Climate Change Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I intervene briefly, and say, first, that as I have not spoken on this Bill before—not in public anyway—I welcome it greatly. Some of us have argued for it over a period; it is profoundly important and very much a step in the right direction. Secondly, I declare an interest as the campaign director for Future Heathrow, which is a coalition of trade unions, business organisations, airlines and others associated with the airline industry, although I am not speaking about that particularly today. Like many others, we have given attention to the issue of climate change in aviation. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on the way in which he introduced the amendment, as he is basically on the right lines. He recognises the difficulty of including it straightaway in carbon trading. I was slightly surprised by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on the Conservative Front Bench. If I understood him properly, particularly if he forces the amendment to a Division, we will have to assume that any future Conservative Government would immediately include aviation and shipping in carbon trading, regardless of what else is done in Europe or the wider world. The implications of that are very serious. I speak as someone who has been concerned about climate change for 20 or more years, when I wrote my first article about it. Those of us who are worried about it recognise that there are two dangers. One is the danger of doing absolutely nothing and carrying on as we have done for many years, and the other is going into panic mode and closing down industries or creating crises for major and growing industries because we have not thought through the consequences. Sometimes the figures given across the board, by people both for and against, can be misleading. That perhaps serves as a warning on this amendment and clause. Late last year, the Mayor’s office was issuing figures which showed aviation in London to be particularly bad, because it had counted the aviation emissions from the aircraft’s point of departure to its arrival in London, and counted that as a London emission. Yet the train emissions were counted only as far as the GLA border. That sort of thing ultimately undermines people’s confidence in statistics on these complex issues. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was right that aviation and shipping must be included. Some people underestimate how fast industry is now moving on this. People underestimate across the board the willingness of people, both individually and as members of organisations, to make a major effort on climate change. I was impressed, as I am sure others were, when the cement industry suddenly stood up in class and said, ““Hey, don’t forget we’re a bad boy, too!””. It announced it when none of us knew it. Similarly, the aviation industry and, now, the shipping industry—although I know less about that—are working hard to reduce their carbon emissions. Yes, the answer is to get an international trading agreement which includes aviation and shipping, but we must first get it in Europe. You could argue a case for aviation and shipping being included for Britain and the rest of the world outside Europe, although it would not be that convincing. But if you try to exclude the European Union and just go ahead and do it, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, seemed to suggest, the implications for major industries in Britain would be severe. We must face that. It is a matter of getting the balance right. UK aviation is the second biggest aviation industry in the world, second only to the United States; it is cutting edge technology and we ought to be proud of what it is doing and its efforts to address climate change. Half a million people work in the aviation industry. They do not think that climate change is not happening. They are not people who do not care about their kids’ futures or their own futures. They are not people who do not care about the future of the planet. They do care, and noble Lords would be surprised how many of them are thinking hard about this issue. We ought to give them credit for that. I do not support the amendment as it is, but the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, understands the problems here. I would certainly like to hear, and I am sure the Minister will want to tell us, how we engage with the European Union and elsewhere to try to get shipping and aviation counted. I suspect that it will be slightly easier within rather than outside the European Union. Having said that, it will not be easy in the European Union either. That is another of the great problems of our day. International organisations like the EU, and the wider ones, govern so much of our lives and yet our influence on them is slow to work. Any country, no matter how powerful, is slow to get agreement because they must do so with the slowest ship in the convoy.