UK Low Carbon Transition Plan

Let me start by saying that I welcome the hon. Gentleman's opening remark that we should conduct the debate in as bipartisan a way as possible. I therefore regret the tone of his subsequent remarks, and I advise him that it does not make much sense for him to come to the House and say that he wants bipartisanship and then engage in attacks that are pretty much without substance. I shall deal first with a point that the hon. Gentleman made that I consider to be very important for people watching in the country. He would have us believe that the reason why we will pay a higher price for the switch to renewable energy is something to do with what has happened in the past few years. He knows that that is not the case, and that the transition will have costs. I advise him in all seriousness that as we conduct this debate, we need to level with people about that. I have been very open about saying to people, "Look, there are costs to the transition." We will never persuade people to make the transition if we say that the costs are a result of Government inaction in the past: they are not, and the hon. Gentleman knows that, just as he knows that there are costs to the transition. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reflect on his remarks later, but let me turn now to the other points that he made. I did not hear him ask any real questions about the substance of my proposals, although I appreciate that he has not had much time to absorb them. However, I should be happy to answer any questions on the substance of the proposals, when he has some. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the roll-out of smart meters, and I can tell the House that 48 million meters will be rolled out in the next decade. It is easy for an Opposition to say, "Let's do it more quickly," and that would be fine if there were ways to do that. However, we believe that 5 million meters are quite a lot to install in one year, and we are open to any quicker way of proceeding. The hon. Gentleman asked about offsets. The Government have taken an ambitious approach to offsets, as did the Chancellor in the Budget. We have said that we will achieve the 34 per cent. reduction through domestic action, and exclusive of the EU emissions trading scheme. That remains the case. As he will know, because his deputies will have taken part in the debate on this, we have set the credit limit for the first budget period at zero. In fact, in our plans we over-achieve on our carbon budgets, but I hope that he is not falling for the idea that any offsetting abroad is automatically a bad thing— ...The hon. Gentleman may say, "Ah," but the truth is that for Copenhagen we face a massive financing challenge, and developing countries are saying to us, "We need the finance to be able to make the transition to low carbon." If we are to make that transition to low carbon, we need all the means at our disposal, and that means private and public finance. We have in place domestic action to meet our 34 per cent. target, but we will not say that we will never engage in buying credits from abroad, because that is the right policy. We have set out the rates for consultation on feed-in tariffs. We have listened to what people have to say, and we think that we have set a realistic estimate of what tariffs can achieve—but if they can achieve more, that is a good thing. Let me just end—[Interruption.] Let me just end—[Interruption.] ...Let me finish by saying this to the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark): we are debating serious issues and we need as much consensus as possible. I regret the tone of his remarks, and the fact that he does not have anything of substance to ask about our proposals today. I look forward to debating them in the coming months.