Bill was not included in the gracious Speech. We welcome the fact that a draft Bill will be presented. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether there will be a draft Bill committee and whether it will be a Joint Committee. We think that that would be the way to move forward because the joint Committee on the Climate Change Bill was very effective. When will the Bill come on to the Floor of the House? Will it be in the next Session rather than later in this one? It covers extremely important issues, not only biodiversity and nature conservation but also the legal framework for a lot of the renewable technology sectors that need to contribute to what we are doing. I was disappointed to see that domestic aviation emissions are increasing very strongly, and we have to have some method of moving to rail rather than air for domestic transport. My noble friend Lord Bradshaw will be speaking on this matter. The final section of the Channel Tunnel link is meeting up this week and St Pancras is coming on stream some 14 years after the Channel Tunnel opened. That shows how ineffective we have been. Although a Statement made before the Recess suggested that there might be a high-speed line between London and Birmingham, there was no commitment. Having a much broader network for high-speed domestic passenger transport is extremely important and is missing from our strategy in this area. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, has covered many of the areas related to the common agricultural policy and farming, and I shall cover something rather different. Before the next Queen's Speech, we will be in to the health check of the common agricultural policy, which was particularly demanded by the Government. The current commissioner, Mrs Fischer Boel, is saying that there will not be a major change, yet some movements in other EU member states suggest that there could be a major change in the way that the common agricultural policy operates mid term, rather than after 2013. When will Defra be able to make a statement on what our goals for the health check will be? My questions for the Minister are: when will those proposals for the CAP health check come on board? How will we move in the short term from air to rail? Will the draft marine Bill be scrutinised by a Joint Committee and will the Bill be introduced in this Session? The Government will be making their own proposals on climate change and setting their own objectives for the Bali conference in December. In conclusion, we must be careful because we in this country are not leaders in addressing climate change. We may be in terms of the Bill being unique, but we are not good in terms of renewable energy, recycling, biofuels, landfill and all the other areas. We are laggards rather than leaders, regrettably. We now have a full intellectual understanding of what is needed concerning climate change, but we—this is not just the Government, but many of us—have yet to grasp what climate change really means. The IPCC evidence tends to show that what will happen in future will be worse than what has gone before. Targets do not mean actions. We now need to move much more to using all those policy instruments and taking action rather than just having framework Bills on climate change.