It has been galling this afternoon to listen to Government Members welcome the environmental commitments in the Gracious Speech as a step change in our commitment to the environment. In reality, those commitments are partial and incomplete, and they sit in the context of a decade of failure and a climate emergency. We already have legally binding carbon reduction targets, and the Government are failing to meet them—indeed, we are currently predicted to miss the fourth and fifth carbon budgets.
The Government are still investing billions of pounds in fossil fuel extraction overseas, when an emergency demands that fossil fuels are kept in the ground. They have announced a paltry package of measures in response to intense public pressure and anxiety about their failure to act. The Gracious Speech ignores the Government’s utter complacency, and nowhere is that more evident than in relation to the built environment. Some 14% of
UK carbon emissions come from residential buildings, yet over the past 10 years, the Government have scrapped the zero-carbon homes programme, which means that every new home currently being built is a lost opportunity to deliver carbon reductions.
The removal of subsidies for domestic solar power has all but halted the installation of solar panels by private individual homeowners. The introduction and then closure, just two years later, of the disastrous green deal for retrofitting, means that next to no progress has been made on reducing carbon emissions from existing homes. There is no programme to reduce our reliance on gas to heat our homes, and one in 10 UK households are still living in fuel poverty. Deregulation of the planning system has reduced the quality of many new homes, as well as the quantum of new urban green space being built alongside new homes.
Finally, the Government talk in the Gracious Speech about a world-leading approach, but the UK is already world-leading because of our role in the EU. Within the EU, we have helped to weight the balance of power towards greater ambition on climate change, and we will have helped to push EU states that are reluctant to do more. If we leave the EU, that ability to lead will be lost and the UK will be stuck between a European Union where we have no seat at the table and the America of Donald Trump, one of the greatest climate vandals of our time. Dressing up some minimalist commitments after 10 years of failure and negligence, in a policy context in which whatever we do will be diminished by Brexit, is simply not an adequate response to an emergency.
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