Queen’s Speech

My Lords, what a speech. I agreed with a lot of that, but things will get a lot worse if we change to the Big Brother state. I am not quite sure. This has been a very wide debate indeed with a number of very good and interesting contributions. I congratulate the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Blackburn and of Lichfield on their maiden speeches. We look forward to more of those and to their regular attendance in the House. I was particularly interested in a number of issues. The noble Lord, Lord Reay, gave a climate-change sceptic speech to some degree. He was not right on everything. I am a councillor in Cornwall, and we have just passed a major wind farm which the Government have called in. I do not know quite what happened in that case; it seemed very strange to me. He mentioned the East powering in other ways. That is certainly true of the coal-fired power stations in China, but China also has one of the biggest investments in wind power. It has more difficulty connecting them to the grid than we do, even though Scotland has its problems in that regard. China is not that different and is moving in that direction. I will come back to some of the other wind power-related issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, is not here at the moment. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was very pleased, as I was, to make sure that the climate change committee had a sub-committee on adaptation. Just as we have read the climate change committee’s first annual report to Parliament, we look forward to the Adaptation Sub-Committee’s work in due course. Having a role in local government, as I do at the moment, I could not agree more with the speeches of my noble friends Lord Tope and Lady Scott on the powers of local government. We have certainly seen devolution over the time of this Government—that is inarguable—but as a newcomer to local government I have been absolutely astounded by the constraints on local authorities. Discretionary expenditure really comes only through bidding for money from central government departments, so it is very much ring-fenced and decided by central government considerations. I was particularly interested in the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on consumption. I will come back to that later because it is particularly important. One thing that struck me particularly about climate change and energy is how they tie up with our debate on high-speed trains and rail. We were some three decades behind France in that area, if not perhaps in renewables—it was more into nuclear low-carbon energy—two decades behind Germany in high-speed rail, and a decade behind Spain, which has almost moved ahead of the rest of the pack. That has been very much true of us in climate-change policy as well. We are now very good at giving ourselves targets and leading the pack in our rhetoric, but so far we are less good at performing. Regrettably, progress has been very slow. A number of noble Lords have read and referred in previous debates to David MacKay’s book, Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air. There are a number of strong lessons to learn from that. One of the points that he makes is that, between 2004 and 2007, we reduced our carbon footprint by only 1 per cent per year. Between 1997 and 2004, it was flat. To meet the carbon budget over the first of the budget periods, we will have to double that to 2 per cent or 3 per cent if we aim for a reduction of 30 per cent along with the rest of the European Union by 2020. There is a great deal of slowness in terms of putting our policies on the climate and the environment into action. However, there is what is almost a catch in that over the past 12 months and probably the next 12 as well, the reduction in emissions will increase quite substantially. That is not particularly due to government policy or the policies of the opposition parties, but because of the economic recession. We face a problem trying to work out which reductions are due to lower economic activity and which can be attributed to policy considerations. There will be a temptation to take the foot off the accelerator in terms of our policies and their outcomes. One of the things that is predicted as a result is a fall in the price of carbon. It is down to €13 a tonne and has been stuck there for about the past 12 months. It has risen from being completely on the floor, but it is now estimated that by 2020 it may not rise much above €20 a tonne. If we had not had a recession, it would have been something like €50 a tonne. That creates great difficulty in terms of pricing signals for industry into the future and how businesses will make decisions in this area. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, often raises this matter, although I do not think he did so in his speech today. But he is absolutely right to keep on making this point: given how the European emissions trading system is a core part of our policy, the price of carbon needs to rise. It is a disappointment to me that although we have known for years that this was going to be a problem, the Government as a part of Europe are not bringing forward a way that the signal can be changed. It could be done through carbon taxation or floor prices or a range of other things. None of the options is easy or a free ride, but they need to be undertaken. The pace of change is slow. During the year the Government were accused of being perhaps slightly economical with the truth because their figures included the permits coming in in terms of their carbon reporting, but we are waiting for all sorts of other things that are still in the pipeline. One of those is feed-in tariffs. A victory for all sides of the House in our debates on the Energy Bill last year was that we have feed-in tariffs coming in, but we still do not know what the prices will be. Investment decisions are not being made by the energy supply industry because the financial framework within which it is going to operate is still not known. Smart meters are coming, yet questions still remain despite endless consultations. Consultation is important but at some point we have to make decisions. We need to know whether we will have meters with proper visual displays that people can use easily in order to control their energy consumption both in the home and in their businesses. Are they actually going to work? A problem that David MacKay has highlighted is that if we make lots of little decisions, we will have only little outcomes. That remains one of the challenges of our energy and climate change policy. However, an Energy Bill is coming through, and we welcome that. However, I was surprised when I read through the opening clauses to see that once again we are back on carbon capture and storage. Could we not have got the financing side of this right in the legislation that went through last year rather than doing it this year? The Minister may disagree and tell me why, but I do have a fundamental concern about the way that carbon capture and storage policy—and, more importantly, its practice—is moving ahead in this country. Immediately after the war, coal produced 95 per cent of our energy; it now provides something like 18 per cent. However, it is still responsible for producing an important one-third of our electricity. It is an important part—and my party sees it as an important part—of any future energy equation. Where have we got in carbon capture and storage so far? A competition was launched in 2007 but we still do not have an outcome. I understand there will be an announcement at the beginning of next year. However, certain experts are saying that that competition is already dead on its feet; that only one, or at best two, organisations can provide demonstration projects, and yet these are absolutely vital to how we tackle the issue of low carbon energy in the future. It was reported today that EU funding for a project in Hatfield in Yorkshire has been agreed. That is good news, but where were the United Kingdom Government in making that decision? On the international aspect, the low carbon project in China, which we say is one of the most important areas of international co-operation on climate change, is going nowhere very quickly. We are still in phase 1 and we have not yet got the financial allocations from ourselves or from Europe sorted out. Again, that project seems to be running into the sand. In all areas of carbon capture and storage which are so vital to our future, we are not making the progress that needs to be made. I wish to address two areas of the Ofgem side of the Energy Bill. It seeks to ensure that competition in energy works better, which we welcome, and to ensure that there is not discrimination against consumers who do not have a gas supply—mainly people in rural areas. Again, in principle, we welcome that. However, surely the problems of competition in energy lie primarily in gas, not in electricity. Does it mean that by not discriminating against dual customers, gas prices will go up again? That will not necessarily help rural communities because they are not affected by dual pricing. Again there is an issue of competition. Wholesale gas prices have gone down by between 25 and 45 per cent over the past 12 months, and yet consumer prices have gone down by only 10 per cent at a time when incomes have been challenged. We therefore have fuel poverty levels rising from 1.2 million in 2004 up to an expected 4.5 million over this winter. Some 38,000 people died from the effects of cold weather last year and there is an expectation that that number will increase. So there is that problem as well. There are a number of difficulties around the Energy Bill. It does not include measures for promoting anaerobic digestion, which could provide a further contribution to energy saving. The Committee on Climate Change highlighted the fact that we need to change 12 million conventional boilers in the country, insulate 10 million loft spaces and fill 7.5 million cavities. However, I do not see any financial measure within the Government’s present energy programme that would allow that to happen by 2022, which the committee is demanding. The provision of the infrastructure for tackling fuel poverty will not be met. However, the Smart Grid will allow wind energy and intermittent sources of energy to be used much more effectively so that appliances can use that energy when it is available. That will solve part of the problem. One of the statistics that reaches out to me is that although we have met our Kyoto targets, effectively, for 2012 with a reduction of something like 15 per cent in our carbon production, our carbon consumption within this economy has gone up by 19 per cent—a 34 per cent difference. That is why I have introduced a Private Member’s Bill—it has had its First Reading and I hope that it will get a Second Reading—to ask that carbon consumption be measured and budgeted in the same way as carbon production. It is not right that we blame the developing world for its increasing carbon footprint when it is producing consumer goods for western societies. That is not equitable without it being realised within that context. The Minister has sat through this whole debate, on which I congratulate him—I did not quite manage it all the way through. That shows his dedication and commitment to this subject. He also has the Copenhagen conference coming up, which will be perhaps one of the most important international conferences since Bretton Woods and even Versailles before it. That may be how it will be looked at in 50 years. I am told that the European Union member states fall into three groups leading up to the conference: eastern Europe states which are looking to reduce targets and are seeking subsidy from more developed nations within the European Union; states such as France and Germany which want to protect their industries; and a third group, led by Britain, which is trying to get the best and toughest solution. I congratulate the Government on leading that process within Europe. It is a huge task. We on these Benches believe that it is more important to get that agreement right than necessarily to achieve it next month. We would all prefer to achieve it next month, but if it takes another three or six months, that should be the priority. Deforestation is one area on which we need agreement urgently, so that our rainforests, whose clearance accounts for something like 15 per cent of global emissions each year, can be preserved, and we do not have another six months of burning and all the emissions that come from it. I congratulate the Government on their stance on Copenhagen, but, on their programme, we on these Benches think that many other things need to be done as well.