15:41 Mr Speaker (Doncaster North) (Lab)

Watching the protests over the past few days, both here and globally, has raised slightly mixed emotions in me. First, there is excitement that the conversations that many of us were having about climate change 30 years ago are finally moving from niche to mainstream. The question is not “Why act?” but “How fast can we act?”

Here in the UK, thanks to excellent cross-party working, we were the first country in the world to pass a climate change Act. We have led the world in reducing the carbon intensity of our economy over the past 40 years. We have made huge progress on plastics-free activity. Last month, renewables contributed over 40% of our electricity supply. In fact, just this last weekend we had our longest ever period of no coal contributing to electricity generation in the UK; and we now have more than 400,000 people working in the low-carbon economy.

Of course we share the desire to raise this country’s ambition, which is why we asked our independent Committee on Climate Change to advise us on how best to reach our net zero target—we were the first industrialised country to ask for that advice. I am also pleased to welcome the cross-party support for our bid to host the crucial United Nations climate change talks next year.

We know we need to continue and accelerate the decarbonisation of our economy, across all aspects of activity, and crucially to help other countries around the world, especially those not at the same stage of economic development as us. That is going to require a broad-based, engaged, informed debate to deliver the low-carbon progress we need; this must be fair, just and progressive, and able to be shared. I am pleased to say that our progress to date has been supported by all political parties, and I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his great leadership and continued support in this area. Our work has been supported by all political parties in the UK, and I hope we can continue to work together to drive the changes we must make in order to secure our future. We have to secure the future of planet A, because there is no planet B.

People can believe that the tactics of Extinction Rebellion are right or wrong—the Minister obviously believes they are wrong—but the demonstrators are certainly not wrong about the failure of politics to do anything like what is necessary to fight climate change: they are right. She said in her reply that we have made progress as a country, and I thank her for what she said about me, but the truth is that the planet is warming far faster than we are acting. Even the path-breaking Paris commitments will take us way beyond the disaster of 2°C of warming, as the Minister knows. The truth is that climate change is not some theoretical future prospect; it is with us here and now, with wildfires, droughts and floods. We have been warned by the scientists: it will get far worse if we do not act with much greater urgency. In these circumstances, it is no wonder people are disrupting the traffic and schoolchildren are striking. The response from Government cannot simply be to restore order and say they are doing a good job. The only credible answer of democratic politics in response to these protests is to admit that we need to raise our game and show we can act.

May I therefore ask the Minister today to commit to the following four actions as a down-payment on what is necessary? First, will she seek to persuade the Prime Minister to declare a climate emergency, as many local authorities have done, in order to focus minds across Government on the centrality of this issue to every Department, not just hers? Goodness knows that is necessary, because we know from the figures that came out just before Easter that the Government are woefully behind in meeting the fourth and fifth carbon budgets covering the next decade.

Secondly, the Minister is to be commended for asking the Committee on Climate Change to recommend a date when the UK will need to hit zero emissions, which it will do next week, but these recommendations cannot be allowed to get buried in Whitehall. So will she now commit to responding formally to them before the summer recess? Only by Britain showing world leadership again, quickly, can we hope to persuade other countries to act.

Fourthly and finally, will she take up the idea of Extinction Rebellion and others to involve the public in these discussions about both the threat of climate change and the action necessary—and, yes, the trade-offs—with a process of citizen deliberation? For too long—this covers both parties—people have been shut out of the climate debate and made to feel powerless. That must change.

She is right. If we do not act, people will say in the future, “You knew the facts, but you did not care enough.” We will be known as the generations with the knowledge of what was to come but without the will or imagination to prevent it. We will be condemned, and rightly so. The right response to rebellion on our streets is to produce a revolution in climate leadership, and the time for action is now.

Let me pick up on the challenges the right hon. Gentleman talked about. He is right to acknowledge that the Government were bold to ask for advice on a net zero economy—we are the first industrialised economy to do so. I will consider that advice carefully and proportionally and, crucially, I will work out how we are going to pay for it. He will know from his time in his climate change role that the Committee on Climate Change was unable to recommend a net zero target when previously we asked for that advice, because the committee did not believe it could be done cost-effectively or, indeed, that we had the technology. It is right that we give that work the focus that it requires.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the declaration of a climate emergency. The thing is, I do not know what that would entail. I could stand here and say, “I believe there is a climate emergency,” and he could say that, too. Many of our local councils, including my own council in Wiltshire, have done that. The question is: what are we going to do about it? That is why we should be proud of the fact that we have the most detailed proposals for how we will hit our carbon budgets.

My right hon. Friend is right. As a newly appointed fellow of the Royal Geographical Society—I had to get that in there—he will know that we have some of the best climate modelling in the world. The problem we have is that the planet is an unbelievably complicated ecosystem. We are finding some feedback loops that we did not even realise about: for example, what happens to the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica could have a meaningful impact on our sea levels immediately. We have the best scientific evidence base we have ever had. The 1.5° report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was based on the best peer-reviewed science the world has ever seen. We have the message from our scientists; we must now continue to act.

Many of us listened to Greta Thunberg earlier today. She spoke about truth—the truth that we are in the midst of an ecological and climate emergency. She also spoke about our refusal—our fear—to acknowledge the truth that stopping this catastrophe requires a complete rethink in the way we run our economy, so that GDP growth is no longer the touchstone. We are on track for catastrophic levels of global warming, yet in the UK we pride ourselves on the 40% reduction in emissions that we say we have achieved on 1990 levels, while achieving a 72% increase in GDP. But the truth is out there. Schoolchildren are teaching it to us. Those figures do not include aviation or shipping emissions. They do not include our imports, our exports and they have largely come from the clean power directive in the European Union, which forced us to announce an end to coal-fired power stations. That is why thousands of our schoolchildren are on climate strike: they know that we are not acting with the speed and seriousness that the climate emergency demands.

Therefore, I ask the Minister: will she listen to the voice of Extinction Rebellion and of our own children? I echo the call from my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North: will she join my party in declaring a national environmental and climate emergency and commit to bringing forward the Government’s response to the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations, which will be published shortly, to achieve net zero urgently? Will she do more to engage with the public in tackling the climate crisis, because it is clear that our citizens need to be in the driving seat for a sustainable future? Will she work with Treasury colleagues and the Bank of England to address what Mark Carney has identified as climate-related financial risks and make the emissions curve and natural capital the key elements of our future economic viability? We know that, however disruptive the climate demonstrations may have been in this past few weeks to businesses, they pale into insignificance against the capacity of climate disasters to wipe out human prosperity and human life itself.

On the point about coal, it is not the case that other countries across the EU are phasing out coal. In fact, when I was at the climate change talks in Bonn, it was shocking to see the barges of dirty Ruhr coal floating down the Rhine because Germany took an ideological decision to phase out nuclear power. For us to get to zero now—it will be zero completely by 2025—is a huge achievement for an island that is built on coal and surrounded by fish and that had 40% of its energy generation coming from coal in 2010 when I was elected. That has been done not by the climate directive, but by unilateral policy decisions taken by the coalition Government and continued by my Government. That is how we will continue to lead the world—by taking tough decisions, hopefully with cross-party support, to make the differences that we need but that we can then accelerate around the world. Our leadership on coal has enabled me and my counterpart in Canada to set up the global Powering Past Coal Alliance—an alliance of 80-plus countries, cities and companies that have all committed to phase out coal thanks to the UK’s leadership.

I am delighted to share many of the points that the hon. Gentleman made, but I do believe fundamentally that a market-based economy that delivers rapidly reducing costs of technology and innovation—the sort of innovation that has seen the price of offshore wind tumble over the last two years—is the way to go. I will look with great interest at the advice that we get from the Committee on Climate Change and act as soon as is proportionate and possible.

We welcome the fact that the Extinction Rebellion protests have largely been peaceful and non-violent in nature, and that so many of those protesting have been young, concerned activists, including Greta Thunberg from Sweden and Holly Gillibrand, whom I met today and who has led climate action protests in her home town of Fort William in Scotland; I welcome both of them here today. Along with other young activists, they have travelled here to meet the leaders of the Opposition parties to discuss how to respond to climate change. Given that the Prime Minister has yet to meet these young adults, will she take the time this week to discuss this vital issue with them? After all, it is our collective responsibility and the UK Government must show leadership.

It is a testament to my constituents—young, old, of no religion, of any religion, whatever shape and size—that they have come to me about the environment. This is an overridingly important issue for everybody. Sustainability should be at the heart of every Government Department, and cross-party should be the name of the game. If we can do one really positive thing to reverse climate change, it will be to reduce our emissions to net zero, and to do so fast. I take my hat off to the Minister for going to the Committee on Climate Change and for asking for its advice on how we could possibly address this more quickly than our targets. The committee’s advice was that we could not do so by 2050. I am hopeful that it will change its mind. Will she please update us on that and will she tell us when aviation and shipping might be included, as they need to be?

To answer in reverse order, there has been progress made on aviation and shipping. That continues to be an international challenge because flights and ships leave and take off from different places, but there is work accelerating on it, and indeed some investment going into low-carbon fuels, which could be hugely important. I will happily update the House when we have received the net zero report and talk about the various aspects in that. We are investing in the first net zero industrial cluster in the UK, with £170 million of funding from the industrial strategy challenge fund. As my hon. Friend has reminded me, it is not just the young who are protesting: one of the most effective and wide-scale campaigning organisations in the UK in this area is the Women’s Institute, which has over 9,000 climate ambassadors. This is a problem that affects all of us, and the solution will involve all of us.

I thank Greta Thunberg and the climate strikers, and Extinction Rebellion, for showing more climate leadership on the streets than we often see in this Chamber. The Minister says that she does not know what a climate emergency looks like. It looks like doing what is scientifically necessary, not just what is deemed to be politically possible at the time. In that spirit, in the meeting this morning that unfortunately the Prime Minister could not clear her diary to make but all the Opposition leaders did, we agreed a number of proposals, including things like ongoing dialogue with the UK climate strikers and stress testing all new manifesto commitments to make sure that they do not exceed the 1.5° warming target. Will the Minister’s Government sign up to those practical proposals?

While I have no time for those who deny climate change, I also have little time for those who deny that great progress has been made. If we have 40% of our electricity from renewables, which is up from 6% in 2010, is it not important that we listen to and work with our scientists and innovators who can improve this picture rather than just listening to those who lie down on the streets?

The Minister put her finger on it when she said that this is going to be about some tough decisions. She expressed concern about describing this as a climate emergency because what she really wanted to do was to move the dial. Ireland has been able to move the dial not by leaving the public out on the streets but by bringing them into a citizens’ assembly—a proper citizens’ assembly that hears the views not just of the activists but of everyone. That has supported carbon taxes and an end to subsidies for peat extraction, meaning that Ireland is now the first country to divest from fossil fuel. Will the Minister meet me and others who are supportive of the idea of a citizens’ assembly to talk about whether that is the cross-party, cross-country way forward by which we can actually tackle this climate emergency?

With pleasure. I point out to the hon. Lady that we already have a carbon tax. We introduced a unilateral tax on carbon emissions, which is what has driven us off coal. She does not seem to realise what an achievement that is. When she and I were elected, 40% of our electricity system was coal-based. Of course I will meet her, but let us look at what has worked and see how we can do more of that.

Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the 2017 PwC report which shows that the United Kingdom is the fastest decarbonising nation of the G7? Can she tell us how the Government are supporting new technologies, such as the use of hydrogen to heat domestic homes in the Keele University experiment, and what further steps can be taken to promote geothermal energy in Clackmannanshire?

I welcome my hon. Friend’s mentioning an independent report which shows that we have decarbonised, as a proportion of our economic growth, faster than any other country in not just the G7 but the G20. We continue to work to accelerate our carbon reduction. He is right to focus on heating, which is a major problem for a centralised gas-based heating economy such as ours. Innovation is happening in Keele, Leeds and other areas to see how we might safely introduce hydrogen into the heating system. Of course, we then have to produce hydrogen in a low-carbon emissions form, which is an opportunity to use excess renewable energy, and particularly offshore wind. This is an incredibly innovative time. By the way, if we can help the world migrate to hydrogen boilers and make those boilers in the UK, we can export them and create a competitive advantage as part of this transition.

Looking at the climate science, I do not suppose that a single Member of the House does not ask themselves, “How can we make the changes that are needed?” The Minister will be aware that the Committee on Climate Change said in November that emissions from homes are off track and we will need to replace gas with hydrogen boilers and supplementary electric heating. Given that about 80% of homes depend on gas for heating or cooking, how will that change happen?

The right hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise homes, although they are responsible for only 15% of our CO 2 emissions. In fact, the biggest nut we have to crack is industrial emissions, which is arguably much harder to do. There will be no one-size-fits-all policy on homes. There will be some decarbonisation of gas, some introduction of pure hydrogen, a move to electrification and a use of community heating or heat networks. Some amazingly innovative local authorities—Nottingham and Leeds spring to mind—are trying to design new forms of heating system into their local economies and home building programmes. That is how we will innovate and drive the cost down. I think that the announcement of no fossil fuel heating in new homes from 2025 will kick-start a revolution, particularly in reducing the cost of alternatives such as heat pumps.

The Minister is right that there are some sectors, such as power generation, in which major progress has been made in carbon reduction, but does she agree that there are others, such as aviation, where virtually nothing is taking place? Does she agree that the Government should re-examine major expansion projects such as Heathrow specifically to look at the climate change implications?

I thank my hon. Friend for raising carbon capture and storage. Members will know that a competition was run several years ago, and it was a rather crude, as it were, point-to-point competition—in one case, it was just decarbonising a coal plant that would in effect no longer be generating power. We are now trying to work out how carbon capture, usage and storage are embedded in an industrial cluster, so that we can actually decarbonise heavy industry and create a way of sequestering the carbon alongside clean power generation. This is how I think we will solve the problems: not looking at them in economic silos, but trying to solve these problems on a whole-economy basis.

The Minister asks what would be the point of her declaring a climate change emergency. Well, it is because it is an emergency. It is an emergency right now and it is an emergency across the world—glaciers are melting, seas are rising—and the Minister knows this. I just do not understand, and I do not think people watching or my constituents in Bristol West will understand, what is stopping her declaring a climate change emergency and then treating the problem as an emergency.

Exactly; so having instituted the fastest decarbonisation of any G20 country, will the Minister remind the House what proportion of total global emissions we produce—I think it is 1%—compared with, say, China? We all know what would happen to an Extinction Rebellion demonstration in Tiananmen Square. If we want to make a real difference, what practical steps are we taking internationally to encourage China, the USA and India to take real action?

The point is that we must work together. I pay tribute to many of the actions that have been taken in China and India, where some of the most rapid investments are being made in electric vehicles and renewable energy. That is the reason why solar panel prices have dropped more than 80% in the UK; we no longer need to subsidise them because of other countries’ investments. My right hon. Friend is right to point out that we must work together. A CO 2 molecule does not care where it is emitted from, or where it is going. We are all contributing to the problem, and we must contribute to the solution.

It is imperative to reduce greenhouse gases, and the replacement of coal by natural gas has vastly reduced such gases. Does the Minister agree that we should back a responsible UK oil and gas sector, and not offshore our climate change responsibility?

I do, and my hon. Friend will know, as do many of his Conservative colleagues, that the incredible contribution of the oil and gas sector to the Scottish economy cannot be overstated. He will also know that we can decarbonise gas very effectively, and, frankly, we produce it with environmental standards far higher than those in the countries from which we import.

The two things are entirely linked. We are a highly gas-dependent economy, as we know. We want to cut the amount of gas that we use, but it is a good transitional fuel. The hon. Gentleman always shouts over me, which is very rude. We want to explore soberly and scientifically whether there are opportunities to extract gas onshore in a way that helps us with our energy security—something he used to care about, when he was mining the black stuff all those years ago—and helps us to generate jobs. Why is it that we trust the science on climate change, but when science says that shale gas extraction is safe, we refuse to listen?

The west midlands was the home of the industrial revolution. We sparked the carbon revolution; we would like to lead the zero-carbon revolution. However, it has been harder to decarbonise our power system since the Government phased out feed-in tariffs for solar. It is harder to decarbonise our transport system because of the confusion, identified by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee before Christmas, around electric vehicles. It is harder to decarbonise energy in our homes when the Minister cannot tell me, in parliamentary answers, our share of the energy company obligation funding that might fund that retrofitting. Cities in this country would like to lead the green industrial revolution, so why does she not help them?

Does the Minister agree that caring about climate change and the environment is not a monopoly of the left—far from it, as evidenced by the many actions of this Government—but that there is a political debate to be had? Does she agree that it is possible to reduce emissions and grow the economy and that this is particularly important not only for the UK but for many of the world’s developing economies?

One way we can decarbonise homes is by using geothermal energy, particularly in former mining areas. The University of Durham has done a lot of research on this subject. Would the Minister like to come to learn about the research it is doing and consider how we can implement it?

I welcome the Minister’s comments about listening to and acting on the science. If that is the case, the Committee on Climate Change has questioned whether support for oil and gas may become incompatible with the Government’s long-term climate change objectives. In the spirit of not disappearing down a rabbit hole of conflict, perhaps we can agree, on both sides of the House, on whether there is a sustainable way to reduce fossil fuel extraction to move from maximum economic recovery to sustainable economic recovery.

I will not correct the hon. and learned Lady on too many things, but we have a mixed, diverse energy supply, which is decarbonising very rapidly. We have not put the kybosh on tidal. In fact, we invested the same amount in R&D funding for tidal as we did with any other technology; it is just that other renewables have out-competed it much more rapidly. However, I was pleased to meet the renewable energy council with cross-party support recently to see what more we can do to support that. I believe that nuclear has a part to play. It is part of our zero-carbon future. We have a nuclear sector deal and it is an incredibly productive industry for the United Kingdom.

I welcome what the Minister had to say on our cleanest and greenest year for electricity yet and her approach to the Committee on Climate Change, but does she share some of my concerns about the goals of Extinction Rebellion? This is an organisation that has pledged to take non-violent direct action but whose co-founder was arrested on charges of criminal damage against a corporate headquarters. To what extent are the Government also looking at how we can mitigate the potentially violent actions of this movement?

My hon. Friend is right to point out that we should be able to have a civilised, important and strong debate about our aims. It is challenging, though, to see that there are acts of violence or acts of criminal damage. I am also aware that no political party or campaigning organisation is endorsing one of the key asks of Extinction Rebellion, which is a net zero emissions target by 2025. It is simply not something that can be delivered. It is right to have that challenge, but we have to be able to take what we do best in this country, which is to have a civilised debate, and apply it to the most important issue of our time.

The Minister mentioned her international influence in relation to reducing carbon emissions. The USA is one of the biggest CO 2 polluters in the world. Can she ask the Prime Minister to use all her influence when President Trump comes to the UK to get the US to recommit to its obligations from the Paris summit and to set up a climate emergency in the USA to tackle global warming?

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, but despite the rhetoric, the US’s decarbonisation record is very good. In fact, it cut its carbon intensity by 3.7% for the year ending in 2017, which is well ahead of the global average and, indeed, well ahead of the EU’s average. He will know that this is about not just federal actions, but the actions of states, cities and companies. The We Are Still In coalition, which is hugely accelerating work on decarbonisation action—for example, the net zero targets of the state of California—is delivering real change in the United States, and we should celebrate that.

I, too, had the honour of meeting Greta Thunberg at the parliamentary leaders’ roundtable discussions this morning. I would like to put on record my thanks to all the youth climate change activists who have succeeded in putting climate change at the top of the agenda.

Climate change waits for no Government. I travelled to London on the train with Heather Bolton from Gwynedd. She was on her way to attend the Extinction Rebellion protests in Westminster. We talked about Fairbourne on the Gwynedd coast where the whole community has been warned to prepare to move out within 40 years. Climate change is more than a passing inconvenience to the people of Fairbourne. Will the Minister accept my invitation to visit the community and see the economic, social and human cost of inaction?

I congratulate the young people in many countries across the world without whom we would not be here today having this debate. They have reminded us how urgent the climate crisis is and that we have to be very ambitious—a lot more ambitious than we have been so far. Are the Government committed to making our electricity grid 100% carbon zero before 2050? If so, when will we know about this new target?

When I launched the offshore wind sector deal, I said that power generation would be at least 70% net carbon zero by 2030—in only 11 years—so we can extrapolate from that. There is a view among energy system modellers, however, that there will always need to be some level of thermal energy generation on the grid, because you cannot do a cold start based on current renewable and storage technology, which raises the question of how we further decarbonise our gas supply in particular.

The hon. Lady is right to point out the role of local authorities. I believe that much policy is best pulled through at a local level, where it is possible to join up regeneration, transport systems, cycling and walking strategies and so on, rather than pushed out from Westminster. The young people of today—it is such a patronising phrase, isn’t it? Everybody in the UK today should be proud of the fact that we listened and 10 years ago with cross-party support passed the world’s first climate change Act. We listen in this place. We might not act as quickly as people want, or in the ways people want, but we must look at our early movement and the fact that we have led the world in decarbonisation. We are listening and we are acting.

Dealing with the climate emergency will require us to ensure that billions of pounds are invested in low-carbon technologies. Most of that money will come from the private sector, and must be invested in heat and transport technologies in particular. The money is there, but for it to be invested at scale will require certainty.

We salute 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the school climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion. They have shone a light on the issue of the issue of climate change in a way that it seems only David Attenborough is able to equal. Surely the Minister recognises that her Government must do more. Perhaps they could follow the lead of the SNP Scottish Government, with their world-leading climate change targets, and perhaps—as was suggested by the hon. Member for Midlothian (Danielle Rowley)—they could follow our example of allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote on these issues, because they are clearly well ahead of some of the dinosaurs in this place.

Climate change is not a party political issue, but an issue of global importance. In the light of that, the Government’s complacency today, and their refusal to take leadership at a national level, is extremely worrying.

Whatever I say, or other Ministers say, from the Dispatch Box is reported in Hansard , and is the next day’s chip paper. What we must do is act. We must set out actions, set out our ambitions, and work together. I am disappointed to hear that the hon. Lady thinks I have been complacent at the Dispatch Box. I have tried incredibly hard to show that we are listening, we are acting, and we are delivering. We must accelerate that, but the hon. Lady should be proud of the fact that ours is the first developed country to say, “Help us to understand what net zero looks like: what will the changes have to be?” Does that sound hopeless? It sounds hopeful to me.

I do recognise that ambitions need to be raised not just here but around the world. That is why I hope we will have the chance to secure the crucial climate change talks next year, because we need to demonstrate that that is possible and not something to be frightened of. We need to work together with other countries to try to raise ambition collectively, and it will be wonderful to have cross-party support for the UK to be the host of those talks.

The Extinction Rebellion protest over the last few days has prevented business as usual, but that is nothing compared with what climate change will do, and is doing, in certain areas of the world. It is not good enough to talk the talk and not walk the walk. This issue needs a fundamental, transformative shift in our economy and in what we do. The Secretary of State is shutting her eyes and ears on this. Will she tell us today what action is actually being taken across Government to demonstrate that fundamental shift and to challenge business as usual?

As the Minister knows, the Governor of the Bank of England warned last week that climate change poses a financial risk to investments such as people’s pension savings. In March, the $1 trillion Norwegian sovereign wealth fund declared that it would no longer invest in oil and gas exploration, in order to minimise exposure to those climate-related financial risks. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that the green finance strategy includes incentives for people to invest and for organisations to provide investments that are sustainable?

My city of Oxford is the first in the country to create a citizens’ assembly focused on the climate crisis. The Minister said that she wanted a broad-based debate, but we all know what happens far too often: we have a politically expedient knee-jerk reaction to anything that goes against the status quo. So please will she come to Oxford, see what we are doing, and look genuinely at these cases so that we can have a much more broad-based discussion about the climate crisis and do something about it?

Of course, and part of the reason that I am so passionate about this is that I studied climate change, geography and meteorology at Oxford University many years ago. Many of the people associated with the university have been world leaders in understanding the science, and Oxford City Council has done some amazing things in this space. Again, we are really keen to learn. I do not accept that there are knee-jerk political reactions. The clean growth strategy sets out what we will do over the next 25 years to meet our budgets, but if we have good ideas, let us stop hoarding them; let us share them.

The Minister will know that over half of the UK’s planned carbon reduction is tied up in some way or another with EU regulations and that EU agencies are key to enforcement. Assuming that the Government’s new office for environmental protection is ever established, will it have a climate change enforcement remit? If not, why not?

I extend my thanks to and express my admiration of Greta Thunberg, whose speech I had the honour of hearing today—her microphone was working, which I know was of concern to her at some points. Much needs to change, and we need to move forward together as a country to deliver that change sustainably. Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), what substantial and specific plans does the Minister have for how we should formally engage with the public on how we respond, in policy and legislative terms, to our climate crisis? Why will she not consider a citizens’ assembly?

Alongside a growing list of my Opposition colleagues—71 as of now—I have written to the Minister, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House calling on the Government to table at least a day’s worth of debate in Government time to discuss their response to the Committee on Climate Change on how we will achieve net zero carbon emissions sooner rather than later. Will the Minister support that request today and join us in that debate?

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