13:30 Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)

I am delighted that we have the chance to debate the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fifth assessment report, which is an extremely important document. In my judgment, the world is potentially at a turning point in relation to policy on climate change; even in the last few weeks, we have seen a significant step up in the commitment of different countries to act in response to the threat that it presents.

People have been sceptical—largely, I think, because of ignorance—about the commitment of China in particular to moving to a much less carbon intensive economy. That is partly for domestic reasons, such as the hideous air and water quality problems that China suffers from and its vulnerability—far greater than the UK’s, for example—to the consequences of climate change. However, the fact that it is committing to targets is wholly to be welcomed.

Last month, equally importantly in my view, the EU agreed a 40% target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels for 2030. That was, of course, exactly the outcome that the British Government were working towards and they deserve great credit for securing that outcome. They have got the target for overall carbon emissions to be reduced without having that overlain with what in my view are less rational targets for specific progress on renewables. It leaves countries free to decide how they are going to decarbonise their economies. That was exactly the right approach, and it is the approach that the British Government had taken a lead in fighting for. As the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change said:

The Prime Minister spoke at the UN climate summit in New York on 23 September and pointed out that the British Government are keeping their promise to be the greenest Government ever. I know that some critics say that that is not actually being achieved, but the truth is that the decision alone to confirm the fourth carbon budget from 2023 to 2027 was of great significance. Although there are lots of areas where we would like the UK to be going further and faster, that commitment alone—again, I will come back to carbon budgeting—strongly supports the claim to be the greenest Government ever.

The UK has more than doubled the capacity of the renewable energy industry in generating electricity in the last four years. That is a substantial achievement and a vindicator of the kind of incentives that have been put in place for investment in renewables. As we know, the UK has also played an important role internationally with its carbon finance commitments. However, we need the whole world to step up if we are going to deliver a deal that keeps the target of a maximum rise in average temperatures of 2° centigrade within reach. That is a big part of the agenda as we move towards the Paris COP—the conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change—at the end of next year. Above all, we need to make sure that policies are in place that give business the certainty that it needs to make investments in low-carbon technology. As the Prime Minister said,

“Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.”

How can my hon. Friend suggest that recent climate changes have anything to do with global warming if there has not been any global warming since 1997, as all the measures of surface temperature indicate?

Of course, with statistics, if we pick the year to suit our argument, we can produce all sorts of short-term pointers. Unfortunately, it remains true that the first decade of the 21st century—2000 to 2010—was the warmest recorded in modern times, so that does not seem to me to be convincing evidence of my right hon. Friend’s claim that the climate has stopped warming. In any event, I believe that it is still clear that there are impacts, as I have said, on human and natural systems that result from recent climate changes—when I say “recent” climate changes, I mean “in the last 100 years or so”.

Decarbonising electricity generation is a critical component of what we need to do if we are to mitigate the worst effects of climate change and, as the synthesis report points out, it is economically affordable. Effective implementation depends on policies and co-operation at all levels. That can be enhanced by the integrated responses that may come out of an agreement in Paris—responses that should link mitigation with adaptation and with other, broader objectives.

“This is the most comprehensive and robust assessment ever produced. It sends a clear message: we must act on climate change now.”

We focused particularly on the contribution of working group I to the IPCC report. There were, of course, three working groups. One was on the physical science basis; the second was on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability; and the third was on mitigation. The conclusion of working group I was that it was now more confident than ever that greenhouse gas released as a result of deforestation and from fossil fuels has caused much of the warming seen in the latter half of the 20th century and, if unabated, those greenhouse gases will continue to drive climate change in the future.

The IPCC was criticised for being political and lacking transparency, so my Committee looked particularly into the process and the robustness of the IPCC’s conclusions. Our conclusion was that the IPCC report provides the best summary of prevailing scientific opinion on climate change currently available to policy makers. It is the most exhaustive and heavily scrutinised report so far. We also consider that there is a high level of statistical confidence in the report and that the overall thrust and conclusions of the report are widely supported in the scientific community.

With regard to the criticisms of the IPCC, Professor Lindzen, Nicholas Lewis and Drs Curry and Wyatt, among many others, attended the sittings of the ECC Committee or gave evidence. Would the hon. Gentleman care to explain why he thinks such people were so critical of the IPCC in expressing their thoughts on climate change?

By way of conclusion, what does the report mean for UK and international policy? First, it clearly reaffirms the scientific basis of the Climate Change Act 2008. Secondly, it has put forward the notion of a global cumulative carbon budget—a maximum level of greenhouse gas emissions for the world to emit safely. We must stay within that level if we are to have a chance of staying within the 2° C average temperature rise that is thought to be safe. Those two conclusions in the report underline the great merit of the UK’s carbon budgeting process. I believe that we can quite accurately claim to be leading the world in that and I think that other countries are getting interested in the way in which we are setting and implementing carbon budgets. That is absolutely in tune with the IPCC conclusions.

There is also now an overwhelming need for a carbon price. Whether that is derived from carbon taxation, emissions trading or a combination of the two does not necessarily matter. I personally hope that we can make cap-and-trade systems work, because I believe that market instruments are usually the best way to drive investment where it will be most cost-effectively deployed.

We have also had this year the publication of the New Climate Economy report. Again, that is evidence based, and again it underlines the fact that climate change mitigation does not have to inhibit economic growth; the two can go hand in hand. We look forward to our evidence session next week with Nick Stern and Jeremy Oppenheim on that subject.

We feel that there needs to be a focus on cities, land use and energy. If we can maximise the use of existing low-carbon technology and find new ways to organise and innovate in those three areas, we can address climate change at the same time as continuing with sustainable development.

We are, as I said at the start, potentially at a turning point in climate policy, and the Paris COP will be a particularly important stepping stone. If we are to achieve the transition to a global low-carbon economy, a sustained commitment will be required from the Governments represented at Paris from 2015 onwards. If we are to succeed in tackling climate change, the world will have to achieve something that it has never managed before: a consistent annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Every year since the industrial revolution, we have had a consistent annual increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

I am confident that the science will continue to strengthen, and that the evidence of human activity leading to climate change will become stronger, not weaker. As a result, I expect that public concern, not only in this country but around the world, will intensify. The longer we leave the task of mitigation, the more expensive and disruptive it will be to accomplish. I hope, and indeed expect, that there will be a substantial carbon price in one form or another in the 2020s. The inevitable consequence of that will be that countries that have started to decarbonise their economies early will be more economically competitive, not less.

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13:51 Graham Stringer (Labour)

It is worth understanding what is meant when we talk about the scientific basis for climate change. Essentially, if the climate is changing, it is because the energy budget of this planet is altering. We are taking in more energy than we are radiating as a planet. There is no direct way of measuring that process, so we have to look at indirect measurement, which leads us into a number of difficulties. One only has to think about the ice ages to realise that the climate has always changed. There is natural variation, and if the planet is taking in more energy than it is radiating, that will inevitably lead to climate change that is not a natural variation.

As Professor Trewavas has said, there is not a scientist on the planet who can measure and distinguish between natural climate variation and anthropogenic climate variation, so we are in serious difficulty when we talk about the scientific basis of climate change. That has become an area of great controversy and enthusiasm from certain parties. I am—or at least I was—a scientist. As I have debated science in this place and elsewhere, I have come to the conclusion that science and politics are a bad mix, and that one tends to contaminate the other. Science is about the search for truth. Good scientists, if they are proved wrong, will shout, “Alleluia!” because they are pleased that the boundaries of knowledge have been pushed further. Politics is about winning the argument; it is about my side beating the other side.

Unfortunately, in the debate around climate change, some politicians and so-called non-governmental organisations have distorted the science and pushed arguments in a non-scientific way. A current example of that—it is not immediately to do with climate change although it could be—is the case of Professor Anne Glover, the former scientific adviser to the President of the European Commission. She has just failed to get her contract renewed because she took a view on genetically modified foods that Greenpeace and other groups did not like, and those groups lobbied to remove scientific advice from the Commission.

I think we will see that various activist groups have behaved in a similar way in the discussion about climate change. Because of that, I proposed a number of amendments to the Energy and Climate Change Committee report, which fell into three categories. The first was about the political nature of the report that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced. The second was about what passes for science, given the problem I talked about before of direct measurement of the planet’s energy balance and climate change. The third was about the consequences for this country’s energy policy.

Staying with the science for a moment, one of the amendments that I proposed to the Select Committee report was to say that we do not really have 97% consensus that we are heading towards catastrophic climate change. I base that, although there are other areas that we can look at, on Robin Guenier’s evidence to the Committee. He carried out a survey of all the reports that consider the views of climate scientists, and he concluded:

The regularly cited figure of 97% consensus comes from a report by Cook based on an old survey of about 12,000 pieces of scientific literature. Cook looked at the literature, and if a scientist stated that they believed carbon dioxide to be a greenhouse gas, he claimed the paper in support of the consensus that catastrophic global warming is happening, which is a non sequitur—it clearly is not the case. When we look at the other papers surveyed by Guenier, which I can list if necessary, there are various views from different scientists and groups of scientists. No survey can be absolutely categorical about the views of climate scientists, but when those views are assessed, they certainly do not come out anywhere near 97% consensus that catastrophic global warming or climate change is happening. We can put that to one side.

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14:06 Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)

I apologise to you, Mr Betts, and to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) for arriving a few minutes late and missing some of his opening speech. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), who made an important contribution to this debate, as he does to the Committee’s deliberations. The report, of course, was not unanimous. Both he and I voted against it. I think we were able to secure the inclusion of only one of his amendments, but that is not because either of us denies the basic science of the greenhouse effect. He can speak for himself, but we are both scientists by training, which is a characteristic that is not shared by most members of the Committee. We do not dispute the greenhouse effect, nor did any of our witnesses. However, great uncertainties remain about how much warming a given increase in greenhouse gases will cause, how much damage any temperature increase will cause and the best balance between adaptation and mitigation in response to, or in pre-emption of, global warming.

This is a general point. Would the right hon. Gentleman describe himself as a climate change sceptic?

However, there is a period when it has been flat. But if the underlying greenhouse effect has been rising, that means that natural factors are of the same magnitude, and those natural factors—over the long term—will cancel out other factors. Therefore, the upswing in natural factors may have been contributing to the warming in the 25 years of warming, and that should have been brought to the attention of policy makers but was not.

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14:25 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

We need to take decisions on how we deal with the decarbonisation of our energy and on limiting as radically as possible the emissions that will add to anthropogenic global warming. Those are the direct policy implications that this House needs to look at closely, and we will unpack that further to say, “We may have disagreements about exactly how we limit the decarbonisation of our energy supply and the many different ways of doing it, but we will have a separate policy makers’ debate”—as my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) has alluded to—“on the best method of doing that.” Unless we have an overarching guide where we are clear about what we are doing, most of the rest of that conversation will not make a great deal of sense.

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14:47 Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the Energy and Climate Change Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), on the important work it does in this area and especially on the report we are debating. I have to say, not as a scientist—I am a social scientist—that I found this one of the most interesting and contentious debates I have witnessed in this place. The last debate I responded to in this Chamber from this Committee was on how the media report this subject and the clarity with which they report it. With the references to Japanese knotweed, surveyors, facts, not facts and plateaux, I would love to see how they report this debate, but I suspect that they will probably not bother.

I start by looking at where the report concludes. We can be more confident than ever that human activity is the driving force behind the warming of our planet, and that the dominant cause is greenhouse gases. For me, there is therefore no scientific basis for downgrading, diluting or delaying the UK’s ambition to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

I welcome the clarity of the report’s conclusions. It is right that IPCC reports are placed under strict scrutiny, as they are at the core of the UK and global response to the threat of climate change. It was, of course, the conclusions of previous IPCC reports that underpinned the previous Labour Government’s Climate Change Act 2008, a world-leading piece of legislation with targets of 80% emissions reductions to be achieved through interim carbon budgets. The carbon budgets are crucial, and it would have been deeply damaging had this Government not fully implemented the fourth carbon budget, as was threatened just a few months ago. I welcome the fact that the Government have now assured us on that.

Given the fundamental underpinning of the IPCC reports for the UK, it is important that they be analysed in terms of UK energy policy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has rightly stated that climate change is the greatest global threat facing our generation, requiring leadership and resolve. Indeed, the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s report quotes the Prime Minister as saying that

“manmade climate change is one of the most serious threats that this country and this world face”.

Yet the lofty rhetoric is not always matched by the actions of Government and certain Secretaries of State. As a rich country and a significant emitter of carbon, the UK can show global leadership abroad only if we take bold action at home. The UK has a vital role to play in international negotiations on climate change, but we cannot and will not be taken seriously as global leaders if we are not seen to be taking action at home.

Labour has committed to setting a 2030 power sector decarbonisation target, which is crucial for stimulating the investment in clean energy that will boost capacity and drive down costs. Yet this Government have refused to set such a target, which is frankly incompatible with what the report sets out. Furthermore, when the UK Government threaten a moratorium for onshore wind or when the Minister states that solar farms are not particularly welcome, it damages not just our clean energy economy, but our credibility abroad.

The IPCC report shows just how important it is that we rebuild the low-carbon consensus. Having listened to the debate, I think that seems an interesting prospect. Just five MPs voted against the Climate Change Act in 2008 yet debates on climate and clean energy can often be hijacked by those who do not view climate change as a threat. The science has not changed. Indeed, the Committee’s report demonstrates the rigorous, evidence-based work that has gone into the IPPC report.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said that politicians change, alter and manoeuvre how the science is reported. Politicians interpret and they do so as policy makers, not scientists. One scientist will never totally agree with another, just as one politician will never totally agree with another. The issue is about interpretation and there is a value judgment on the evidence that is presented, which will always be the case. The science has not changed. The IPCC has provided overwhelming and compelling scientific evidence that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity and that it will have disastrous consequences if urgent action is not taken to cut our carbon emissions and invest in mitigation.

I am grateful to the Energy and Climate Change Committee for its work in evaluating the IPCC report and setting out recommendations, and I urge the Government to ignore pressure from their Back Benches and to ensure that the UK is best placed to help secure a legally binding agreement in Paris next year.

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14:54 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) on securing this debate and thank the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change for its report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s working group I report on the fiscal science basis of climate change. The Government welcome the Committee’s finding that it provides the best summary and guide of the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change currently available to policy makers.

The Government have considered the Committee’s findings and, as we set out in our official response, seek to take forward a number of recommendations. The Government also strongly support the Committee’s recommendations, which is why we published our vision for the new global deal to be agreed in Paris next year. Our Paris 2015 vision document highlights the strong business and NGO support for securing a global climate change agreement. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk highlights the importance of reaching an agreement at Paris 2015 and I share his dedication and increased optimism, to which the hon. Member for Sunderland Central also referred, following the recent European deal and the good signs from China in the recently announced US-China deal.

As I conclude, may I point out that it was 25 years ago that a scientist and politician, Margaret Thatcher, who appreciated the need, became the first leader of any major nation to call for a global treaty on climate change? There can be no doubting this Government’s commitment. In September, the UN Secretary-General engaged world leaders at a climate summit in New York, where the UK was represented by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and me. We are leading from the front and we will hopefully be present next year at Paris 2015 to secure the international agreement that the vast majority of us want and that scientists support.

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