Climate Change

I am certainly happy to do that, and I hope that my hon. Friend will also congratulate His Holiness the Pope on doing precisely the same thing on a world basis. If I may say so, I was a little unhappy about the mutterings from the Secretary of State, whom I much admire, when he complained that Keynes, Hayek and Thatcher were all quoted together. I will take any support for what is so magnificent a quest, and we should be interested that so many great minds have committed themselves to dealing with the issues before us. So, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), and his point leads me to say that, even in regard to small things, we need to face these facts. I must declare an interest: I am the chairman of a water company, one of whose subsidiaries is the only water company to be allowed compulsory metering. The reason for that is that we do not have any water. I refused to have compulsory metering until there was a socially fair tariff, because we cannot ask poor people to carry a heavier burden than those who are rich. We therefore have to accept that social justice is an essential part of delivering the climate change solutions that we need, and we need to ensure that that happens in every part of the world—[Interruption.] If I may say so, those smug faces on the Labour Back Benches should recognise that social justice is not a private deal among certain kinds of Labour Members. There are many people on both sides of the House who have talked about and worked for social justice all their political lives, so let us have a little less of that. We have to do this together in our various ways. Some of us happen to think that capitalism delivers social justice more effectively than other systems. That is a matter of argument, but let us face the fact that our aim must be the same. It is better not to belittle others when they happen to put their views forward. That is also important in recognising the problem of population. Those who have read The Economist this week will have seen the interesting articles on the fertility rate. There are now two major parts of India—Tamil Nadu and Kerala—in which the population is not reduplicating itself, and the birth rate is below two children per family. The reason for that is the improvement in the standard of living. The only way to deal with the population issue is to recognise that it is not a question of telling poor people not to have more children; rather, it is about making poor people rich enough not to need them.