Climate Change

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, as I have had this argument with him before. He is wrong, and I am sorry about it, but one day he will find out why he is wrong. The fundamental reason why he is wrong is that we cannot afford to put second-order issues in front of the major issue that lies before us. That brings me to saying a few words about the Treasury. The Treasury is endemically opposed to any long-term decisions about anything. I remember winning the battle over the landfill tax when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and believed in it. I recall being there when he turned to one of those superior mandarins and said, "I am very sorry, but we are going to do it. I do not care. I am in favour of pushing the market, which is what a tax on landfill would do". I saw the awful look on the face of the mandarin who had finally been caught out and told, "We're going to do this, because it's right; we're going to do it because it is necessary in the long term". That kind of decision making is what we need in the Government today. That is why I am always sorry that a Treasury Minister is not compulsorily placed on the Treasury Bench, which would force him to listen to this debate. What a pity it is, too, that all those people up in the Press Gallery who chat about the minutiae and bits and pieces of the Westminster village, who write about all the silliness and who make all the jokes, are not here today to report the real issue. This is the real issue. We know exactly why the public are not frightened about climate change as they ought to be: it is because the press have ceased to realise that, as Lord Reith rightly recognised, part of their job is to inform people about matters that are important in a form that enables them to understand.