Climate Change

The Secretary of State says that the ETS revenues are accounted for, but he has not been able to point out in the Red Book what they are being spent on, or how much he has spent. He might want to give us the answer now: how much has been allocated? I should be happy to give way to him if he can tell us how much has been allocated and spent. Answer came there none. We will of course look at the Bill when it is published. It would be foolish to endorse the levy uncritically and sight unseen. We will give our reaction to the proposal when the Secretary of State publishes the Bill. That is the time for us to do that, but if he would like to share the details in advance, we will give him an earlier assessment of whether it passes muster. It is in the interests of China, just as it is in our own, to move to a genuinely low-carbon economy. As I said in Question Time, with so much at stake and yet so much still to be agreed on, it is easy to be pessimistic about our chances of reaching a successful deal. We must not seek a deal for a deal's sake—to be fair, the Secretary of State has shown himself to be cognisant of that risk and determined to avoid it. We agree that the worst kind of failure would be to trumpet a deal that was inadequate as in some way satisfying what is needed. However, even though that might be what we want now, we know that summits have a momentum. The pressures for an agreement—for the handshake that I mentioned earlier—will be intense. The Heads of State and of Government who fly in will not want to fly out again without achieving some sort of concordat. It is more important to get an agreement than it is to have a photograph at the end of the summit. I hope that the Secretary of State will be true to what he has said today and blow the whistle on any deal that is not adequate.