Climate Change

Absolutely, and there is an awareness that those are two huge sectors of international activity that people will need to come to agreement on. I am setting out the context in which they need to deliver. Thirdly, may I ask Ministers to be absolutely clear whether any commitments made so far by the UK, such as when the Prime Minister shared the announcement in Brussels the other day, have been announcements of new money? I have seen nothing to suggest that any new UK money has been announced as going into the kitty. I believe that they were re-announcements of earlier pledges, but I stand to be corrected, and if they were not they will be important. The Government should make it absolutely clear to all of us—I have heard this plea elsewhere—that the money provided will be additional to overseas development assistance and does not include double counting. There is great suspicion among well informed commentators and those who follow these things that there is currently some double counting in emissions trading receipts and so on. Over the next three or four weeks there will be continuing dialogue, and the last formal negotiating session took place the other day in Barcelona. I hope that this country will go further than it has before, and I believe the Secretary of State and his colleagues will gain credit at home and abroad for doing so. Just as we showed our leadership at the time of the industrial revolution by starting a new generation of successful economics, if the UK, as one of the two major historically responsible countries, can be really brave—even if some of the messages that we send might have cost obligations for us—the rewards will be great and the public will recognise that. We can afford to be bolder and braver than we have been, and I look forward to the Government ratcheting up the pressure and working on other countries, particularly the big ones, to deliver a braver outcome in the next few weeks.