Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and his comments on photovoltaics, an area of technology which we all look forward to being developed in the future. This Bill is radical, welcome, of utmost urgency to the United Kingdom and of global significance. It is important legislation as it places a legal duty on the Government to provide a sound foundation for addressing climate change and demonstrates that the UK Government are prepared to lead on the matter. I am particularly interested in the attitude of the trade unions. I am indebted to the UNISON trade union team of David Arnold and Ian Geary for advising me on the developing debate in the trade union movement. While government action is clearly imperative on this agenda, engaging and empowering civic society is equally vital. UNISON’s work on tackling climate change demonstrates that trade unions also recognise that they have a role in empowering and equipping their members to be active citizens. Their members need to be prepared to tackle climate change by greening their workplaces and lifestyles. UNISON is a member of the ““Stop Climate Chaos”” coalition and welcomes the Bill, but it has high expectations that its content should be even more radical than its current ambition. In brief, its objectives are that the Bill should include a commitment to 80 per cent cuts by 2050 and should include aviation and shipping within the targets. However, at the International Parliamentary Conference on Climate Change this morning, sponsored by the CPA, a very interesting contribution was made on the problems that would arise with these targets on third world and developing countries in the event that we go down the aviation and shipping route. Clearly, while we go down that route we have to take those positions into account. Its objectives also include backing-up five-year budgets with annual milestones. As has already been stated, the Government are committed to asking the new Committee on Climate Change to consider whether the target proposals need to be increased. The UNISON team fears that the results of this inquiry will not emerge until after the first of the three five-year carbon budgets has elapsed. Its worry is that the Government at the start of the process are set on a trajectory that is woefully low and ineffective in preventing catastrophic climate change. I shall focus on the significance of this Bill and the areas in which, I believe, we can, with creative thinking, be more radical. The Bill should include the 80 per cent commitment. We must not dither. Since the 60 per cent goal was formulated, with science moving on and with it being estimated that a figure of at least 80 per cent is required to keep average global temperature rises below 2 degrees centigrade, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research now believes that there is a strong risk that pursuing a 60 per cent target would contribute to a global temperature rise of between 4 per cent and 5 per cent, which is higher than pre-industrial levels. Furthermore, if the Government are serious, they need to include aviation and shipping. The Bill should have the widest possible coverage in these areas, subject to the caveat to which I have already referred. We are told that aviation is the fastest growing source of emissions. Does it make sense to exclude it? I believe that the Committee on Climate Change should include membership from stakeholder groups—I have never liked that word—as well as experts. The current proposals for the Committee on Climate Change include a number of competences that members of the committee should hold. My view, and, interestingly, that of UNISON, is that for this important body to have the legitimacy required for the public to support its recommendations and the independence to stand up to government, serious consideration should be given to including membership from stakeholder groups. These should include environmental NGOs, trade unions and other groups. I would argue that there is a strong case for the committee to comprise of both expert and stakeholder voices. The public sector, as institutions that give expression to the collective, common good, clearly have a role in setting an example for civil society. The carbon reduction commitment, which will be one of the mechanisms through which the Committee on Climate Change can assign specific reduction targets, will be a significant driver of changes in the public sector, as will the new national indicator on climate change for local government. For example, each year public services spend about £10 billion on energy; about £125 billion on goods and services; billions on new buildings; and more than £8 billion—I was astonished by this figure—on uniforms and food. The NHS alone uses 1 per cent of all energy consumed in the country, produces 400,000 tonnes of waste and accounts for 25 billion kilometres of miles travelled. The challenge of tackling climate change and greening our public services will involve technological and regulatory dimensions. This Bill recognises those imperatives. Yet these levers and mechanisms alone will not prove sufficient. The task that lies ahead will also require a strong, behavioural component. I am delighted to see trade unions are rising to this challenge and developing the role of trade union environmental representatives. I hope that the Government can support these developments. UNISON is taking a prominent lead in this role. I should also like to say to the sceptics and the proponents of the debate that whatever the truth—even if this whole debate about climate change is misplaced, which is not my view—it will force the world community to clean up the environment, conserve resources and dramatically cut industrial pollution. The consequences of these changes for human health and disease are incalculable. That benefit arises whatever the outcome of this great debate. Finally, I want to say a few words about the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Vinson, who is not in his place. I agree with him and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, that nuclear power will have a huge role to play in the future. My father was an engineer in the nuclear industry and my former constituency had thousands of workers in the nuclear industry. I am a strong supporter of nuclear power and I really do see it as the solution. But the noble Lord, Lord Vinson, has to recognise that organisations such as Greenpeace have a critically important role to play in the development of nuclear power because they are part of the checks and balances. Greenpeace and similar environmental protection organisations actually give the public the reassurances they need, particularly when incidents occur in the nuclear sphere. Greenpeace’s campaigns on waste discharged into the marine environment were absolutely critical in the investment programmes of British Nuclear Fuels in the early 1980s into the Sixsep plant and another plant whose name I have forgotten for the purposes of this debate. Greenpeace also campaigned on the marine transportation of nuclear waste from one part of the world to the other, exposing deficiencies in shipping. Again, that was absolutely critical. I have financially supported Greenpeace in some of these campaigns even though I take a very strong view in favour of the nuclear power industry because the organisation is part and parcel of the whole arrangement of checks and balances. In my last minute I want to say this. There has been a little confusion in the debate, and perhaps my noble friend will be able to advise those involved in these discussions nationally to deal with a particular issue concerning the word ““ton””. When we talk about ““tons”” in terms of emissions, people cannot see it in the context of 20 hundredweights. I put a simple proposition: we need to explain to the public exactly what is meant by the word ““ton”” because it does not register in the way we intend it to do so.