Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I am sorry, I shall not give way again. I do not know the circumstances in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, but I am confident that Liberal Democrat campaigners in the area are doing the right thing. There is more evidence that the Government are parting company with even the contents of the Stern report. In the Environmental Audit Committee this morning, we heard from Friends of the Earth and WWF that the economic cost of carbon emissions—the future cost of climate change—being used by the Government is dramatically lower than Sir Nicholas Stern recommended. He cites a figure for the social cost of carbon in 2000 of $85 per tonne of CO2 equivalent. Using DEFRA's exchange rate, Friends of the Earth calculated that that equates to £53 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, but DEFRA has introduced a new concept—the shadow cost of carbon—and puts the 2000 value of that at only £19, which is nearly three times lower. What is the importance of that apparently technical detail? It affects all our lives—some more than others. It gives us a social cost of carbon emissions in the Heathrow consultation of just £4.8 billion. If DEFRA and the Department for Transport had stuck to Sir Nicholas Stern's figure, they would have put the cost at more than £13 billion. That would have stopped in its tracks the proposal for a third runway at Heathrow, but by miscalculating the future economic cost of climate change DEFRA has changed the outcome of the Heathrow runway consultation. Although carbon emissions have risen year on year since the Government came to power, the Government have given the green light to one of the very projects that will stop them meeting their own targets. The cost to the environment and, as Sir Nicholas Stern pointed out, to the economy will be truly dreadful. There is more. DEFRA's influence on other parts of Government is clearly weak. Why else would the Chancellor, too, take a significant step away from Stern? Again I give due credit to Friends of the Earth's brilliant economist Simon Bullock for spotting that. The Chancellor's October document, entitled—without a hint of irony—““Implementing Stern”” says that the basis of the carbon price is"““to reflect the damage caused by emissions and to require Governments, businesses and individuals to meet the costs they impose on the environment””." The Stern report actually argues rather differently—that it is not the price of carbon that determines the cap, but exactly the opposite: the cap should determine the price. Stern says:"““A long-term stabilisation target should be used to establish a quantity ceiling to limit the total stock of carbon over time. Short-term policies (based on tax, trading or in some circumstances regulation) will then need to be consistent with this long-term stabilisation goal.””" This time, it is the Treasury that seems to be weakening the foundations of our attack on climate change. On 22 November, replying to me during a debate on climate change, the Minister for the Environment failed to say whether the British Government were taking active steps to persuade one of their friends not to veto a Bill that would put limits on the most significant carbon emissions of all—those of the United States of America. Will Ministers tell us whether DEFRA has asked the Foreign Office to ask George Bush not to veto the Lieberman-Warner Bill? DEFRA's performance has been good in parts. In its emergency response, in introducing the Climate Change Bill and in its responsibility for the BREW programme, the Department deserves credit; but by failing farmers, failing to plan for future flooding and above all by failing to spread the message on climate change across the whole Government, it has delivered a very poor performance indeed. If Members do not believe me, they should believe members of Green Alliance, who are so stingy with their accolades that they gave the Liberal Democrats only three green points in their assessment of a range of all our environmental policies—““The Green Standard Report””. It gave the Government just one point. The best that can be said about that is that at least the Government did better than the Conservative party, which was given no points at all.