16:44 Ed Miliband (Labour)

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement about December’s Copenhagen climate change conference, at which I represented the United Kingdom alongside my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Today I want to report back to the House and set out where we go next in the global battle against climate change.

The Copenhagen accord, which is available in the Library, was agreed by a group representing 49 developed and developing countries that together account for more than 80 per cent. of global emissions. The key points of the accord are as follows. It endorses the limit of 2° C in warming as the benchmark for global progress on climate change. Unlike with every previous agreement, not just developed, but all leading developing countries have agreed to make specific commitments to tackling emissions, to be lodged in the agreement by 31 January.

We also welcome the decision by Chancellor Merkel to host a conference as part of the mid-year negotiations in Bonn, and we will work with the incoming Mexican presidency, which will be hosting the next conference in November. But dialogue and negotiations need to restart before June—something I made clear to Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the convention on climate change when I met him in London just before Christmas.

I want to pay tribute in particular to the enormous effort of those in the UK, from the scientific community, civil society, British business and the general public, who have mobilised on climate change. Their ideas and energy helped to drive us forward over the past 12 months and during the Copenhagen conference itself. Let me assure them and the House that we are determined to strengthen and sustain the momentum behind the low-carbon transition in the UK. Building on our low-carbon transition plan, our world-leading policy on coal and our plans for nuclear, we will be making further announcements in the coming weeks and months on energy generation, household energy efficiency and transport. Following Copenhagen, as part of the work already ongoing on the road map to 2050, we are looking at whether further action is necessary to meet our low-carbon obligations, and we will report back by the time of the Budget. This will include looking at the advice of the Committee on Climate Change published last autumn.

Internationally, thanks in large part to the deadline of Copenhagen and the mobilisation behind it, every major economy of the world now has domestic policy goals and commitments to limit its greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico, South Africa and, of course, the EU. Throughout the world, policy is now set to improve energy efficiency, to increase investment in low-carbon power, to develop hybrid and electric vehicles and smart grids, and to reduce deforestation.

So although Copenhagen did not meet our expectations, 2009 did see the start of a new chapter in tackling climate change across the world. This global shift might not yet have found international legal form, but scientific evidence, public opinion and business opportunity have made it irreversible. In 2010 and in the years ahead, this Government—and, I am sure, the vast majority in this House—are determined to ensure that we redouble our efforts to complete the unfinished business of Copenhagen.

Climate change remains the biggest global challenge to humankind, and it requires a global solution. We owe it to our children, their children and the generations to come to find it. The work has started, it will continue this year, and I believe that it will succeed. The fight against climate change will be won. I commend this statement to the House.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement, and for the briefing that he kindly gave me in advance of the Copenhagen summit. It is disappointing that the Prime Minister is not making this statement, however. He missed questions in the House in order to go to Copenhagen early, and it is surprising that he has chosen not to report to the House on what he accomplished there. The Secretary of State and I share the view that we need to see global action on climate change. If Copenhagen showed one thing, it was that the discussions should not end there, and that they must continue.

Before Copenhagen, we said that a rigorous deal should achieve three things. The first was a commitment to limiting warming to 2° C. The second was a clear focus on adapting to climate change and on finding a dependable mechanism to finance that. The third was urgent action to preserve the rain forests. On the first, the 2° C proposal was noted, as the Secretary of State said, but the accord is completely unclear about when emissions should be cut, and by how much. On the second, it is welcome that adaptation was so prominent in the discussions, but there is no clarity on the sources of finance. On the rain forests, there was once again discussion of the issue, but nothing that could be meaningfully described as a political deal, let alone a legal framework. By any objective assessment, therefore, Copenhagen was a flop.

In other words, the implication is that attacking climate change ranks, for them, below these priorities.

This revealed preference on the part of India, China and other parts of the developing world cannot simply be overlooked or assumed away. The People’s Daily reported that the Chinese Government would treat talks in 2010 on a binding global deal as a struggle over “the right to develop”. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with me that the central issue is now how cutting current and future emissions can be shown to be compatible with development? Does he agree that for developed and developing countries alike, becoming less dependent on fossil fuels, using energy more productively and damaging the environment less is a pathway that can enhance the prospects for economic development, for prosperity through trade and for the reduction of poverty? If he does, will he accept that we now urgently need a new politics of climate change—one that can convince both around the negotiating table, as it failed to do in Copenhagen, and in the court of public opinion that the action we must take to guarantee the stability of the climate in the long term is also in the interests of both rich and poor in the short term?

I am all for slogans about the need for a new politics of climate change and all that, although I will have to talk to the hon. Gentleman at some point about what that means. I think it best to build on the progress made at Copenhagen—although it was disappointing—and, more important, the progress made over the last year, and to use the opportunities that we shall have in the coming year to secure the agreement that we did not secure at Copenhagen.

I attended the Copenhagen conference in my capacity as the Council of Europe’s rapporteur on climate change. May I offer my congratulations to my right hon. Friend and the Prime Minister—as did many people at Copenhagen—on the leading role that they played in bringing about the Copenhagen accord? The Opposition clearly do not understand that, as at Kyoto, an agreement was reached in principle and the details will come later during years of negotiations. That is called the process of the United Nations. We did not secure a legal UN agreement because—as the House knows, and as I have constantly said—it was never possible to secure a legally binding agreement at Copenhagen. The matter will be decided in the negotiations.

Lastly, rather than what has been suggested in some of the post-Copenhagen comments in the British press—that measures on climate change response and emissions targets will make us uncompetitive in a competitive world—will the Government make it clear, as I know that the Secretary of State is committed to doing, that unless we get an agreement that binds everybody, we will miss the chance to have a sustainable future for all countries, not just ours? We will also miss the chance to have the sustainable jobs and sustainable, safe and secure energy on which the security of the world depends.

I, too, was in Copenhagen, and it seemed to me that one issue behind the problems that emerged from the conference was the concern about where the relevant finance should come from and go to. The Government have rightly said that not more than 10 per cent. of our official development assistance budgets would be spent on climate change finance, but may I press my right hon. Friend to go further? Will he make a commitment that that 10 per cent. will not make up the whole of our climate change finance? Perhaps it should not, at any point, make up more than 10 per cent. of our total climate change finance. The people of Bangladesh want to know that we are not simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The Secretary of State was right to say that the meeting was disappointing, and that is fundamentally because we do not have the confident arrangements in the world that would enable business, countries and companies to make decisions to promote mechanisms to reduce emissions. Britain’s leadership in the industrial revolution means that we are responsible for a good deal of the climate change that is happening at the moment, so does the right hon. Gentleman accept that this is the moment for us to firm up on the commitments that we have made to green technology and a green future? Europe is also very responsible for today’s problems, so should not Britain take the lead in ensuring that Europe firms up on its 30 per cent. pledge? More than that, should we not seek to create, as far as possible, the most encouraging atmosphere for business to do what it has to do? The leadership of business is crucial in this matter.

Let me take this opportunity to say that I know that the right hon. Gentleman has announced that he is leaving this House. We will miss his expertise and passion on these issues of climate change, and we wish him well in what he does next.

I can hardly believe that question, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The weather fluctuates, as anyone knows, and the notion that a cold spell in Britain disproves the science of climate change is something that I believe not even the right hon. Gentleman believes.

The hon. Gentleman speaks with authority on these issues. China has moved some distance in the past two years on climate change. The very notion of a target—it set out a target of 40 to 45 per cent. reductions in carbon intensity—is important. We look forward to seeing what it lodges as part of the agreement on 31 January. We face a continuing effort, and we are determined to continue with it, to persuade China that a legal undertaking should give it confidence about others meeting their commitments, and that it will not face the constraints on growth and development that it fears. That is part of the persuasion that we need.

The new coalition that was evident at Copenhagen between the developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change—I mentioned Ethiopia and the Maldives, but there were others including other small island states and African countries—is important. That coalition wants a legal agreement. We need to find ways in which that voice can be heard and to persuade others who are more reluctant that it is the right way to go.

My right hon. Friend will be aware that we are trying to establish what will probably be the largest carbon capture and storage project in Hatfield colliery in Doncaster in his constituency by 2015. How important is the achievement of that goal to the future economy of Yorkshire and to meeting our obligations under the climate change agenda?

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is very important that we make progress on carbon capture and storage, including in Yorkshire, where there are exciting plans to move forward on that process. It is also worth saying that internationally many countries are moving towards carbon capture and storage. Again, that is a change we have seen over the past couple of years; countries understand the importance CCS will play and the importance of making coal a clean fuel of the future.

Like my right hon. Friend, I believe that the challenge that faces mankind is climate change, and I commend him for his work in Copenhagen. There is an enormous distance in moving from an accord to a legally binding agreement. How does my right hon. Friend see the development of steps towards that legally binding agreement? Although the UN is involved in a very positive way, there is still a need to keep that momentum. What steps does he see being taken to keep up the momentum towards a legally binding agreement?

Despite the Secretary of State’s best efforts, the failure of Copenhagen surely increases the risk that an international legally binding agreement to prevent climate change may never happen. Given that risk, at what point do the Government reprioritise efforts to adapt to climate change, rather than trying to prevent it?

No, I do not think that I should give the impression that it was a problem of process. At a meeting early on in the negotiations, I said that every country faced compelling constraints that inhibited action on climate change. If there is a reason why we did not reach the agreement that we wanted, it is that every country faced those compelling constraints and we could not overcome them sufficiently. It was not an accident and there was no question, simply, of a badly organised meeting. There are difficult issues, but I come back to this point: the past year has shown that such compelling constraints can be overcome, and we need to spend the months and years ahead overcoming the other constraints that countries faced at Copenhagen.

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