It is a pleasure to be at this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and I am delighted that you are a chairman of so many things. I congratulate the hon.—and old Malvernian—Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on obtaining the debate. I mention her school since she seems to be obsessed with other people’s schools. It is important to have the opportunity to debate the issues.
The hon. Lady asked Members to draw attention to their interests. I invite everyone to look at my interests, as declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. They will find that I have no interest in fracking or in any oil and gas companies in this country. Over my lifetime, I have been—indeed, I still am—involved in an oil company in central Asia and I was involved in analysing oil companies and predicting energy prices for 20 years, when I had a proper job before coming to this place, so she may try to insinuate that that somehow makes me too well disposed to the oil and gas industry. She may therefore be surprised that, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) will confirm, I was the only member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee who criticised, as she does, the suggested special tax breaks for fracking. On the basis of my knowledge of the oil and gas industry, I think that they are probably unnecessary, and we should not give away unnecessary tax breaks; although if they are necessary, that would be fair enough.
I want to draw Members attention to one interest that is not declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I probably share this interest with all other Members, although too many ignore it. It is my interest in my 70,000 constituents who want their heating bills kept as low as possible, my interest in the people in this country getting jobs and my interest in reviving the manufacturing industry in this country and providing it with fuel that is as plentiful and cheap as possible.
I have great respect for the hon. Lady and those who, like her, simply want to keep fossil fuels in the ground, although if that was my objective, I would start by keeping coal in the ground rather than gas, which produces only half or less of the carbon dioxide emissions of coal. I do not support such a policy because, probably like her, I take as given the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change summary of the science, I also, unlike her, accept its summary of the economics of taking action to prevent global warming. It has concluded that, in relation to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, it could not identify
“an emissions pathway or stabilisation level where benefits exceed costs.”
Unless and until we can find a pathway or a stabilisation level for CO2 thatwill produce greater benefits than its costs, we should not set about impoverishing this generation in the vague hope that we may make some generation in the future richer.