16:45 Jeremy Corbyn (Other)

The Government still lack any meaningful strategy for creating high-skilled jobs in every region and nation, and they are failing abysmally to invest in the industries of the future necessary to tackle climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report this month was clear on the consequences: we can avoid climate catastrophe only if we act now. The Government’s response has been to: cut support for our solar industries, losing 12,000 jobs in the process; slash building of onshore wind; cut subsidies for electric vehicles; and sell off the UK Green Investment Bank, and instead to back fracking in the face of overwhelming local and scientific opposition.

Ten years ago, a Labour Government passed the Climate Change Act 2008—world-leading legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. This Government are not even on target to do that. Clean energy investment fell 56% last year, and the UK produces less of our energy from renewables than Germany, Spain, France or Italy. This Government are, I believe, failing to protect our environment, and in doing so failing to protect the future of us all.

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17:08 Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)

Barely two weeks ago, the world’s scientists issued their most stark warning yet that we have just 12 years in which to tackle climate change and avoid climate catastrophe, yet there was not a single word from the Chancellor about climate change, nothing about clean energy, nothing about green energy. Does the right hon. Lady agree— [ Interruption. ]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I heard the Chancellor mention climate change. The hon. Lady will have her own opportunity to speak later on in this debate.

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19:50 Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)

It was really bad of the Chancellor not to mention climate change in his speech. He talked about plastics, which of course is very important, but it was an error not to mention climate change, especially since the scientists and the Committee on Climate Change so recently talked about the more immediate emergency that the world faces.

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20:02 Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that came out earlier this month talked about a potential climate catastrophe, but what is the Chancellor’s response? He has announced £10 million for fly-tipping and a plastics tax. It is pathetic. Since this Government came to power, we have seen a 56% cut in renewable energy investment. The Chancellor also had the temerity to talk about a jobs miracle. He is having a laugh! We have had the worst decade in history for pay rises. People are now £800 a year worse off on average than they were in 2010. He also had the gall to say that Labour’s programme would lead to an additional £1 trillion of debt. What a lot of nonsense. This Government have been borrowing for failure, and the sovereign debt is approaching £2 trillion. What we need is to recapture the spirit of 1945, when we invested to save and invested to create the national health service and build 1 million homes. We came out of that decade in a far better place than where we were when we entered it, and certainly than where we were in 1945.

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21:02 Anna McMorrin (Labour)

For me, also striking is the failure to make decarbonisation and clean growth absolutely central to this Government’s economic plans. The Budget comes less than a month after the world’s climate scientists firmly told us that the global economy has just 12 years to almost halve greenhouse emissions if dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate change is to be prevented. In this Budget statement, not one mention was made of climate change. If the UK Government want to protect future generations, as they say they do, that must be put front and centre. Instead, energy efficiency funding has been cut, green levies politicised and prevented, and the cheaper forms of green energy—onshore wind and solar—locked out of Government funding. The UK’s recycling infrastructure is struggling badly following under-investment.

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