Mary Creagh MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

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Mary Creagh's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 40 Parliamentary debates in which Mary Creagh has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 12 Sep 2024: Topical Questions

  We are in the early stages of looking at how we deal with the country’s waste and considering the policies we will bring forward. This will be looked at as part of the review. We will be working with colleagues from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to ensure we get the right results.

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• 25 Jul 2024: Convention on Biological Diversity

  17:21

  My hon. Friend is a true champion of nature at home and abroad, and as a distinguished former Minister for biodiversity he has made tireless efforts to hold us, the UK, and all parties to the convention on biological diversity to the very highest standards. He deserves our thanks and commendation for that work. I also thank him for hosting the introduction to the International Conservation Caucus Foundation on Tuesday, where I had the chance to meet both the Colombian ambassador to the UK and representatives from Canada house. It was an important reminder of the fact that reversing nature loss is a global priority—one that we can achieve only by working in partnership with our friends around the world. We will need leadership, participation and commitment in equal measure to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and climate change.

  Nature is central to each of the missions that define this new Government. We know that being in nature promotes wellbeing and tackles poor mental health. Clean air helps to cut hospital emissions. Protecting landscapes that capture and store carbon helps us to meet our net zero targets, and training people for new jobs in new industries, restoring and protecting the natural world, will protect our economic growth.

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• 19 Jun 2019: Engagements

  Q12. The Prime Minister is a dedicated follower of fashion, so can she explain why yesterday her Government rejected a penny on every garment sold in this country, which would have created green jobs, a ban on the 300,000 tonnes of textiles that go to landfill or incineration, and the 16 other recommendations made by my Committee when she wants to get to a net zero carbon economy by 2050? ( 911447 )

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• 9 May 2019: Topical Questions

  T4. One of the recommendations in the Committee on Climate Change’s report last week was a 20% reduction in meat consumption by 2050 to meet that net zero goal. Can the Secretary of State set out how he plans to achieve that in a way that is fair and equitable? Red meat is obviously particularly important in the diets of children and women, and we do not want to use price as the mechanism. ( 910798 )

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• 9 Apr 2019: World Health: 25-Year Environment Plan

  16:51

  As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said, this has to do with climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5°C”, published last October, warned that we have just 12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change. It warned that the rate of biodiversity loss will be twice as severe in a 2° warmed world as it will be in a 1.5° world. The difference that that makes is that in a 1.5° world, 90% of the coral reefs will be lost, so our children will be able to see the remaining 10% of coral reefs, whereas in a 2° warmed world, our children will never see a coral reef. That includes the cold-water coral reefs on the southern border of the UK as well.

  Another inquiry that our Committee did was on heatwaves. We have warned that a 2° rise in temperature could see the average number of heat-related deaths in the UK more than triple, to 7,000 a year by 2050. The Environment Agency has warned that within 25 years England will not have enough water to meet demand, and that problem is particularly acute in the south-east and east of England. We have rehearsed the dangers of air pollution over and over again, and I welcome the Mayor of London’s introduction of the ultra low emission zone. As I cycled in yesterday and cycled home last night, there was a notable drop in the number of cars and vans that were circulating. Perhaps that was to do with the Easter holidays, or perhaps it was all in my imagination, but it certainly felt a lot cleaner. We await the Committee on Climate Change’s review of how we cap emissions at a 1.5° rise.

  To finish, I will briefly talk about the Government’s 25-year environment plan. That plan is necessary because of the decision to leave the European Union—a decision that I profoundly regret and that many of my constituents also profoundly regret. A tricky third of environment legislation on air, waste, water and chemicals cannot simply be cut and pasted through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We need to put into practice the environmental principles that we have signed up to in international law. We want our climate change commitments to be actionable and measured by any new Office for Environmental Protection, and we want an architecture of long-term, legally binding environmental targets that is supported by a five-year planning cycle and takes the Climate Change Act 2008 as its model. I welcome the plan, but I am worried about the lack of targets.

  I am also worried about the lack of measurable targets to increase our green space. We on the Committee recommended that we should get urban green space back to 2001 levels to reduce the urban heat island effect. These issues are not just for DEFRA; they need to be dealt with across every Department. Great work is being done in my constituency. We are getting a new garden at the Hepworth gallery, and we have some brilliant groups, such as Friends of CHaT Parks. That group helps to run the nurseries at Thornes Park, working with adults with learning disabilities. I was also proud to plant some trees to mark the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy locally. However, achieving net zero emissions simply cannot wait. We need action across Government. We need greener cities, greener cars, greener diets, greener finance and greener Government if we are to meet that challenge. I look forward to working with the many people of good will across all parties, and of course with the Minister—who I know is working hard on these issues—to make that a reality.

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• 28 Feb 2019: Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

  15:07

  To achieve net zero, we must reduce our emissions rapidly and at scale in every area of our economy and in every area of our lives. Our Committee has talked about some of the personal changes that we can make, whether that means turning our backs on single-use plastics or considering how we can achieve, for example, a net-zero fashion industry. The report that we published last week took climate change into areas where it may not previously have gone.

  I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the things we did in our green finance reports last year was talk to the top 25 pension funds in the country and ask them what they were doing in this area, and of course we talked to our own parliamentary pension fund as well, and we ranked them as engaged, moderately engaged and less engaged. We need to shape and bend the entire financial system to invest in this new green economy and to ensure a just transition, because in areas such as mine, Wakefield, which were dependent on coal, we must not have thousands of people just being left on the dole. We need to skill up the current generations to meet the green future we want to see.

  I totally and passionately agree. We on the Environmental Audit Committee are privileged to have global thought leaders appearing before us and giving us the best available science. It is sometimes rather chilling, however; for example, Professor Jim Skea from the IPCC told us that our assumptions about how quickly we can decarbonise are perhaps over-optimistic and based on new technologies that have not yet been invented, so perhaps the discount rate for future technologies needs to be lower than at present. There are some truly profound moments in our Committee, and I am sure my hon. Friend would be very welcome to join it; we also have a couple of spaces for Conservative Members, so I hope we can get some volunteers following today’s discussion.

  We have been leaders in this, and people still look to the UK for both thought leadership and policy action leadership. We provided that under the last Labour Government with the Climate Change Act 2008. A weakness in that Act has become apparent, however: there was no review process. We set up the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the Government—all well and good—but then it is up to the Government to heed that advice or to ignore it, which is less good, and there is no review process, so now if we do need to set this zero net emissions target, we will need to re-legislate, and I will be interested to hear from the Minister about the necessary policy mechanisms.

  We have signed up to the 2015 Paris agreement and to the UN sustainable development goals to create a more equitable, sustainable world. Our Government will subject us to a voluntary national review at the UN this year, and I urge all Members of this House to participate in that process. It is about how we end poverty, violence and hunger in every aspect of our communities. Our Committee has looked at the hunger aspect, and I welcome the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics will now start to measure hunger in our country. Real sustainability comes not just with social justice, but with climate justice as well.

  I want to talk about why net zero emissions matter. In October 2018, the UN’s leading scientists—some of whom were British—showed what could happen if we do not get to net zero. Extreme weather is already happening; the warming is already with us, as we are seeing with the tragic events on Saddleworth Moor, the heatwaves in the Artic last year and the fact that we have had the hottest February day on record. The Arctic is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the planet, and in February 2018 temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing during the polar nights, which is when the sun has not even started to come up; it was 30° higher than normal. When we talk about an average of 1.5°, that means a 7° rise at the North Pole. That is catastrophic for the melting of the sea ice.

  My hon. Friend is making an important point. In the Peak district, we have Moors for the Future, which is seeking to sequester as much as possible of the 580 million tonnes of carbon that is captured within peat. At the moment, we are seeing 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere each year because of the degradation of those peat moors due to climate change, industrialisation and lack of care. Will she welcome any commitment that we can get from the Government to finance those important projects?

  We can tackle emissions and deliver healthier cities, healthier people and a healthier planet. The Committee’s latest inquiry on planetary health is looking at how these complex systems deliver. We have seen exponential growth of wind and solar, and we are experiencing an industrial revolution. We have done things we thought impossible 10 or 12 years ago, for which I pay tribute to politicians on both sides of the House. The revolution is happening at the speed of the technological revolution, which is good. Big data will help us in this fight, too, but we will need renewable energy to supply between 70% and 80% of all global power by 2050.

  In this country, we have done a lot on electricity, but the Committee on Climate Change has said that this progress has

  It is encouraging how, in some ways, the public have got ahead of politicians, such as with the rise of flexitarianism. We are all trying to eat less meat because of our knowledge, particularly about processed meat and the risks from nitrites. What does a net zero diet look like? What does a net zero city look like? We will have to start mapping out these big changes. Where we lead, other countries will quickly follow.

  I want to conclude by talking about what we need to do and what policies the Government need to adopt. Government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the country. I have been banging on about the need for the NHS, which has a huge budget, to decarbonise its fleet rapidly. We have had the NHS sustainable development unit before our Committee; there is talk about doing this by 2028, but that is too late. We need electric vehicles in every town and city. There is no sense in midwives and district nurses going out and polluting the cities, and then talking to parents about treating their kids’ asthma—that is absurd. We need cross-government working on this.

  We need to talk about the difficult-to-decarbonise sectors, particularly heavy industry and transport. We come back to things such as bus regulation here; mayors could have the powers to state where buses go. We have Stagecoach today saying, “The stuff in Manchester is outrageous,” but it is running profitable bus services. We need to force these companies to invest in new, cleaner vehicles. We also need to look at our energy systems. Some 31 million homes in this country run on gas. How are we going to get them to a clean gas source? Is it going to be hydrogen? Is it going to be air source heat pumps? How are we going to lag those buildings? This is not that hard, but we need to choose our policy sectors. When we choose our sectors and our actions, we can have a just transition. We can have that new green deal. We know that the mayors are willing to do this.

  Finally, we need to make sure that our financial systems are looking at the risks: the physical risk from flooding; and the transitional risk from stranded assets in coal and oil and gas-fired power stations, which our pensions are currently being invested in. We also need to make sure that we have a stable policy environment. The Government can be a leader on this. The Minister has proven that she can be a leader, not least in the actions she took in heading off a no-deal Brexit in the past couple of days. We need to practise what we preach. Net zero is not the end; it is just the start of the next mountain to climb.

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• 11 Feb 2019: Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill [Lords]

  18:51

  In 2015, the United Kingdom signed up to the Paris agreement on climate change and the UN’s global goals for sustainable development, which set out ambitious targets to transform our world. In the three years since then, we have learnt much more about climate science. As was made clear in a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October 2018, if we are to avoid the catastrophic effects of uncontrolled climate change we shall need radical and unprecedented changes in all parts of the economy, which will require trillions of pounds—or dollars—to be invested in clean energy and cleaner transport infrastructure.

  We have done well in our own country. We have moved quickly to decarbonise the power structure. However, we have done very little to deal with our agricultural and transport-related emissions, and almost nothing to decarbonise our heating emissions. When people tell me that things will be easier, I always ask, “How are you going to transform 31 million gas boilers over the next 10 years?” According to the IPPC’s report, we have just 12 years in which to tackle damaging carbon emissions. We need to think big, and think globally, if we are to rise to that challenge.

  My Committee’s inquiry found that the privatisation of the Green Investment Bank and the reduction in European Investment Bank lending following the referendum may have played a part in the 56% reduction in investment in green energy projects in the UK. We could not work out whether that was a blip or a trend, but I look forward to seeing this year’s figures and finding out which it was. Our “Greening Finance” report states that climate change poses material threats to our economy, our investments and, of course, our pensions, which provide the funding for these companies.

  Issuers—banks, insurance companies, asset managers and owners, and a range of other financial institutions—must assess and report climate-related financial risks. That is particularly important in relation to pension funds. I welcome the National Employment Savings Trust, but by the time a young person auto-enrolled in the scheme retires, we could be living in a world radically transformed by climate change and society’s response to it. According to the latest Met Office prediction, in a high-emissions scenario our summers will be 5° warmer than they are now. That has implications for the water that we drink and the homes in which we live.

  Let me now turn to why the Bill matters in relation to sustainable finance. I asked the Minister—and I was grateful to him for giving way—about “in-flight” legislation. The EU has proposals for financial services legislation that would promote sustainable finance. It is debating proposals for a framework for low-carbon benchmarks which would allow investors to harmonise their portfolios with the Paris agreement on climate change. The benchmarking is important, because only by seeing what is happening in other companies can investors work out whether they are doing well or badly, and make the strategic changes that may be necessary. It is also discussing the possibility of a taxonomy of environmentally sustainable activities which would allow companies to “green-check” their revenue streams, and new disclosure requirements for asset owners such as pension schemes, as well as asset managers, banks and insurers. My Committee had called for that.

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• 31 Jan 2019: Fashion Industry

  12:04

  The moderately engaged retailers were Next, Debenhams, Arcadia Group and Asda. These retailers are the proverbial curate’s egg, taking some steps towards sustainability in the social and environmental spheres, but still falling short. For example, Next does not run take-back schemes for used clothing, saying that it would just be too expensive. Arcadia has one take-back scheme in one Oxford Street store out of its 2,500 UK shops. None was committed to reporting on climate change risk and only Next is taking action to tackle hazardous chemical discharges in its fabrics supply chain.

  This interim report shows that the current business model for the UK fashion industry is unsustainable. We are disappointed that so few large retailers and supermarkets are showing leadership. If we are to tackle climate change, cut emissions and reduce fashion’s heavy footprint, these socially exploitative and environmentally damaging practices must end. Retailers must do more. By using this report, customers and consumers can make informed choices about where they choose to spend their money. We know they want to use their spending power wisely. It is time that retailers follow their lead. We will be setting out a blueprint when our full report is published. I commend this report to the House.

  Climate change does not respect political sensitivities. Whatever is said in this Chamber will make no difference to the rate of global temperature increase unless we can reduce our consumption of fossil fuels globally. Every area of our lives needs to be geared to that objective fact. Does the Chair of the Select Committee share my hope that more of the major retailers will sign up to the sustainable clothing action plan? Clearly, there is a way to go both with pollution, especially the release of micro-fibres into the environment, and with the climate change implications of fast fashion.

  Transition towards a globally sustainable pattern of clothing consumption will not be easy, but does my hon. Friend share my conviction that companies that set out to do the right thing will reap the rewards of their initiative? Customer trust in brands is essential to clothing retailers and trust in those brands’ environmental credentials will be an increasingly important part of the way consumers feel about them. Companies that are already striving to improve their environmental impact will be better placed to meet any regulatory or financial changes that may come about as a response to climate change.

  I thank my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for that question. He is absolutely right. If we have just 12 years to tackle damaging climate change before we reach certain tipping points, every sector and industry in the UK economy is going to have to tackle its carbon, waste and water footprints. Signing up to initiatives such as SCAP will literally be their licence to do business and their licence to operate. It is not a nice cherry on the cake or just a nice thing to have.

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• 17 Jan 2019: Sustainable Seas

  12:45

  I begin by thanking the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to present the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on sustainable seas. I have a copy of it here, and it is our 14th report to this Parliament. We launched our inquiry last April, examining how our oceans can be protected from climate change, overfishing, resource extraction and pollution, and what more the Government should do. Human activities in both coastal and open waters have dramatically increased in recent years. The UN estimates that up to 40% of the world’s oceans are impacted by humans, with dire consequences, including pollution, depleted fisheries and the loss of coastal habitats. We have treated the seas as a sewer—literally—and that has to stop.

  Climate change is causing a triple whammy of harm from ocean acidification, ocean warming and deoxygenation. This harms the entire food web and disrupts our weather systems. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showed us that a 2°C rise above pre-industrial levels will significantly harm biodiversity and fish stocks, and will destroy nearly all the coral reefs in the world. If we can keep the temperature rise to 1.5°, we will still lose 90% of coral reefs. Until we did this inquiry, I did not know that the UK has a cold-water reef in the south of England.

  That is why we have to redouble our actions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and meet the Paris agreement on climate change. The Government must set out their plans to achieve that in the first half of this year and set a net-zero emissions target by 2050 at the very latest. Species affected by climate change include krill and plankton; if they are removed from the marine food chain, that could lead to a one-third collapse in the populations of predators such as polar bears, walruses, seals, sea lions, penguins and sea birds.

  The UN is currently negotiating a high seas treaty. We call on the Government to seize this chance and push for a Paris agreement of the seas. Like the climate change agreement, it would contain legally binding targets and regular conferences of the parties to hold Governments to account, and designate marine protected areas and the funding needed to achieve them. We look forward to the publication of the Government’s international ocean strategy later this year. I hope it will include and build on our Committee’s cross-party ambitions.

  Again, I appreciate the input of my hon. Friend and neighbour into the Committee and this report. He is right: we need to speed up our ambition. The scientists have warned us that we have 12 years to tackle climate change. It is no good putting targets in place for 2042—that is far too little, far too late. We heard about some of the interesting foreign policy discussions that are going on around Antarctica, particularly some of the negotiations with the Norwegians and the Russians. Clearly a lot of politics is involved in the oceans, and we have to be mindful of that.

  Finally, I do have a question for the hon. Lady. So much of what she says is relevant to both our overseas territories and our Commonwealth partners, which, in many cases, are small island states facing down a barrel of disruption—literally—from climate change and ocean pollution. Has she communicated the findings of this report to those countries and organisations? If not, how can we as a Government facilitate her in doing so?

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• 16 Jan 2019: UN Climate Change Conference: Government Response

  16:53

  Safeguarding the future for the planet and for our children is one of the defining challenges of our generation. The climate change conference—COP24—was a real opportunity to take decisive action in this area. I will very quickly focus on the scale of the challenge, the solutions that are already available and, of course, the finance that we need to put behind any action.

  The world’s leading scientists have warned us that we have just 12 years to avoid devastating climate change. They gave us a report that spelled out the difference between a 2°C rise and a 1.5°C rise. Under a 2°C rise, we lose all the world’s coral reefs; under a 1.5°C rise, we lose “just” 90% of them. That shows the damage that is already baked into the best-case scenario. Of course, in the UK heatwaves raise the spectre of heat-related deaths, such as those in 2003, when there were 2,000 excess deaths in just 10 days. We have never known so much and we have never realised before just how much we have to do.

  The climate conference was held in Katowice, a coalmining region of Poland. Can I make a bid that, if the UK holds the climate conference in 2020, we hold it in the coalmining region of Yorkshire, which is an example of how we can swiftly move to the new green economy and create jobs in the process? I am sure that Sheffield, Mr Betts, Wakefield and Leeds would be happy to argue the toss over who should win that bid.

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• 10 Oct 2018: Agriculture Bill

  17:12

  “mitigating or adapting to climate change”,

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• 17 Jul 2018: Offshore Wind Sector

  Britain needs about £22 billion a year of investment in clean energy to meet our legally binding EU renewables targets, but my Committee heard that, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, investment has collapsed over the past two years. Given that the Brexit White Paper says that the Government believe that there is no need for a common rulebook on environmental or climate change rules, what confidence can investors in offshore or onshore wind have that the Government will support low-carbon energy if we leave?

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• 12 Jul 2018: Plastic Waste Recycling

  It is vital that we recycle more of our plastic waste here at home and create jobs and growth in every nation and region of this great country. I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to my Committee yesterday to recycle half of England’s 35 million asthma inhalers by 2020, not only because of the damaging plastic but because of the damaging fluorinated gases—greenhouse gases—that they release into the atmosphere. Will the Minister enshrine the principle of extended producer responsibility into law through the waste strategy so that more producers are responsible for the waste they produce?

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• 20 Jun 2018: NATO

  17:28

  The operations that NATO is engaged in are to meet the new challenges of mass migration, climate change in the high north and Arctic, cyber-security and cyber warfare, and resource stress, with the water, food and energy nexus becoming ever more acute. Tackling disasters, whether natural or human made—clearing up after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina or the earthquake in Kashmir in 2006, providing humanitarian assistance in Kosovo in the late 1990s—is an important part of NATO’s soft power that is not talked about or recognised and given the attention it deserves.

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• 7 Jun 2018: Environmental Audit Committee

  12:42

  The situation is vital to us all. The Committee on Climate Change estimates that we need to spend up to 1% of GDP, or £22 billion a year, to meet our carbon budgets. The Environmental Audit Committee found a dramatic collapse in low-carbon energy investment since 2015 that threatens the UK’s ability to meet its carbon budgets and tackle climate damage. Last year, Britain generated twice as much energy from wind as from coal, but green investment is faltering. In cash terms, investment in clean energy fell by 10% in 2016 and 56% in 2017. Annual investment in clean energy is now at its lowest level for 10 years. Is that a trend or a blip? It is too early to tell.

  Let me set out how we want to see a green thread running through the investment chain. The 2008 financial crisis revealed the dangers of short-termism in our financial system. Climate change already poses material threats to our economy, our investments and our pensions. Seventeen of the 18 hottest years since records began have occurred since 2001. That means more droughts, heatwaves and wildfires and more extreme rainfall and flooding. Those risks will grow. In the time it takes today’s young people to reach retirement, the physical risks from sea level rise and more extreme weather will grow. That will affect investment in food, farming, infrastructure, home building and insurance, to name just a few.

  Companies that do not make a timely low-carbon transition could also face costly legal or regulatory action. Some companies will be left behind by firms with cleaner, more efficient new technologies. Fossil fuel companies could be left with stranded assets in an overvalued carbon bubble—oil and coal deposits that they cannot burn—if we are to keep global temperature rise to less than 2° C. They also face increasing liability risks. The city of New York is taking legal action against five fossil fuel firms to recover the costs of protecting the city from flooding from rising seas caused by climate change.

  The direction of travel for the global economy is clear from the Paris agreement and from what scientists are telling us about the risks of climate change. Despite that, the short-term horizons of many financial institutions, businesses and investment managers mean that sustainability risks are not always factored into financial decisions. The quarterly earnings cycle and structure of remuneration for investment consultants and fund managers encourages the pursuit of short-term returns rather than long-term considerations. Institutional investors can be prevented from acting on climate change due to confusion about the extent to which pension trustees have a fiduciary duty to consider environmental risks. KPMG’s 2017 corporate responsibility survey found that almost three quarters of large companies worldwide do not acknowledge the financial risks of climate change in their annual reports. More than half of institutional investors surveyed by HSBC said they were receiving “highly inadequate” information from companies about their approach to climate change.

  The disclosure of climate-related risks would help financial markets work more efficiently. It would enable UK institutions and investors to position themselves ahead of the market to benefit from the low-carbon transition. My Committee is calling on the Government to clarify that pension schemes and company directors have a fiduciary duty to protect long-term value and should consider climate risks. Pension savers should be given opportunities to engage with decision makers about where their money is invested. Ministers must make it mandatory for large companies and asset owners to report their exposure to climate change risks and opportunities by 2022.

  The UK’s existing framework of financial law and governance could and should be used to implement climate-related risk reporting. The Government should issue guidance making it clear that the Companies Act 2006 already requires companies to disclose climate change risks where they are financially material. Companies with high exposure to carbon-intensive activities should already be reporting on climate risks in their annual reports. UK financial regulators such as the Financial Reporting Council, the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority should amend their codes, rules and guidance to require climate-related financial disclosures. Companies and asset owners need time to develop how they report, but only if reporting is mandatory are we likely to see comprehensive and comparable climate risk disclosures. Embedding climate risk reporting in UK corporate governance and reporting frameworks could negate the need for new legislation. However, if regulators fail to implement that, there may be a need for new sustainability reporting legislation, such as France’s climate reporting law: article 173.

  To those who ask whether we must do this, I say yes, we must. Climate change poses material financial risks to our pensions and our investments. To those who ask whether we are doing this, I say yes. The transition to a low-carbon economy presents exciting opportunities in clean energy, clean transport and tech that could benefit UK businesses. And to those who ask whether we will do this, I say that London is the centre of global finance, so let us make it a global centre for green finance.

  The Overseas Development Institute said in its evidence to our inquiry that the UK’s clean growth strategy is “undermined and contradicted” by our continued support for fossil fuel production overseas through UK Export Finance, which has been averaging £551 million a year in recent years. Does my hon. Friend agree it undermines our international climate commitments and our efforts to decarbonise our economy if we continue to support fossil fuel investment by British companies overseas?

  Macquarie got the green investment bank, which has now been rebadged as the Green Investment Group, and there are still market failures. There is market failure in green transport, and our Committee heard there is no intermediate body to broker between the City of London and locals authorities that want to decarbonise their local housing schemes and council housing through low-carbon combined heat and power plants. The bank could have been that bridge.

  I very much welcome the report, in which I played a small part. My hon. Friend will know that, globally, the fossil fuel subsidy is some £5.3 trillion, the size of the French and UK economies combined, yet 80% of fossil fuels cannot be exploited if we are to avoid irreversible climate change and to fulfil our Paris agreement. Uranium supplies will run out in 10 years once we start using nuclear to meet 12.5% of global energy needs.

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• 17 May 2018: Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups

  13:23

  I remember visiting Juba in South Sudan in 2012 and noticing that there was very little water there for people, and that all the aid workers and visitors were using plastic bottles. There was no waste infrastructure whatever. This is a really important problem, because we know that huge amounts of waste are thrown into rivers in Africa, India and the far east. We need to get that waste out of the rivers. How do we do that? We pay people to do it. It is not just kids in the UK who will collect 5p or 10p plastic bottles; people will do the right thing, but they need a cash incentive to do it. The United Nations has an opportunity to achieve that through the international climate fund. We all tend to think about that in relation to green energy and clean energy, but we need to look at how some of these climate funds are allocated and spent at supranational level, and at how our own UK aid budget could be used to help to set up systems to keep plastic out of the oceans. As I said earlier, there is only one ocean and we need to do more to protect it.

  I agree with the hon. Lady. She makes an excellent point. Bangladesh is absolutely at the forefront of climate change, and much of our aid budget is going there to make homes more resilient, but resilience in communities is also about giving people a good, clean, safe environment to live in and ensuring that the poor have decent incomes.

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• 8 Feb 2018: Environmental Audit Committee

  13:44

  Why did the Committee choose the Ministry of Justice? With 1,600 sites, the Ministry of Justice has the second largest estate in Government. It accounts for 20% of the Government’s greenhouse gas, waste and water emissions. It is the second largest buyer of goods and services, spending £4.6 billion through external suppliers in 2015-16, which is 10% of total Government spend on procurement. The Committee recognises the financial pressures that the courts and prison services are under, but being green brings financial benefits. UK businesses, for example, could save £23 billion a year by improving how they use energy and water and by reducing waste.

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• 30 Jan 2018: Oral Answers to Questions

  21. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of investment in the renewable energy sector. ( 903633 )

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• 12 Dec 2017: European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

  16:00

  That is important because 80% of the UK’s environmental protections come from EU law. This Bill will have to deal with swathes of environmental law, and we do not want it tampered or fiddled about with in any way if we leave. Those laws have brought us a very long way since the 1970s when we were seen as the dirty man of Europe, but they are neither self-executing nor self-policing. They set air quality targets, climate change targets and water quality standards, and the rules and regulations affect almost every aspect of our waste management industry. It was interesting that the Prime Minister said yesterday that waste, water, food and agriculture would all be subject to continued regulatory alignment; we wait to see what that means in practice. Those laws mean we bathe on cleaner beaches, drive more fuel-efficient cars and can hold the Government to account on air pollution.

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• 1 Mar 2017: Bus Services Bill [Lords]

  17:03

  The Environmental Audit Committee, which I chair, published its report “Sustainability in the Department for Transport” last September. I hope that the Minister has read it; perhaps I will test him on some of its findings when he makes his winding-up remarks. We found that progress on tackling air pollution was too slow. Critically, the Government are set to miss the Committee on Climate Change’s target for 9% of cars to be ultra-low emission by 2020. During our inquiry, we asked the Minister whether the 9% figure was reflected in his single departmental plan. We went to and fro over the issue. Eventually, in a letter from the civil servant responsible for this matter, we found out that the target was no longer 9%, but between 3% and 7%, with a mid-point of 5%. However, even that target is looking pretty unachievable because only 1.5% of England’s vehicles are currently ultra-low emission. We will not hit the 5% target, and we might be lucky to hit 3% over the next three years.

  Last year, the High Court found that the Government’s plan to tackle air pollution was illegal. This Government have repeatedly delayed, postponed and pushed back the publication of their emissions reduction plan. This Bill is an opportunity to reverse that lack of ambition and incentivise the manufacture and uptake of zero-emission buses. Transport for London told my Committee that when the Government cut the 6p per kilometre payments for hybrid buses through the bus service operators grant, the costs of making its entire double-decker fleet zero-emission suddenly ran out of control. My Committee heard that the amount of funding available through the local sustainable transport fund and the clean bus technology fund is too small and not of the scale necessary to tackle this issue across our country.

  [Source]

• 27 Feb 2017: Future Flood Prevention

  16:59

  Before I discuss the detail of our report, I wish to say a few words about climate change. Flooding is the greatest risk our country faces from climate change. As hon. Members have said, the risks are already significant and will increase as a result of climate change. Even if global temperature rises are kept below 2°, the UK faces a rising threat from surface water as a result of the intense rain patterns, from coastal erosion and tidal surges, and from fluvial flooding. It is important to stress that cities such as Hull face all three of those threats—some areas are much more vulnerable than others.

  Various predictions, including the forecasts in the Government’s national flood resilience review, say that monthly winter rainfall could be 20% to 30% higher over the next 10 years, so as well as planning for the next 80 years, for our children’s lifetimes, we need to be thinking about the next 10 years. There are risks to all nations and all sectors of the economy. In its latest risk assessment, the Committee on Climate Change said:

  I hope my hon. Friend shares my disappointment at the slow rate of progress. The adaptation measures in the Climate Change Act 2008 are the direct result of a private Member’s Bill I introduced around 10 years ago. As she points out, we have made almost no progress.

  The Committee on Climate Change warns that increased flood risk affects property values and business revenues, and, in extreme cases, threatens the viability of some communities. A much worse scenario is set out in the climate change risk assessment: if global temperatures rise by 4° above pre-industrial levels, the number of UK households predicted to be at significant risk of flooding will double from 860,000 today to 1.9 million in 2050. Those are very stark and very concerning figures.

  The floods in Leeds were the worst since 1866. Leeds University, which has done some research into this issue, told my Committee that 60% of local businesses have been unable to obtain a quotation for insurance since last winter’s floods. We heard of one business whose excess had risen from £1,000 to £250,000 after the floods. We heard of another business whose buildings insurance premium rose 60%, to £10,000, and whose excess increased 40%, to £10,000, but it would get the insurance only if it stumped up £400,000 to build new flood defences. The Committee on Climate Change says that the economic viability of some areas is being threatened, and the way insurance companies are failing to rise to meet this risk and failing to stand with communities is putting whole parts of our country at risk of becoming economically unviable.

  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: there is market failure in these areas. Businesses are encouraged to shop around, and there are some excellent community Flood Save schemes, where people try to get together to use market power to purchase insurance collectively, and one of those schemes is now up and running in Calderdale, but it should not have to come to that. We want to see insurance companies standing alongside communities. The insurance companies lobbied long and hard to mitigate their risk from climate change, and the Government set up the Flood Re scheme —another insurance tax on contents premiums and buildings premiums, with every homeowner in the country stumping up for the access risk so that the insurers do not have to pay it and can transfer it to the Government. Insurers need to cut businesses some slack and rise to meet some of these challenges.

  [Source]

• 24 Nov 2016: Sustainable Development Goals

  14:45

  We also heard from businesses yesterday. At the meeting I attended in Berlin, where there were environmental charities that are used to fighting businesses that want to build dams, chop down trees and exploit mineral deposits, it was very interesting that there was a strong reaction against me when I said, “No one is really talking about the role of business in this.” I thought to myself that business has probably lifted more people out of poverty than the combined global aid budgets and everything that charities have done, so it is a question of how we get business to address market failure. If people are hungry or in poverty, that is a market failure. How do we work with businesses to address that? Businesses want well-paid people who are able to purchase their goods and services, whatever they may be. We heard from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is developing an interesting data mechanism that can be applied globally. We heard about the insurance company, Aviva, which is on the frontline of flooding and climate change issues, and also from Hermes Investment Management.

  Perhaps we need to look at fixing this into law, as we did with climate change, and having something that sets the goals on a five-yearly basis—although not to coincide with general elections—and that are agreed by an independent committee and with an independent monitor that is able to look at those things in the round. The area on which I think the International Development Committee report was most damning was the “deep concern” at the lack of a strategic approach, the

  I conclude, Mr Gapes, by saying that ours is the generation that can end extreme poverty, hunger and violence, reduce inequality and tackle climate change. I know that my Committee, and the other Committees of the House, will work over the course of this Parliament to ensure that we live up to our commitments and achieve those global goals. Our constituents, our children and our grandchildren are relying on us to do that. We must not let them down.

  [Source]

• 17 Nov 2016: Soil Health

  13:30

  I begin by thanking my Committee colleagues for their work and all the other hon. Members across the House who have a long-standing, informed interest in protecting the environment. One of the first findings of our report is that soil is a Cinderella environmental issue. It is an earthy subject; it is not clear like water, and it receives a lot less attention than air pollution, water quality and climate change. Yet whether we realise it or not, society relies on healthy soil for the food that we eat, for flood prevention and for storing carbon. The UK’s soils are only about 10,000 years old, which is one of the fascinating facts we learnt as we went through our inquiry. Soil supports 95% of the world’s food production —the other 5% is probably fish and perhaps stuff from trees, although trees grow in soil as well—so if soils start going down, human life will follow soon after.

  The Government say they want our soil to be sustainably managed by 2030, but we found no evidence that they are putting in place the policies to make that happen. Although healthy soil is a vital tool in the fight against climate change, degraded soils harm the environment and can even contribute to climate change by emitting carbon into the atmosphere, so it is vital that robust mechanisms are put in place to promote soil health and reverse soil degradation. We welcome the Government’s aspiration for UK soils to be managed sustainably, but we need ambitious targets, effective policy and strong enforcement mechanisms to make sure that happens, and we did not see that action.

  Let me turn to soil degradation, peat lands and climate change. I was unaware before this inquiry that soil is a massive natural carbon capture and storage system. We hear a lot about CCS, but we do not actually understand that the soil around us is capturing and storing carbon all the time. It stores three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, and we want it to stay there. The UK’s arable soils have seen a widespread and ongoing decline in peat soil carbon levels since the ’70s. Soil degradation increases carbon emissions and contributes to climate change. Each tonne of carbon retained in soil helps us to meet our carbon budgets and slows climate change.

  At the Paris conference on climate change last year, the Government pledged to increase soil carbon levels by 0.4% a year. That is a great pledge, and we welcome the ratification today of the climate change treaty, but the Government need a plan to put that pledge into action. I would like to hear from the Minister where that plan is. Without a national soil monitoring scheme to establish a baseline for the nation’s soil, we will not know whether the target is met. The carbon content of soil is vital for growing food—95% of food, apart from fish. Soil degradation could mean that some of our most productive agricultural land, particularly in East Anglia, becomes unprofitable to farm within a generation.

  The degradation and decline of peat bogs is particularly troubling, given that peat lands store about 40% of our soil carbon. The Government need to crack down on land use practices that degrade peat, such as the burning and draining of bogs. I welcome the Government’s commitment to publish their report on the carbon and greenhouse gas balance of low-lying peat lands in England and Wales before the end of the year. That research will fill an important knowledge gap, and the Government should use the report to accelerate and improve their peat land restoration programme.

  Maize produced for anaerobic digestion receives a double subsidy: first through the CAP and then from the UK’s own renewable energy incentives. That is counterproductive and has contributed to an increase in the land used for maize production. The Government’s plan to restrict the subsidy for energy generated using crop-based feedstock is a move in the right direction, but it fails to prevent maize from being grown on high-risk soils. I would be grateful if the Minister set out whether she has any specific plans on that issue.

  Some 80% of our environmental regulations are shaped by Brussels, and soil is no exception. The European Environment Agency researches trends in European soil health and looks at how cross-cutting policy objectives impact on soil management. It is not glamourous work—getting our hands dirty never is—but it is important for member states, including the UK, working towards the European Union’s target to ensure that by 2020 soil erosion is reduced, soil organic matter is increased and remedial work is underway on contaminated sites. It is important that we are able to meet our 0.4% target to improve soil carbon capture, as we have agreed to do in the Paris agreement. As we leave the EU, it is vital that the Government maintain that target and ensure that UK agencies take over the European Environment Agency’s vital work in this area.

  Other Members wish to speak, so I will conclude by saying that soil is crucial to life on Earth. Neglecting soil health will damage our food security, increase climate change and damage public health. DEFRA’s upcoming 25-year environment plan gives us a unique opportunity to place soil protection at the heart of our environmental policy. We must stop seeing soil just as a growth medium and treat it as a precious, fragile ecosystem in its own right—it is the Cinderella of all ecosystems.

  [Source]

• 7 Sep 2016: Paris Agreement on Climate Change

  17:26

  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on bringing this debate forward. It has been some time since we debated climate change. Like other speakers, I believe that this issue is one of the three great challenges of our age. The first is the challenge of the ageing society and how we can all live better now that we are living longer. How can society adapt to that new longevity? The second challenge stems from technology hollowing out traditional jobs and traditional workforces. How can the Government collect taxes on the new economy when the intellectual capital exists in places such as California, but the products are consumed in our own country? The final great challenge of our age is climate change.

  There is the challenge of adaptation to protect our island from the different weather patterns we will see in the future. How can we mitigate the risks and play our part in the world in standing by our poorer neighbours? As previous speakers have said, they have done nothing to cause this catastrophe, but having risen out of poverty, they now risk seeing hundreds of millions of their own people being dragged back into it through climate change. It will either cut off their food supplies and their traditional ways of life or, in the worst-case scenarios, see island states disappear under water altogether.

  In 2015, 190 countries adopted the new climate agreement in the first ever universal and legally binding global deal. We cannot overstate how much of an achievement that was and what a great part the UK Government played in achieving it. The Home Secretary, then Climate Change Secretary, really took the lead on that, and it is a great shame that the Government have now abolished the Department for Energy and Climate Change. The lessons from other countries show that when climate change is put into a pot alongside other industrial and energy policies, climate change is often the loser as economic interests take over. We do not value what we cannot see. This is one of the big “abstract thinking” problems of trying to deal with climate change. We are talking about worst-case scenarios in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time, but scientists would argue that we have just seen 14 consecutive months as the hottest on record and are now 1.1° above our pre-industrial revolution peak.

  Does the hon. Lady agree that if the Government want an example of certainty of policy, which has been mentioned by previous speakers, they should look at the state of California, where what I think is a 20-year all-party agreement on renewable energy has led to investment by various companies? Does she agree that Westminster Governments have probably been practising long-termism and short-termism for far too long, and they cannot allow this to go on until 2020, 2030 or 2040, or for an indefinite period?

  We have heard about the Climate Change Act 2008. That was Labour’s achievement, but it was a cross-party achievement in that only five Members voted against it. It committed the United Kingdom to reducing its emissions by 80% of the 1990s level by 2050. It has been copied, replicated and imitated across the world because it gives investors certainty, which is crucial, particularly at a time when, following the referendum result, there is a great deal of uncertainty in our economy. The Act sets out long-term goals, but it also gives Governments flexibility to decide how they want to meet those goals. Our Government also introduced feed-in tariffs and the renewables obligation, which brought about an energy revolution in this country. In 2005, none of our energy was being produced from renewable sources, whereas at certain points last year, 25% of our electricity was coming from such sources.

  Domestic transport is the single largest emitting sector of the economy, accounting for 22% of UK emissions. Those emissions need to fall by 31% over the next 10 years. We found that the UK is on course to miss that target by 50%. So demand for transport is growing and, despite marginal falls in average car and van CO 2 intensity, this is driving up emissions. Therefore, we are not going to be on the most cost-effective pathway to those 2030, 2040 and 2050 targets. That is deeply worrying, because if we are not on the most cost-effective pathway, it means we are idling along in the slow lane, hoping that something will turn up to suddenly help us meet those carbon budgets later on down the road, literally and figuratively.

  What I would say about a 2050 target is that it is long enough away for none of us to be accountable for it, because most of us will be dead by then. [Interruption.] Well, some of us; I probably will be—no, I will be enjoying a long and fruitful old age, as I intend to live until I am 100. I want to see interim targets, so if there is a 2050 target I would be interested to see what are the 2020, 2025 and 2030 targets, because faraway targets can always be our children’s problems.

  The issue in the report about our transport sector is that we are not doing enough now, and I want to develop my theme because transport emissions increased in both 2014 and 2015. Some 94% of those transport emissions are from road transport, and we were concerned that less than 1% of new cars are electric. There is a good reason for that: they are very expensive—£30,000 or £32,000, perhaps. The Committee on Climate Change says that we need 9% of all new cars to be ultra-low emissions vehicles by 2020 if we are to meet those targets at the lowest cost to the public. We should match what the Committee was saying with the Department’s forecasts; the Department was saying, “Well, actually 3% to 7% of vehicles will be ultra-low emissions by 2020, but our average central point is 5%.” So the Department’s central forecast is 5%, but the Committee on Climate Change says it should be 9%.

  That is worrying, because the next target—the 2030 target—is that 60% of all new vehicles should be low-emissions. If we are only at 5% by 2020, I cannot see a way of getting to 60% of low-emissions vehicles without some spectacular change in the way we buy cars in this country, and we did not hear any brilliant bright ideas from the Department for Transport. We heard of the money that was committed, but we did not hear a strategy for getting that mass take-up. That means we are playing catch-up and we are not going to follow the lowest cost route to decarbonise the economy.

  Yes; it is done in the single departmental plans and the annual reports, and the Committee on Climate Change looks at these targets every year and says whether we are going to meet our various carbon budgets. There is a range of reporting mechanisms, and I see it as the job of the Committee to point out where we think things are going wrong.

  The Energy and Climate Change Committee has similarly been looking at the uptake of electric vehicles. What assessment has the Environmental Audit Committee made of the preparedness of our energy system, particularly for clusters of electric vehicles? For example, are we going to be able to provide the level of charge required if, say, two dozen or more electric cars on the same road all need to be charged at the same time?

  We did not look at all the life cycle issues, but I have a feeling that that might be coming out in the hon. Gentleman’s report. If so, that would be great—a good bit of boxing and coxing from both Committees. He makes a good point: we still have coal-fired power stations, and it would make no sense to have emitting power stations fuelling electric vehicles. We need to look at the whole life cycle of the power supply. There are big issues with battery storage and battery life, and it would be a great prize for our industry if we could find a way to capture renewable energy and store it when we have more than we need.

  The Committee has also produced a report recently on the Government’s approach to flooding. Flooding is the greatest risk that climate change places on our country, and the risk is threefold. There is a risk from surface water following heavy rainfall, whether in summer or winter. The July 2007 flooding, which flooded more than 1,000 homes in Wakefield, was the largest civil emergency that this country had seen since world war two. There is a risk from river flooding, which is what we saw in the Christmas and Boxing day floods in York and all across the country, including Scotland and Wales. There is also a risk from a tidal surge from the North sea. We were in a position, I think in 2014, in which a combination of high winter tides and heavy rainfall resulted in red flood warnings and evacuations from Newcastle all the way down to Margate. The entire east coast of England was at risk from a tidal surge.

  Turning to the Environmental Audit Committee’s work on looking at the Treasury, all such decisions are ultimately signed off or not by the Treasury. The National Audit Office told the Committee that there is a growing gap between our stated ambitions on climate change and the policies and spending that the Government are bringing forward to get us there. According to the Government’s own calculations, we are on track to miss our fourth carbon budget between 2023 and 2027 by 10%, yet we saw no action in the previous spending review to take us nearer to closing that gap.

  In fact, the spending review contained a number of negative decisions that impacted on our ability to tackle climate change. The last-minute cancellation of support for carbon capture and storage, for which industry had been preparing for seven years, has delayed the roll out of this crucial technology for a decade or more, meaning that the eventual bill for cutting our carbon emissions could be up to £30 billion more. Other last-minute changes, including ending all funding for the green deal, cancelling the zero band of vehicle excise duty on low-emission cars, abolishing the zero carbon standard for new homes, cutting the funding available for greener heating systems available under the renewable heat incentive, and closing the renewables obligation to onshore wind a year earlier than previously promised, have all damaged business and investor confidence.

  In conclusion, the US and China have worked together to ratify the agreement. They are getting a head start in the next great innovation race: the decarbonisation of advanced economies. We are fortunate that we have the Climate Change Act 2008 and the framework that forms the basis for this new industrial revolution in sustainable technology. I hope that all Members will continue to work together and do diligent work in our Select Committees and interest groups to ensure that the Government ratify and honour the spirt of the Paris agreement.

  [Source]

• 12 Jul 2016: EU Referendum: Energy and Environment

  13:59

  We have heard today that environmental problems do not respect borders. I would like to posit an alternative argument to the one just advanced by the hon. Gentleman, who said that everything was pretty much okay. I say that things are not that okay and that Britain’s membership of the EU has been instrumental and crucial to the improvement of UK air quality, the cleaning up of water pollution, the management of waste, and the protection and enhancement of biodiversity. It has also given us a global platform on which we can show global leadership in tackling climate change.

  In an interview with The Guardian, the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) described the birds and habitats directives as “spirit crushing”. He said that if we voted to leave, “they would go”. We will have to see whether his version of events is the same as that of the new Prime Minister. He also said that leaving the EU would free up both common agricultural payments and up to £2 billion in “insurance and incentives” for farmers. Nowhere in that do I hear anything about the need for protecting species, wildlife, and plant life. There is no mention of the vital services provided by soils and bogs or of the need for the restoration of bogs and peatlands, which we recommended just a month ago in our excellent report on soil, and which was echoed this morning by the Adaptation Sub-Committee report of the Committee on Climate Change. So, we have seen otters, hen harriers and bitterns making a comeback, and the referendum result could put all that progress at risk.

  The EU has also played a key role in promoting investment in sustainable businesses and technologies. Investors need clear policy signals emanating from strong legislative frameworks, and, to be fair, those frameworks are provided by the Climate Change Act 2015. However, our Committee has received some mixed messages from the current inquiries into both the Department for Transport and the Treasury. In particular, I posed a question on the cancellation of the carbon capture and storage competition, which has had a massive debilitating effect on investor confidence. We do not want to get into a position where consumers are not spending and investors are not investing, because that is absolutely disastrous not just for the economy, but for the UK’s environmental progress.

  We found out from our inquiry that the environment and the UK’s membership of the EU had been a two-way street. It forced us to take action much more quickly on waste and on water, but it also acted as a platform from which we could project our own British values, particularly in relation to climate change. DECC Minister Lord Bourne told the Committee that the UK’s voice was louder in Paris because we were part of a club of 28 countries. I worry about the global agreement reached at Paris and the possible damage to achieving those climate change targets as a result of our withdrawing from the European Union.

  [Source]

• 23 Feb 2016: Enterprise Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

  14:15

  I was very pleased when the coalition Government brought forward proposals, having worked up those ideas so that they were workable, and when the Bill was passed and the bank was set up. I was also pleased about the good start the Bill has had and how well it got under way, which Members have also mentioned. There have been some criticisms about the straitjacket the Treasury might have put on the Green Investment Bank, but nevertheless it has been able to participate in the financing of projects that otherwise probably would not have taken place and that make a real contribution to meeting our commitments under the Climate Change Act 2008. I think we are all agreed that its creation is a good news story.

  [Source]

  14:30

  Finally, our Committee expressed concern that a privatised bank could invest in questionably green projects, such as fracking and coal-fired power stations, although I understand that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has said that she wants the coal-fired power stations to close by 2025. That concern was exacerbated by the Minister’s comments in oral evidence, where she appeared relaxed about that possibility and implied that it could be possible within the bank’s existing green purposes. The Government’s response to our report claims that it is not possible to place controls on the Green Investment Bank limiting such investments while achieving their aim of reclassifying the bank to the private sector. Will the Minister say whether, through this workaround—the special company and the special share—questionably green projects can be ruled out?

  [Source]

• 18 Jan 2016: Energy Bill [Lords]

  19:38

  We take our warm homes and electricity supply for granted. I remember—as, I am sure, do other right hon. and hon. Members of a certain age—scrapping the ice off the inside of my bedroom window as a child. That was a common feature in my home in Coventry, and the discovery of North sea oil and gas transformed this country’s energy infrastructure and meant that families such as mine were able to have heated bedrooms instead of just a gas-bar heater. That has changed people’s lives immeasurably for the better, so today I will talk about warm homes, the importance of low bills, and green energy—I have perhaps a different trilemma to some Conservative Members.

  Briefly, I want to mention the Government’s record, and particularly solar subsidies that have now been reduced by 87%. Plans to sell off the Green Investment Bank were criticised by the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit, for risking the bank’s unique green identity. The Government have cancelled proposals for carbon capture and storage technology, which could have been a huge new industry in Scotland and Yorkshire. People in Yorkshire were ready to bring in subsidy from the EU and to use the subsidy that the Government offered. That cancellation will have a massive impact on the creation of new jobs in Yorkshire and Scotland, and we must quickly come up with a new CCS strategy to ensure that we do not miss out on opportunities from that new technology.

  The Bill also scraps support for onshore wind—one of the cheapest low-carbon energy options—and that will have a big impact on business confidence and inward investment. Figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance published today forecast that over the next five years investment in renewable energy could “fall off a cliff”. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) spoke about the big investment, but the world in 2016 is a more uncertain place for such investment. Bloomberg predicts that the country will lose at least 1 GW of renewable energy generation because of the early closure of the renewables obligation, which is not good news. As with solar feed-in tariffs, the Government are changing energy policy with very little notice, and that damages investor confidence and puts at risk jobs and our energy security.

  In conclusion, our energy policy should focus on the trilemma of warm homes, low bills, and green energy. The Government’s track record in all those areas has been chequered, and they need to stop changing the goalposts on green energy. All changes reduce and affect our ability to meet our climate change targets. They affect families, businesses and growth, and we must live up to our past record as a leading player, not just on the big picture of climate change, but on green energy investment and tackling fuel poverty.

  [Source]

• 7 Jan 2016: Oral Answers to Questions

  The Secretary of State rightly says that the Paris climate change agreement is not as ambitious as the Climate Change Act. The national action plans agreed to in Paris commit the world to no more than 2.7° C of warming. Will she outline what steps she has taken and what conversations she has had with her EU ministerial counterparts to increase the EU’s ambition for those nationally determined plans before the next stock-take in 2018?

  [Source]

• 6 Jan 2016: Flooding

  18:09

  We know flooding is the greatest risk that climate change poses to our country. Those are not my words; they are the words of the Committee on Climate Change. The 2015 national security risk assessment says that flood risk is a tier 1 priority risk alongside terrorism and cyber-attacks, so I want to look at the Government’s record on flood defence spending, outline the impact of flooding in my constituency and look to future resilience.

  [Source]

• 1 Jun 2015: Britain in the World

  21:24

  Let me turn to the three immediate tasks ahead of the International Development Secretary in the next six months: the financing for development summit in July; the sustainable development summit in September; and the climate summit in December. Those international summits will shape the life chances of millions of people, yet only one, the climate summit, received a mention in the Gracious Speech. Will she encourage her right hon. Friend the Chancellor to attend the financing for development summit, to demonstrate UK leadership? It will be crucial to convince other wealthy countries to make their fair contribution to put poorer nations on the path to a low-carbon, secure and sustainable future.

  The third summit is the climate summit in December. As many right hon. and hon. Members have said, the effect of climate change will hit the poorest people hardest. Eradicating poverty goes hand in hand with tackling climate change. If we do not cap temperature rises below 2°, millions of people will fall back into poverty. DFID must be fully involved in the preparations and negotiations for the climate conference. The climate change crisis is not an abstract geography and weather question, but a threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.

  In conclusion, there is an ambition across this House to see a better world, as Members from both sides have passionately made clear in a range of speeches today. The last Labour Government cancelled debt, trebled the aid budget, and brokered ambitious deals on trade and climate change. We will not allow that history to be rewritten by Conservative Members. In Opposition, we will support the Government unfailingly and in good faith where it is appropriate to do so. Where it is not, we will force them to act, as we did when the Government failed to act on their 2010 manifesto promise to commit 0.7% of gross national income to international development aid. This Government must not squander the leadership role that the 0.7% commitment gives them. As many hon. Members have said in this debate, we have to choose and shape Britain’s future place in Europe and in the world. As the global village becomes smaller and more connected, we believe we must build a world where power, wealth and opportunity is in the hands of the many, not the few, and where we achieve more by our common endeavour than we achieve alone.

  [Source]

• 28 Jan 2015: Sustainable Development Goals

  16:15

  That this House recognises that 2015 is an historic year for development as the countries of the world come together to negotiate the binding climate change agreement at the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals; believes it is unacceptable that more than one billion people still live in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day; notes that the effects of climate change will be most severe in some of the world’s poorest countries; further recognises that the UK has a leading role to play in these negotiations; regrets that the Government failed to bring forward legislation to enshrine in law the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on international aid as set out in the Coalition Agreement; further regrets that this Government has failed to support standalone Sustainable Development Goals on health and climate change; and calls on the Government to show global leadership on tackling the causes of poverty inequality and climate change.

  This year, 2015, is an historic year for development. The countries of the world will come together at the United Nations in September to agree the sustainable development goals, and in Paris in December we will agree a framework to tackle climate change. These agreements would be priorities for a Labour Government. We have called today’s debate—the first since the debate on Burma in 2008—to set out the differences that we see between this coalition Government and Labour on these vital issues.

  Fifteen years ago, a Labour Government led global efforts to tackle extreme poverty, which led to the millennium development goals. These goals have produced fantastic results. Every day, 17,000 fewer children die. Nine out of 10 children in developing regions now attend primary school and we have halved the number of children who die before their fifth birthday. In 2002, just 700,000 people received treatment for HIV. The last Labour Government helped to found the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Today, 13 million people access life-saving HIV treatment. We cancelled debt, increased aid and outlawed cluster bombs, and when my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the UK became the first country in the world to put into a law a target to reduce carbon emissions. Other countries, such as Finland, Denmark and Brazil, have followed that lead.

  I appreciate the call that the hon. Lady is making for UK leadership on climate and poverty issues. Does she recognise that her party’s support for things such as maximising oil and gas extraction in the Infrastructure Bill, agreed just a few days ago, is undermining the pledges she is now making to tackle climate change?

  There are three vital areas that Labour would prioritise to tackle inequality: universal health coverage, human rights and climate change. I will say more on those issues in a moment, but first I would like to look at this Government’s approach. We regret that the Government failed to bring forward legislation to enshrine in law both parties’ manifesto commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international aid. It fell to Labour MPs and the good offices of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) to ensure that the landmark Bill that would do so was passed in this House.

  Eradicating poverty will be possible only if we tackle climate change. If we do not keep temperature rises to below 2º C, millions will fall back into poverty. The Prime Minister says very little about his wind turbine these days. He is a prisoner of his divided party, which is split over whether climate change even exists. For Labour, climate change will be at the centre of our foreign policy and integral to our plan to change Britain.

  There is a real opportunity to address climate change this year. The United States, the EU and, most importantly, China, are all showing a willingness to act. At the Paris summit in December, a Labour Government would push for global targets for reducing carbon emissions, with regular reviews towards the long-term goal of what the science now tells us is necessary: zero net global emissions in the latter half of this century. In addition, we must ensure that the sustainable development goals have a specific goal on climate change—something that the Secretary of State has repeatedly failed to back.

  It is entirely fair for my hon. Friend to be scrutinising and questioning Government policy, particularly on climate change and what position is taken into the sustainable development goals summit. Does she feel that a Prime Minister who said that we should “cut the green crap” is the right person to lead this country into crucial negotiations about climate change and the future of poor countries around this world?

  With the right leadership, ours is the generation that can end extreme poverty, reduce inequality and tackle climate change. We can move to a world beyond aid and enable people to secure justice instead of charity. The year 2015 provides a unique opportunity for the world to think bigger and do better for ourselves, our children and the world’s poorest people. That is a thrilling opportunity and we must not let them down.

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• 17 Dec 2014: Oral Answers to Questions

  The Prime Minister co-chaired the United Nations High Level Panel on sustainable development goals, yet last month Tory MEPs joined forces with UKIP to vote against the sustainable development goals to tackle climate change, tax avoidance and inequality. Will the Secretary of State join me in condemning them for doing that?

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  I notice that the Secretary of State failed to condemn her Tory colleagues in the European Parliament for that vote. The typhoon that hit the Philippines nine days ago reminds us of the threat that climate change poses to the world’s poorest people. She is spending £2.4 billion of British taxpayers’ money on helping vulnerable people to adapt to climate change, yet neither she nor any Minister from her Department attended the Lima climate change conference last weekend. Why on earth not?

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• 5 Dec 2014: International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

  12:49

  As well as being morally right, Britain’s international development spending is in Britain’s national interest. We face huge challenges today. After a summer of conflict in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, we have the largest refugee crisis since world war two. There is also climate change and food insecurity, human trafficking and terrorism, and 1 million children die on their first and only day. There are also 168 million child labourers, and 17 million people living with HIV because of a lack of access to antiretroviral drugs to save their lives. These are huge challenges—global challenges—and it is in Britain’s interests to tackle them at the global level. By passing this Bill today, the UK will become the first country in the G8 to do so. While we have seen attempts by some Members to frustrate this Bill’s progress, we are many, they are few.

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• 13 Feb 2014: Flooding: Transport Disruption

  10:34

  Although the conditions are unprecedented, particularly because of their severity and sustained nature, it is important that we ensure that our network is resilient in the long term to such threats. The Department for Transport works very closely on resilience with other Government Departments, local authorities, other transport operators and the wider sector. Resilience to extreme weather and climate change also form part of our capital maintenance programme. The Government have asked the industry to build climate resilience into its plans for railway investment for the period between 2014 and 2019. The industry has responded by introducing more specialised equipment and trains that treat rails, and that clear ice and snow or compacted leaves.

  On the roads, the Highways Agency has assessed the potential risks that climate change poses to the ongoing operation and improvements to the strategic road network. It has taken action to mitigate and is spending a huge amount a year on maintenance and renewal. Funding for local roads maintenance has increased by £650 million in this Parliament. That figure will increase by a further £500 million to £4.9 billion between 2015 and 2020.

  The Government need to speak with one voice and their response needs to be speedier than it has been in the recent past. The Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change has warned that flooding is the greatest risk our country faces from climate change. The Prime Minister has said that “money is no object” and the Secretary of State has said that there is no blank cheque. Who is right? Communities and commuters face long weeks, potentially months, of transport disruption. They need leadership and clarity on what help they can expect and when. When will they get it?

  As the effects of climate change multiply and increase, it is likely that events that now seem unusual will become more and more usual. Can the Secretary of State assure me that his current plans for transport infrastructure strengthening will be reviewed in the light of the fact that what is happening at the moment will not be a one-off event?

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• 26 Nov 2012: Flooding

  17:17

  Communities that have been devastated by flooding should not have to listen to Ministers telling them that their experience is not nationally significant. Today and this weekend, we have once again had a reminder that floods are the greatest threat that climate change poses to our country, and flood-hit communities deserve not to have to go through that terrible experience again.

  The Secretary of State talks about something that is not a burden on the Treasury, but no country in the world has a free market in flood defences, as he knows very well. However, I thank him for coming to Exeter today and, through him, his Minister, for keeping in touch with me by phone over the weekend. The Secretary of State will know that Exeter narrowly escaped a flooding disaster over the weekend. It tops the south-west Environment Agency’s list of priority schemes for upgraded flood defence. The city and county councils have come up with money to help fill the shortfall left by his Government’s cuts. Will he now get together with the Environment Agency to come up with a scheme urgently, so that Exeter is safe in the years to come, given the greater threat of climate change?

  Unpredictable weather events are one of the main consequences of climate change. Does the Secretary of State not understand that if he continues to resist the scientific evidence and refuses to take sensible policy measures to prevent climate change, his successors for years to come will have to come to this House to make statements such as the one he has made this afternoon? [Interruption.]

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• 26 Jun 2012: Rio+20 Summit

  15:40

  There was progress in the field of energy, with the Secretary-General’s sustainable energy for all initiative, which received pledges of $323 billion in funding to bring clean energy to more than a billion people in developing countries. We welcome that. We also welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement at Rio that the UK will introduce carbon reporting for 1,800 quoted companies from April next year, as set out in Labour’s landmark Climate Change Act 2008. That was, sadly, the weakest option that the Government consulted on. It creates the anomaly that British Airways will report its carbon footprint as a public company, but that Virgin Atlantic, as a private company, will not. However, we are the first country in the world to do it, which gives us a temporary, green competitive advantage to make up for the Government’s disastrous handling of the solar feed-in tariffs.

  The hon. Lady mentioned the sustainable energy for all initiative, which I am glad she supports; it is an outstanding initiative. I hosted a preparatory meeting of the group on the initiative in London some months ago. We had hoped that the Rio declaration would adopt the initiative as a core conclusion. In the event, because of the nervousness of some participants on what the initiative means and its implications, it was “recognised” in the declaration. We would have inserted a stronger verb, but none the less, as with all those initiatives, we now need to exploit that recognition and work on it.

  The hon. Lady complained that the proposal on greenhouse gas emissions reporting does not go far enough. We have to start somewhere. We are the only country doing this. Some people complain that we have already gone too far and are imposing too many burdens on business. Other business groups, such as the CBI, have welcomed the proposal. I think we are breaking new ground, and I hope she will welcome that rather than cast aspersions on it.

  The hon. Lady will know that the Darwin initiative is a robust initiative that we are using to monitor the plight of endangered species. Finally, she rightly said that these summits make sense only if one acts consistently with them at home. We are rightly proud of our record: we are the first country to establish a green investment bank; the green deal, which will be up and running in the coming six to eight months or so, will be the largest initiative of its kind for installing energy efficiency measures and bringing down energy bills in homes up and down the country; and the green sector, the green economy, is growing by about 5% a year, employs close to 1 million people in this country and actually runs a trade surplus. That is something we should cherish and celebrate. The carbon floor price is another major innovation of the Government, while the electricity market reform, which is one of the most ambitious legislative and regulatory overhauls of an electricity market I am aware of anywhere in the developed world, is explicitly designed to ensure that we have a sustainable energy mix for future generations.

  Given the frustratingly disappointing outcome of Rio and the crisis of investor confidence in solar PV, onshore wind and nuclear in Britain, is it not even more important that the Deputy Prime Minister joins the growing cross-party support for the Severn barrage, which would generate 5% of the electricity in Britain and create nearly 40,000 jobs—a green project that will deliver the Government’s renewable energy commitments?

  Within the privacy of this Chamber, will the Deputy Prime Minister admit that Rio actually showed that it is now blindingly obvious that no other major country proposes to follow us in imposing a legally binding obligation to cut emissions by 80% at a cost of £430 billion to our economy, so we should discreetly shelve the Climate Change Act 2008 as soon as possible?

  As the hon. Gentleman may know, we have not only set an international precedent by, for instance, announcing that some of the largest companies will be abiding by new greenhouse gas emission reporting requirements; we are also setting the pace by moving towards what I referred to in my statement as GDP-plus by 2020, whereby we do not just take a snapshot of our nation’s wealth and prosperity, but try to include in that new measures of the resources we are using and their sustainability. We have established a natural capital committee, chaired by Professor Dieter Helm, which I think is the first of its kind. Those are not only institutional but methodological innovations that are genuinely world beating, and I very much hope that other countries will follow our lead.

  Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with Mr Kandeh Yumkella, the joint head of the United Nations “sustainable energy for all” initiative, who said:

  I commend my right hon. Friend and the Secretary of State on the positive stand taken by Britain in Rio, but given the lack of any landmark agreements comparable to the original Earth summit, how can Britain now promote rapid, timetabled agreement on issues such as GDP-plus and the sustainable development goals?

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• 14 Mar 2012: Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

  16:54

  I agree that we have had a very good debate on the Bill. This week’s drought announcement illustrates the increase in weather volatility, however. If there are floods in Australia, it is likely that there will be droughts in other parts of the planet and we are going to have to plan for a lot more climate change disruptions.

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• 29 Feb 2012: Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

  16:15

  The extra time we took for the water White Paper improved it, putting resilience at its heart, and the climate change risk assessment vindicated that decision. I am sure that hon. Members would like the time to debate, through proper pre-legislative scrutiny, the measures set out in the water Bill. The Prime Minister gave an undertaking to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that a draft bill would come forward within months and I have repeated that commitment today.

  This is an orphan Bill, which is decoupled from the long-term reforms required to tackle climate change and keep water affordable. Why does the Bill, which affects two areas—the south-west and London—not mention those two areas? Is it because that would make it a hybrid Bill, which would require full and proper scrutiny in the other place? Is it because by not mentioning those two areas and drawing the Bill widely, the Secretary of State is able to define it as a money Bill, which means that it receives only a cursory one day’s scrutiny in the other place? What possible reason could she have to fear their lordships’ scrutiny of this worthy and timely Bill? We can surmise that she is keen to get her short Bill through Parliament—an endeavour that does not seem to have been properly communicated by the Whips to her own Back Benchers, if today’s sudden change of business is anything to go by.

  We recognise that privatised water has brought benefits, with £90 billion invested in our infrastructure at no direct cost to the taxpayer, and we believe that water should remain a properly regulated private industry. Today, however, is a day for thinking about the water customer. Since privatisation, customers’ bills have increased year on year, wherever they live. Many have found themselves adjusting to metered water, and by 2015 there will for the first time be more metered customers than unmetered ones. Climate change will mean more regions being under greater water stress, with consequences for customers’ water use. That is why it is down to us to hammer out a new consensus on water affordability. I ask Ministers to work with us to amend the Bill and help hard-pressed families.

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• 24 Nov 2011: Oral Answers to Questions

  Climate change is the biggest market failure the world has seen and the Secretary of State’s decision on whether to introduce carbon reporting to correct the failure is imminent. That decision is a once-in-a-Parliament opportunity to create green growth and drive the development of low-carbon products and services across UK plc. With youth unemployment at record levels and mandatory reporting supported by Britain’s largest employers, how many jobs does she estimate would be created in the UK’s green economy if it was introduced?

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• 26 Oct 2011: Environmental Protection and Green Growth

  16:16

  We on the Labour Benches have always protected the environment, whether by setting up the national parks or introducing the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the Climate Change Act 2008. These show our green leadership. Will the Chancellor’s comments and the spat with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change enhance or reduce our leadership on these issues in Europe?

  Does the hon. Lady think a little humility might be in order, given that when we take into account the UK’s share of international aviation and shipping emissions, under Labour’s three terms of office, greenhouse gas emissions rose, rather than fell?

  Today we see open warfare breaking out between Government Departments over mixed messages to UK plc, with the headline in The Independent, “Osborne’s anti-green agenda splits Coalition” and today the speech from the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and snub to the Chancellor to cheers from a business audience. The only people who benefit from such Cabinet warfare are the climate sceptics at the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, who want us to do less.

  Let me turn to carbon reporting. In January 2010, several Tory and Lib Dem Members wrote to Labour’s then Business Secretary, calling for mandatory carbon reporting. They included the current Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), and the hon. Members for Lewes (Norman Baker), for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey)—all now Ministers. In that letter, they said:

  I know that the Labour party has an obsession with carbon emissions, and indeed the Climate Change Act 2008 was evidence of that, but the motion is about job creation. Carbon reduction has led to an increase in consumer and business electricity prices, and to energy-intensive industries relocating outside the United Kingdom, with the British Air Transport Association saying only last week, “If we continue down this road it will affect the aviation industry’s competitiveness,” so will the hon. Lady explain how that fits with job creation?

  We have leadership in offshore wind, and that was restated by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change today. I was at a business breakfast meeting with representatives of several large manufacturers of regeneration technology, and they said that the most important thing they want from the Government is certainty. I am not sure that climate change was at the top of our agenda 13 years ago, but we have realised over time that it is already factored in and that we will have changing climate over the next 50 years, so we must do something now if we are to preserve and conserve the earth’s resources. We have only one planet.

  I must tell the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) that a green company in my constituency, Logicor, manufactures a product called a green plug, and has business angel backing to roll it out nationally and internationally. The plug fits to an iron or other appliance, and automatically turns it off after 15 or 20 minutes if someone leaves the room and forgets to do so. It has been shown that that can reduce carbon emissions in the home by about 50%. The company’s research demonstrated that what we all fail to switch off most often is our computer printer. I share that with the House and the nation for those who wish do their bit on climate change.

  To return to carbon reporting, I cannot help but wonder whether the Department is deliberately inflating costs and reducing benefits as part of a go-slow on these areas. We know that that go-slow is driven by the climate change sceptics at the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. When can we expect the results of the Department’s consultations? What are the Minister’s plans to help companies whose biggest environmental impact is not carbon-related, but water consumption, as in the case of the food industry, the amount of waste they send to landfill or the natural resources that they consume?

  I pay tribute to that scheme, because it has created certainty not just for the council, but for employment in the area and it will drive down the council’s waste emissions. Biodegradable material decomposing in landfill generates 40% of the UK’s methane emissions and 3% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. In government, Labour trebled household recycling from 11% to 40% with schemes such as that mentioned by my hon. Friend.

  Next year we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth summit, whose agreements were signed by the last Tory Government, and the 31st anniversary of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. I hope that the louring figures of the Chancellor and the Minister for the Cabinet Office will not prevent the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from celebrating those landmark successes.

  In the coming autumn statement, we need a comprehensive green growth strategy from the Chancellor. Governments around the world are attracting investment in environmental technologies and the UK economy risks being left behind, but I am afraid that he has sapped green business confidence in the UK as a leader in climate change technology. Once again, he has shown that he is out of touch with business and driven by dogma. I urge the House to support the Opposition motion.

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