12:37 The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrea Leadsom)

Also on leadership, there is one woman—the first ever female Conservative leader—who definitely deserves 10 out of 10: Margaret Thatcher. Just over 30 years ago, she became the very first global leader to warn of the dangers of climate change at the United Nations, saying:

I agree. From wildfires in Australia to flooding in Indonesia and record temperatures across the world, the impacts of climate change are in the here and now. People throughout the UK and around the world are calling for us to act, and we are doing just that. Just as the UK has led the past 30 years of climate action, we will lead the next 30 years, seizing the opportunities of the green industrial revolution.

Since 2000, we have decarbonised more quickly than any other G20 country. Since 2010, we have quadrupled our electricity generation from renewables, including through the installation of 99% of the UK’s solar capacity.

In 2017, low-carbon fuels produced more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time, and in that year we also saw the first coal-free day for a century, followed in 2019 by the first coal-free week and coal-free fortnight. Building on the world’s first climate change Act, last year we became the world’s first major economy to legislate to end our contribution to climate change altogether by 2050.

We obviously welcome some of the things that the Secretary of State has outlined, but on the net zero target that she just outlined, Lord Deben, the chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said in his covering letter to an update report that

to achieve the target of net zero by 2050. Is the Secretary of State going to address that in her speech?

I will indeed address it, and I can also tell the hon. Gentleman that the Government have taken the advice of the Committee on Climate Change in setting our legally binding commitments to net zero by 2050. Throughout the year, we will set out precisely how we think we can achieve that.

The Secretary of State will know that the Government are off track when it comes to the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, but I wish to take her up on the constant repetition from the Government. She says that greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 42% since 1990, but she knows that if we calculated consumption-based emissions and factored that in, our emissions have actually fallen by only 10%. Does she agree that we need a common understanding of what is facing us? If she keeps using numbers in a slightly misleading way, we are not going to get to where we need to be by getting our emissions down.

On the one hand, the hon. Lady is absolutely right: the carbon emissions figures for the United Kingdom do not take into account our consumption emissions or, indeed, our contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions around the world—both are important points. On the other hand, I would take issue with her from a philosophical point of view, because in order to measure progress, we need to have measurements, so it is incredibly important to talk about our UK territorial emissions at the same time. I look forward to working with the hon. Lady constructively, as she and I have done previously on a number of occasions, to make the UK’s ambition to lead the world in tackling climate change a reality in the run-up to COP26.

Many of my new, true blue hon. Friends have green-collar jobs in their constituencies. The constituency of Sedgefield makes underwater-cable protection systems that are exported all over the world. Great Grimsby leads the world in offshore wind operations and maintenance, while in Blyth Valley, where I was proud to pay a visit to support our excellent new colleague my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Ian Levy) during the general election campaign, our offshore renewable energy catapult recently tested the world’s longest offshore wind turbine blade. At over 100 metres, it would, if we stood it next to Parliament, be taller than Big Ben.

The Secretary of State talks about offshore wind, but does she agree that this Government have effectively banned onshore wind, which is the most tried and tested of all forms of renewable energy technology? Will she commit to bringing that technology back across all parts of the UK?

The Government’s policies are not sufficiently ambitious to meet their own climate change targets. Does she agree that according to the Government’s official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, the UK is even off its own climate change target of an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050?

As I said in answer to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), we work very closely with the Committee on Climate Change. Our target of net zero by 2050 has been set on the basis of its recommendations so that we can grow our economy, sustain our future and contribute to tackling global climate change in a way that is sustainable for the UK, with the creation of green growth, so I am confident in that regard. We will bring forward more measures throughout the year to help us to meet that target of net zero.

In the first industrial revolution, our pioneers from Scotland to Cornwall forged their own path, and in so doing they became the envy of the world. James Watt’s Prussian rivals travelled hundreds of miles to sneak a glimpse of his steam engines in Birmingham. Richard Trevithick travelled as far as Peru to personally oversee his engines. Today, like them, we must be the first movers, not the last to act. From creating supply chains for electric vehicles to decarbonising our industrial clusters and designing low-carbon buildings, the opportunities of net zero are immense. In 2020, the first year of a new decade of decarbonisation, we must seize those opportunities.

The Secretary of State has outlined a number of important stats. Local councils such as mine—Ards and North Down—are specifically involved in achieving climate change standards and environmental targets. Will she consider implementing a reward system for councils that are specifically involved in education and setting targets for them to achieve? If we do that, we may encourage councils to do even more.

My hon. Friend is a great champion for his constituency and for Cornwall more widely. In many ways, Cornwall is playing a major role in our moves toward net zero, and we in my Department will always be happy to talk to him about that.

Crucial to this debate is the UK’s global leadership. The UK contributes only about 1% of global emissions, and that figure is falling. We cannot solve the challenge of global climate change just by doing the right thing at home, so we are using our strength to help to transform the world, from doubling our international climate finance contribution to nearly £12 billion to using our £1 billion Ayrton fund to support the world’s most vulnerable—for example, by designing clean stoves for the billions who rely on firewood. In 10 months’ time, COP26 in the fantastic UK city of Glasgow will be a seminal moment for climate action, as well as a massive opportunity for British business—a giant global shop window for the UK’s clean tech prowess, with countries across the world heading home with their pockets crammed full of British ideas, technology and expertise.

My right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary is sitting right next to me, and he and I work closely on all sorts of incentives for people to move away from fossil fuels and toward decarbonisation. Of course, as the hon. Gentleman knows, transport is a key target area and we will talk more about it later.

From fighting climate change across the world to backing British ideas, we need a thriving economy to pay for it all. That is why I have set out my Department’s clear mission to build a stronger, greener United Kingdom. That mission is underpinned by three priorities: to lead the world in tackling climate change; to solve the grand challenges facing our society; and, quite simply, to make the UK the best place in the world to work and to grow a business. Today, as well as prioritising the pathway to net zero, we are solving the grand challenges facing our society, backing a new generation of problem solvers in science and business. From space technology to life sciences, the UK is developing satellites that measure climate change and creating ways to help people to enjoy five extra healthy years of life by 2035. From artificial intelligence to robotics, and from advanced manufacturing to green tech, the UK will seize the opportunities offered by this new industrial revolution. That will be underpinned by our commitment to increase our research and development spending to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

Again, we are hearing the right noises from the Government, but the action is not being followed through. The commitment to net zero trips off the tongue, but can we achieve it if we continue to fail to meet our environmental targets?

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12:59 Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour)

I agree with much of what the Secretary of State said in her speech, but that ambition needs to be matched with sufficient action. I hope she takes the comments that I am about to make in the spirit in which they are intended, so we can work across the House and reach a solution to the climate emergency.

I pay tribute to my colleagues Danielle Rowley, Laura Pidcock and Sue Hayman, who were sadly unable to take their place after the general election. Each one of them has been a champion, fighting against the climate emergency, and their policy work will leave a mark on this House for years to come. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) to his new role on the shadow DEFRA team. I am sure he will also leave his mark in the years to come.

Climate change and environmental breakdown present an existential threat to our society. I doubt that there is a single Member of this House who would disagree with me. Seeing off that threat by investing in new industries and technologies, and the restoration of our natural world, has the potential to bring jobs, new wealth and new pride to all the regions and nations of the UK. Again, I doubt there is a single Member of the House who does not want to see that.

So we start from a position of agreement on the green industrial revolution, which, in a nutshell, is about achieving just that. But to make it happen, rather than just talking about it, three qualities are required that are lacking in the Queen’s Speech: honesty, ambition and fairness. We need to be honest with ourselves and with the electorate about what the science says is necessary to avoid planetary catastrophe; we need to be ambitious, deploying our resources and testing our inventiveness at a pace and scale that is commensurate with the challenge; and we need to be fair, tackling climate change in a way that is socially just, that leaves nobody behind, and that meets and exceeds the expectations that people have for their lives and their communities.

I turn to the first quality—honesty. The Queen’s Speech references the Government’s commitment to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the world’s leading scientific body on the subject, says that the entire world needs to reach net zero by 2050 to avoid more than 1.5° C of warming. Given the UK’s historical responsibility for climate change, and our wealth and resources to do something about it, we clearly need to be ahead of the curve on this, and we need to be honest that 2050 is not good enough—not if we are serious about keeping our people safe. I urge the Government to revisit this target.

My hon Friend is making an excellent speech. COP26 is coming to the UK this year. Is that not an additional responsibility for the Government, not just a historical one? Is it not true that we have a responsibility for the entire planet as the president and host of COP26?

My hon. Friend is spot on. We have an opportunity now to show on the world stage that we really mean business when it comes to tackling climate change. We need to lead the world, and not just in terms of the industries we support in the UK. We need to lead by example and encourage other countries across the world to take as robust action as I hope we will do over the coming years.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that, despite the grand statements from the Government, they are missing all the targets that they are putting in place due to their own mediocre measures? Does she also agree that the cuts to renewable energy subsidies need to be reversed, and that we need to ensure that the Government work towards jobs in the green industries—unionised jobs? Rather than just talking a good game, the Government actually need to deliver.

We need to be honest that we are off track when it comes to meeting our targets, inadequate as they are. In fact, according to the Committee on Climate Change—the Government’s official advisers—the UK is even off track with regard to meeting its old target of an 80% reduction by 2050. The UK’s CO 2 emissions fell by only 2% between 2017 and 2018. Politics aside, that is nowhere near good enough. Let us be honest about what it means. It is not like failing an exam or a driving test. Failing on climate change means devastating fires sweeping across Australia and the Amazon. It means critical threats to food security, water security and the entire ecosystem, on which we all depend.

My hon. Friend is quite right. It is devastating to see the impact of what has happened in her constituency. We need to tackle the climate emergency, and we need a robust industrial strategy to sit alongside it. This is the biggest economic opportunity that the country has had in a generation. By tackling a huge societal and environmental need, we can support our industries and create the new green jobs of the future. Unfortunately, although we talk about targets, and about providing help here and there, we are not backing it up with a comprehensive industrial strategy that supports our industries. What was lacking in the general election campaign—although certainly not from the Labour party—was support for the steel sector, with a robust strategy ensuring that the steel industry plays a key role in our infrastructure projects and the technologies of the future. That is what I would like to see from this Government.

On honesty and ambition, the hon. Lady said that net zero by 2050 is not good enough, so I am sure she will welcome the fact that the Scottish Government have legislated for net zero by 2045. During the general election campaign, Labour started talking about net zero by 2030. Currently, 27 million homes rely on fossil fuels, so getting to net zero by then would mean changing over 52,000 homes a week every week from 1 January 2020 until the end of the decade. What are Labour’s plans for doing that?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comment. Certainly, there is no point in having a target without having an ambitious plan to deliver it. We know from the work of leading scientists across the world that the majority of the work that needs to be done even to reach net zero by 2050 must be done by 2030. That is an inescapable fact and that is why we have to move so quickly.

The Government have started to work towards insulating social homes. That is welcome, but it is not enough. We need to look at how we can support the UK’s 27 million homes to take part in a home insulation programme that will not only tackle climate change but help to bring down bills. We had an ambitious package for that but unfortunately we did not deliver that message strongly enough in our election campaign.

My hon. Friend is quite right. We are expected to encourage our localities and our regional governments to take part in the climate emergency and to do their best to deliver plans on a local scale, but they are not being given sufficient resources to be able to do so. That is not acceptable, because this is a national crisis and a local crisis. That goes right to the heart of the point about public transport. We need to make sure that all the workers involved in transport are given the opportunity to deliver transport that is eco-friendly, but they are not, particularly taxi drivers. Taxi drivers, in many cases, cannot afford to transition to electric vehicles as rapidly as we need them to, and we must provide the support that is necessary for them to be able to achieve that.

A little earlier, the shadow Minister implied that climate change was causing the raging fires in the Amazon and Australia. The fires in the Amazon are caused by mankind trying to create agricultural land, not climate change, as I would expect it is very wet out there. In Australia—this goes back to a question I asked earlier—75% of fires are caused by arson.

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s points, but we need to move beyond discussions regarding climate change denial and recognise the scale of the task ahead of ahead of us, because the science is clear. We are facing a climate emergency, and if we do not take robust action and lead the world, we will not have a world left—it is as simple as that.

I am very disappointed that the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has mentioned the 75% figure, which was also mentioned by the Foreign Office Minister who gave the statement on the bushfires last week. It is fake news that is being spread by climate change deniers in Australia. A letter to The Guardian from a number of well-renowned climate academics, including several from Bristol University, was published yesterday. I think the true figure for arson is less than 1%. I would like to make sure that that is absolutely on the record.

With reference to civil society groups like Extinction Rebellion who have been urging those in power to tell the truth about climate change, I was alarmed by reports that the Government’s response was to defend the recommendation to list them alongside neo-Nazi terrorists. That is an absolute disgrace. I urge the Secretary of State to speak to her colleagues about this. It is absolutely absurd that our school strikers and our climate activists who were trying to fight to be heard here in Westminster are being listed alongside terrorist organisations when they are simply trying to save the planet and deliver a world for their future and that of their children and grandchildren.

I have no doubt in my own mind that the landslips, the flooding and the collapse of roads is being caused by climate change: I come from the land of the mountain and the flood. Highland Council and all rural councils, not just in Scotland but all over the UK, are faced with the cost of the restoration works. Adding to the hon. Lady’s suggestion that the money is not there, does she agree that we need a dedicated income stream for the devolved institutions in the UK to pay for these repairs, because otherwise it is just going to get worse?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments because he is quite right. As I said earlier, we cannot keep having discussions about whether climate change is real. It is real, and we cannot detach ourselves from the situation in thinking that it is something that happens to other countries across the world and it is not going to affect us. It is already affecting us, and even if it does affect other countries across the world we will need to help the people in those countries. We also need to recognise that for a country like ours that is so reliant on imported food, any disruption to any part of the world disrupts our quality of life here. That is why it is so important for us to protect the people here in the UK by making sure that we lead across the world on this. I am sure that we have collaborative agreement across the House on that point.

Let me move on to the second quality that is required—ambition. The purpose of the Queen’s Speech should be to look forward—to set out the Government’s future plans—but most of the climate section looks backwards, sadly, to the Government’s record over the past 12 months, and even this is confusing to many. There is reference to £400 million of funding for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, but this was first announced in the 2017 Budget. The Queen’s Speech also references an industrial energy transformation fund, but this was announced in the 2018 Budget. We were told that 53% of electricity now comes from low-carbon sources, and that sounds good, but is it really ambitious enough? As any energy expert will tell you, electricity is the easy part. Only 11% of the UK’s total end energy consumption, including heat and transport, comes from renewable sources. Only 7% of the UK’s heat demand is met by renewable sources. As Labour set out at the general election, to get on track to a net-zero energy system, we need low-carbon electricity at levels of above 90% within a decade.

The Government reference their doubling of international climate finance, and this sounds good until you realise that this money is not new or additional and that the Government are effectively raiding the aid budget to pay for it. The Government want to ensure that everybody is within 30 miles of an electric charging point, but that does not sound particularly ambitious to me, to be honest. Nor does the commitment to end the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries when 60% of our plastic waste exports are actually shipped to OECD countries. Should not the Government be asking why we are producing all that pointless plastic in the first place and cut it off at source rather than dumping the problem overseas?

There are of course welcome features in the Queen’s Speech, such as the commitment to invest £800 million to develop the UK’s first carbon capture and storage cluster by the mid-2020s. But I remember the time in 2010 when the coalition made a £1 billion commitment to CCS before scrapping it again in 2015. Can the Secretary of State assure us that the UK’s carbon-intensive industries will not suffer the same fate as when the last promise was made? Why is it that as the climate crisis worsens the Government appear to be treading water and going backwards? Tackling the climate and environmental emergency and capturing the massive opportunities of the green economy require ambition. We needed to see an emergency plan for the first 100 days of Government—a plan for every year of this Parliament and a plan for the decade ahead. Sadly, the Queen’s Speech does not come close to this.

I now turn to the third and final quality—fairness. Rapid decarbonisation across our economy requires fundamental changes in the way we work and the way we live. Done badly, this presents big risks to people’s livelihoods. Only by socialising the costs and the benefits of decarbonisation will we be able to take the public with us through this change, but the Queen’s Speech does not set out a plan to do that.

To give an example, fossil fuel workers have powered the country for decades. We need a clear and properly funded plan for what will happen to those workers and their communities as we move to a renewable energy system. We tried to set out proposals at the election for a just transition fund. The absence of a plan for a just transition in the Queen’s Speech is a major omission, and I urge the Government to do better and start listening to and working with trade unions on this as quickly as possible.

It was more than 30 years ago that NASA scientist James Hansen presented his findings on climate change to the US Senate. Nobody could reasonably argue that we have done enough since then, and now we are running out of time. We cannot afford another lost five years. I urge the Government to work with us and Members across the House to correct the obvious shortcomings of the Queen’s Speech and their agenda, and to develop a package of measures that can secure the future all of us deserve. There is still time, but it is running out.

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13:20 Caroline Nokes (Conservative)

I want to pick up briefly on some of the comments that the Secretary of State made about the generation of clean energy. I urge her to ensure that, when we are generating green energy, it must be properly green. She also spoke of new technologies. I absolutely agree; there are many new technologies coming forward that will enable us to generate power and deal with waste in much greener ways, but we must scrutinise them incredibly carefully, to ensure we do not make mistakes that will be around for many generations to come.

I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s comments and the policies included in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. I particularly welcome the introduction of a landmark environment Bill, the introduction of an Office for Environmental Protection and the personal commitment of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to chair a new Cabinet Committee on Climate Change. The environment Bill will cement our position as a world leader on air quality, biodiversity and plastics reduction; I know I am correct on that because I am quoting directly from the Conservative research department brief—something that I would commend to all new Conservative Members.

My asks of the Secretary of State today are wholly in line with her and my aspirations for a reduction in carbon emissions, enabling us to meet our net zero target and supporting her goal of better air quality, and totally in keeping with the aim to reduce waste, including plastics. We simply cannot keep looking to incineration as a solution to landfill. It is not good enough, and it is not green enough.

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13:25 Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)

The word “revolution” means either an overthrow or a radical and pervasive change in society, especially one made suddenly. Have we really had a green industrial revolution? Have we had a revolution in Government? I would suggest that, if anything, there has been a counter green revolution, given that the Tory Government scrapped the Department for Energy and Climate Change, thus highlighting their priorities in recent years.

I have to acknowledge that we have made fantastic strides forward with renewable energy, but has it been a revolution? I would argue that, owing to the UK Government chopping and changing strategy, the process has been too stop-start to be classed as revolutionary. We have seen a welcome increase in the deployment of renewable energy, and UK Government support has facilitated that, but owing to policy changes, there have been too many peaks, troughs and, in some cases, catastrophic failures because of the actions of the UK Government.

The first example of that is onshore wind, which was deployed to great effect in Scotland, with prices falling rapidly due to the initial Government policies. It was a renewable energy revolution that Scotland embraced—one that saw 75% of gross electricity demand met by renewable generation in Scotland in 2018. However, the Tory shire prejudice against onshore wind means that the Tory Government are now blocking onshore wind across the UK, against Scotland’s wishes.

The Committee on Climate Change states that onshore wind capacity in the UK needs to increase from 13 GW to 35 GW by 2035 as part of the net zero transition, yet there is no route to market at present for onshore wind, despite it being the cheapest form of electricity generation. The former Secretary of State for Scotland should hang his head in shame for blocking the redeployment of onshore wind in Scotland. A report by Vivid Economics estimates that this could cost 2,300 jobs in Scotland and add £50 a year to everybody’s energy bills.

When we consider renewables and wind in particular, it is a reminder that the transmission charging regime is a straitjacket around Scotland. The punitive charges, especially in the north of Scotland, can be a deal breaker for some developments. The charging system needs a complete overhaul to allow deployment of renewable energy for maximum benefit.

In the past—in another policy change—we had the carbon capture fiasco, when the Treasury pulled £1 billion that was on offer, and which looked set to deliver carbon capture and storage in Peterhead. That was a wasted opportunity—money down the drain with nothing to show for it—and it cost 600 jobs in Peterhead and ruined the chance for the UK and Scotland to be a world leader in that technology. I am asking Westminster to please back Scotland’s CCS potential. With 35% of the available capacity in the whole of Europe, we could still be a world leader. However, it needs a fast start, and better investment in Scotland. The Committee on Climate Change has made it clear that carbon capture is not a wish; it is a necessity in order to hit net zero by 2050.

If we are to hit net zero in the UK by 2050, we need a proper green industrial revolution. We need the large-scale development of CCS, which, as well as creating jobs, will allow a long-term just transition for the oil and gas sector. We need radical measures to decarbonise our heat. Our domestic heating systems are the elephant in the room when it comes to the net zero target. I said earlier that 27 million houses relied on fossil fuels for heating, so a change in that mechanism for 27 million homes needs to be a proper revolution. It is likely that we shall see gas central heating boilers change to hydrogen boilers, and we know that hydrogen blending is a short-term transitional measure in decarbonising the gas network, but we need the strategies and policies in place, and the necessary changes in regulation to allow that to happen. There, too, we need concrete plans from the UK Government.

Scotland leads in energy efficiency, and we also lead in climate change registration targets: the first Government to call a climate change emergency; a net zero target for 2045; and a 75% target reduction by 2030. According to the Committee on Climate Change, Scotland has become the leading UK nation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. However, these latest targets are world-leading. Our 2030 target goes beyond what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states is required globally to limit warming to the 1.5°, as per the Paris climate agreement. We have also taken the difficult decision not to reduce air passenger duty when it is devolved. In the past couple of days the UK Government have been flip-flopping on that, and are all over the place when it comes to APD.

Going forward, the Scottish Government’s “Programme for Government” puts the green new deal at the heart of Government policy. Securing transition to net zero will be the primary mission for the Scottish National Investment Bank, supported by £130 million this year. The creation of the SNIB will provide £2 billion of long-term capital to businesses and infrastructure projects, to help transform the Scottish economy, and again reduce carbon emissions. That contrasts directly with the UK Green Investment Bank, set up by the Tory Government and then sold off without assurances of green aims or a UK focus.

We know that transport is a major carbon emitter. If we are looking at the roll-out of electric vehicles, I suggest that we need to look at Norway. It has undertaken a real revolution towards electric and low emission vehicles. In 2019, 58% of new car sales were of plug-in low-emission vehicles and 42% of overall sales were of fully electric cars. Meanwhile, here in the UK, flags are being waved and we are supposed to celebrate the fact that we have reached 3% sales of electric vehicles. According to the Committee on Climate Change, the UK deadline of 2040 for the phase-out of fossil fuel vehicles is way too far ahead, and even then the plans for its delivery are too vague. I suggest that the UK Government look to a small, independent, prosperous country such as Norway for inspiration, and to see how things can be done properly.

The UK has made strides regarding carbon emissions, but, as we have heard, there is a long way to go. While we look for solutions, nature is unfortunately undergoing its own climate change revolution. We have seen that with the bushfires in Australia, the 4 million hectares of Siberian forest that burned a few months ago, and the fires in Greenland, Alaska and Canada. The six hottest years on record have been the last six consecutive years, with warming oceans and melting ice. Things are critical, and Lord Deben, Chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said that the UK’s efforts to deal with climate change have fallen short. Indeed, in the interim progress report he states that

We have a Prime Minister who ducked out of TV debates on climate change, so we are looking for real leadership on this issue. I am glad that Scotland is showing such leadership, but I know it could do so much more if it were a small, independent country that was able to grasp the nettle in the way that Norway has.

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13:41 Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)

We in Furness have a tremendous opportunity to be at the forefront of the green industrial revolution. We vie with Hull to be host to the largest offshore wind farm in the world—a title I very much hope we will soon regain. Up the coast in Copeland is Sellafield, to which a number of my constituents make a daily journey, through the farmyard that I mentioned. We in south-west Cumbria are already pioneers of renewable energy, but there are further opportunities on our doorstep. Our coastline is the ideal place for a tidal barrage, the development of which would cement the Cumbrian coast as a northern powerhouse in renewable energy, skills and capability. The impact of such a concentration of renewables businesses in Morecambe Bay and the Cumbrian coast would be transformative. That remote and beautiful part of England could become the epicentre of the green industrial revolution. We have the people, we have the skills; we just need the chance, and I look forward to working with colleagues on the Front Bench to explore the viability of those bold projects.

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13:48 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

We also had an urgent question on Flybe yesterday. Again, in the Minister’s initial response, with regard to bailing out an airline and possibly cutting air passenger duty on domestic flights, there was no mention at all of the impact on carbon emissions and pollution. Surely, no matter what your views on whether Flybe provides an essential service, you have to mention climate change if you are serious about trying to reach net zero.

Another thing that really worries me is that the COP25 climate change talks took place during the election campaign. A number of us had been hoping to attend, but were obviously unable to because of the election. We have not had a ministerial statement on COP25. We should have had an oral statement, particularly as we are hosting COP26. COP25 is widely regarded as a failure—very little was achieved. I would have expected, at the very least, a written ministerial statement assessing what did not happen in Madrid and putting forward a plan for how we can get things back on track as we host COP26 in Glasgow later this year.

On UK Export Finance, it is a shame that the Secretary of State is no longer in her place. She was boasting about some of the work we do on reducing carbon emissions overseas, but, as the Environmental Audit Committee found, UK Export Finance spent £4.8 billion on fossil fuel projects overseas between 2010 and 2016. In fact, well over 90%—I think 95% or 96%—of the amount it spends on financing energy projects overseas goes on fossil fuel projects, rather than on cleaner renewable projects. That is almost equal to the total spending on international climate finance. There is no point boasting about what we do on the one hand, if we then finance the private sector to do damaging fossil fuel exploration on the other hand.

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14:15 Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)

I welcome the cross-party consensus on the environment evident from both Front-Bench speeches today. We may have differences between us over the speed and scale of the action required, but there is no doubt that everybody in this Chamber and community groups outside recognise that the environment is a key national and international challenge and that we as a Government have to lead the way and do what we can. The science is clear. If we continue to pump out greenhouse gases at the rate we are, the climate will get worse and temperatures will rise, with devastating consequences that we are starting to see increasingly regularly around the world. We need to bring that consensus to bear to put pressure on the UK Government to lead the way in trying to mitigate climate change and on other Governments to do more collectively.

There are disagreements over targets, however, as we have heard already today. I was interested to note that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), called for more ambitious targets. I urge her to reflect on the target in the Labour manifesto of seeking net zero by 2030 and to compare that with the target set by the Mayor for Greater Manchester, the former Labour Front Bencher, who on advice from the Tyndall Centre has set a framework to achieve net zero for Greater Manchester, where her constituency is situated, by 2038. It is quite possible to have a sincere endeavour to reach net zero carbon without necessarily agreeing on exactly what targets to set.

Ministers have recognised that fact in setting separate targets for their own sectors, Departments and activities. I applaud my right hon Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, whom I am delighted to see back in his place, for announcing at the party conference that he is actively considering bringing forward the date for the removal of diesel and petrol vehicles from the streets of the United Kingdom from 2040 to 2035. That is an excellent example of how different sectors in our economy may have to move at different paces to achieve net zero, mainly because of the state of the technological alternatives that exist thus far. We do not want to go down the route that a 2030 target, or even more ambitious targets, would require, namely the inflicting of unprecedented austerity on all our constituents. We must look with a degree of realism at how we will achieve these targets.

Many local authorities, in addition to Manchester, are setting targets. Last month my own authority in Shropshire set a climate change strategy framework which has been copied up and down the country. I hope that, over the next period, the Government will try to find ways of helping authorities to fulfil their plans. Many people feel that the current frameworks are fine words, but lack action. I think that we should use the COP26 conference, which we will host at the end of this year, as an opportunity to develop action plans across our economy and across local authorities, so that, with the leadership of our Government, a clear plan is set out during the year for how to achieve the net zero targets that are being set throughout the country.

Another Bill that we have been scrutinising is the Agriculture Bill, which will also be introduced as a result of Brexit. I agree with the points made by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) about the need to encourage better productivity in agriculture so that we can use less land to produce more food, as well as seeking alternative uses for land in order to improve carbon capture and all the other elements that are so important to meeting our climate change commitments. Land use is a critical issue. Members have mentioned peat bogs, and the Government have ambitious plans for the planting of trees. It is yet to be seen how achievable those plans are, and we look forward to holding the Government to account in respect of their targets.

I think that this country has every opportunity to lead the world in the green industrial revolution, just as we did in previous industrial revolutions. We need to take advantage of the exceptional skills that we have in our universities, and in sectors such as the automobile industry that can lead the world. We have touched on electric vehicles, but not on alternative technologies such as hydrogen vehicles. A company called Riversimple, which started in my constituency, has produced the first hydrogen fuel cell-powered car. We need to find ways, in the Budget and in the comprehensive spending review, to support alternative technologies and the ingenuity of people in our universities and in the City of London, where we are leading on green finance, so that the UK can lead the world in developing the right solutions to climate change, and we can achieve “net zero Britain” as soon as possible.

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14:25 Zarah Sultana (Labour)

The prospect of five more years of this Government is almost enough to make me despair, but my generation and I cannot afford to despair. If we do, by the time I reach middle age it will be too late, and the climate emergency will have become the climate catastrophe. I come here with a message from my generation and my constituents: we have no intention of letting that happen. We have seen Australia burn and Indonesia drown. We have seen our Earth teeter on the brink of ruin. We have heard the warnings of scientists. We know where the blame lies: it is with the 100 companies that are responsible for 70% of global pollution. It is with the billionaires who got rich polluting our rivers and pumping out carbon. It is with an economic system that puts the profits of the rich above the needs of the people.

Make no mistake: the climate crisis is a capitalist crisis, and the climate struggle is a class struggle across borders. Whether you are in Coventry or Canberra, Doncaster or Delhi, if you are working class you will suffer the worst effects of floods, fires, droughts and devastation while the rich build ever-higher walls to protect themselves. That is what is coming unless we take bold action. That is what will happen unless we unite working people across borders to say that our lives are more important than anyone’s profits. It is what will happen unless we put the power in the hands of the working class to put people and planet first.

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14:33 Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)

The UK started the industrial revolution that changed the face of the world, and since then, all major economies have been powered by coal, oil and gas. But today we stand on the precipice of change, and I believe that the UK is once again in a position to lead by example and ignite a global green industrial revolution. We are already on this path, having decarbonised faster than any other developed economy, with renewables up from just 6.1% when we took office to nearly 40% today. To put that into perspective, 75% of our electricity came from coal in 2010, but last year it was just 2%. That is a remarkable feat, and I want to pay tribute to colleagues across the House who have championed this change.

Last year, we committed to continue this journey with our landmark commitment to a net zero carbon economy by 2050—or sooner; we are allowed to beat our targets, and as we are Conservatives, we often do. Wind power has played a significant role in our success thus far, and we are now the world’s biggest producer of power from offshore wind. Last year it contributed a fifth of our electricity generation, overtaking nuclear for the first time in our history. This is progress. I fully support the Government’s commitment to increase our output to 40 GW by 2030, and I fully anticipate that this will become a reality, given that the cost of wind energy has fallen year on year through contracts for difference.

Chichester District Council recently installed eight new charging sites across the district, thanks to a £58,000 grant from the Office for Low Emission Vehicles. Our council is not alone: we have made progress nationally, and there are now more charging locations than petrol stations in the UK. Despite this, there are still more than 100 local authorities with fewer than 10 public charging devices per 100,000 people. I therefore welcome the £400 million charging infrastructure investment fund, and the consultation on requiring charge points to be built into all new homes with a parking space. Getting this right is not only a necessary piece of our net zero puzzle; it will also improve air quality. Of course, we could go faster, and the Transport Secretary has announced that he will look to move the petrol and diesel phase-out date forward from 2040 to 2035. Where we can, we will improve our targets.

Chichester District Council is doing its part. It already operates two electric vehicles for its daily enforcement patrols, and I will have further cause to speak about its work as it implements a climate emergency action plan that aims to make a 10% carbon reduction in the district year on year from now until 2025. Again, we can go faster if many more councils follow this example. I am sure that the council will also consider the steps that we can and need to take to make existing and new homes more energy efficient as we move towards zero carbon housing, which will be vital.

This Government have proved that we can grow our economy and tackle climate change. The real winners in the industrial revolution will be those who take the lead early on, as we are doing. We have already created 400,000 green jobs, and more will follow. The new climate economy project has forecast that bold action on climate change globally could deliver £20 trillion in economic benefits over this decade, so there is even a business case at this point. Later this year, we will welcome the world to Glasgow to talk about climate action at COP26, and I want our message to be simple: “We in the UK are taking a lead and so can you.”

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14:41 Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)

I will start with a few words about the maiden speeches that we have had the privilege of hearing this afternoon, and I single out that by the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana). I completely agreed with her powerful and uncompromising statement about climate change and austerity, and I completely agree that Parliament should be moved out of Westminster. I am perfectly happy to check out Coventry South as a possible new venue, but we should be decentralising far more of the institutions of government and Parliament.

There is new evidence every day of the increasing scale of the climate emergency. Just yesterday, scientific analysis showed that ocean temperatures have hit a record high as the rate at which our planet is heating increases. Yet, despite the weight of the irrefutable and overwhelming evidence, the UK continues to do far too little, far too late to cut greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of our economy. In a year when the COP26 climate talks will be hosted in Glasgow, it is time to demonstrate real climate leadership, not just talk about it. While I welcome the Government’s decision to invest in a green industrial revolution, I will set out how their approach is not up to the task in three fundamental ways.

We need Ministers to start speaking the truth. The Prime Minister claimed that the UK is leading the world on tackling climate change, and we have heard the same thing from other Members on the Front Bench, yet they have already been pulled up on that claim on several occasions, with people pointing out that, for example, the figures look an awful lot less impressive when we factor in consumption emissions. When we do that, we see that emissions have fallen by just 10% over the past 20 years, which is nowhere near enough. What is more, historical reductions are no indicator of future progress. Coal is now all but gone from the power sector, meaning that the biggest source of reductions so far has now been exhausted, and there is little sign of the policy required to ensure that the necessary reductions continue. The truth is that if the Government’s green revolution includes spending on new roads, bailing out failing airlines, and promoting more airport expansion, they will remain part of the problem, not the solution.

A target of 2050 is not leadership. When someone’s house is on fire, they do not dial 999 and ask for a fire engine in 30 years’ time; they want the fire engine right now because the crisis is happening right now. Targets on their own do not bring down emissions; action does. However, the Committee on Climate Change warns that

“actions to date have fallen short of what is needed for the previous targets and well short of those required for the net-zero target”.

While we are at it, let us examine what the “net” in net zero means. It means positively heroic—I would rather say criminally reckless—assumptions about the potential for negative emission technologies to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. Such technologies are almost entirely unproven, and even unknown in some cases, so let me be clear about what we are doing when we rely on those net negative emission technologies: we are simply passing the buck to our children and leaving it to them to sort out. That is not a moral position.

We must also be clear that the primacy of GDP growth as the overarching priority for our economy is the elephant in the room. Our house is on fire and that elephant is blocking the door to the emergency exit and devouring our efforts to decarbonise. Take the IPCC report that tells us that we have to reach net zero by 2050 globally: during that period—the next 30 years—the global economy is set to triple in size. That means three times more production and consumption each year. It will be hard enough to decarbonise the existing economy in such a short timescale, so the idea that we will be able to do it three times over is fantasy. If we carry on with growth as usual, halving emissions by 2030, as the IPCC has made clear we need to do, would require decarbonisation of the economy at its current size at 11% a year. That is five times faster than historical rates of decarbonisation and about three times faster than even the most optimistic scientists project is possible.

The IPCC has set out one lifeline scenario that does not rely on speculative and harmful negative emission technologies, and it is our emergency exit from climate breakdown. So what does it look like? Fundamentally, it is about scaling down material consumption in the richer countries by 20% globally, and with the richest among those richer countries leading the way. This cannot be about preventing poorer countries from developing; it has to be about the richer countries, and the richer people in them, doing their fair share. Transitioning away from the growth dogma is not about hurting people’s welfare—quite the opposite. It is about placing wellbeing centre stage, reducing inequalities, cutting waste and inefficiency, and prioritising quality of life over quantity of things. Instead of measuring progress in terms of GDP growth alone, we need to shift to indicators that tell us an awful lot more about whether people have high levels of wellbeing, whether there is clean air and clean water, whether we have a safe atmosphere, and whether we are reducing the gaping inequalities that diminish us all.

The transition we need is not just to net zero but to a new kind of economy. The green new deal is a transformational programme to transform everything from the way we produce and consume energy to the way we heat and cool our homes, the way we travel, the way we connect our communities, the way we grow our food and the way we work. It will create jobs and generate income, including tax revenues for the Government. It will be a real revolution that enables us to transform our society so that it is fairer, more democratic and works better for all of us, here and around the world, while safeguarding and restoring the ecological systems on which we all depend.

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14:51 Claire Coutinho (Conservative)

In Outwood, near Godstone, work began in 1665 on one of the oldest working British windmills. The owner is said to have watched the great fire of London rage 25 miles away from its roof, and I am proud that what East Surrey helped to pioneer in the renewable energy sector in the 17th century has now become one of the most remarkable success stories in the UK today. Not only are we the world’s leader in offshore wind, but seven of the 10 biggest wind farms in Europe are right here in the UK. I commend the ambitious environment Bill proposed in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech to forward this work, and I look forward to seeing the green measures in the upcoming Budget that will undoubtedly build on it.

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14:56 Jim McMahon (Labour)

This debate, which is both timely and long overdue, is about how our country can address the climate emergency while realising the economic benefits of developing a new settlement for communities that feel frustrated with the current offer. I do not claim to be any kind of climate expert—I have read the briefings, as other hon. Members have—but I can see the difference. There is a spectrum of views on the climate emergency in this House. I do not claim to have had the ability of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) to foresee it, but I can see what is in front of my eyes. I worry that some hon. Members are blind to what is staring us right in the face.

We all need to learn, to be educated and to form solutions together to address the climate emergency and to build a shared future. None of us can escape the extreme weather conditions or the impact of flooding and coastal change. Parts of the planet are burning today. There is a financial cost, but the human and wildlife cost is significant and the suffering is evident. We are seeing water shortages, we are seeing the effect on natural ecosystems, biodiversity and coral reefs, and we are seeing the impact on crop production. And we all know it is always the poorest in society who pay the price when crops fail or when water runs short.

I am proud to say that in Oldham the council is doing that; this week, it announced plans for a project called “Northern Roots”, whereby we would have an eco-park of 160 acres right in Oldham town centre and beyond, into the countryside. Another suggestion was for worldwide twinning. After the second world war, we made a massive effort to ensure that towns and cities in this country were connected to our counterparts in Europe. Why not do the same today for climate, so that children in Oldham can be connected with children in Bangladesh, and see the human impact of climate change and what it means for children of their age going to school?

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15:06 Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)

Health is definitely being affected too. For instance, according to Bromley Council health people, in one recent year there were 60 deaths across the six wards in my constituency because of long-term exposure to polluted air. I agree that we have started to tackle the problem, and we have had some success: carbon emissions have, apparently, been reduced by 25% in the past 10 years, and that is great; and all coal-fired generating stations will be gone in the United Kingdom by 2025. It is also really good news that we are the world leader in offshore power generation. We have increased renewable energy generation sixfold in the past 10 years. In 2018, renewable sources of electricity generation supplied 33% of our electricity needs, which is up from 6.9% in 2010. This is all good news. More and more people are buying and using cars powered by electricity, but they are damn expensive. By 2040, diesel and petrol cars should be almost off our roads, so it seems the future for our vehicles will be electricity, but let us not forget hydrogen, which is another source that can be harnessed to run vehicles. A heck of a lot of investigation as to how that can happen is being undertaken by the car companies.

Of course, our Government have a major part to play in reducing carbon emissions, and we have too; on 27 June last year, Parliament amended the Climate Change Act 2008 to include the commitment to net zero emissions by 2050. That is excellent news. Some say—I accept this—that we could get there earlier, and let us hope that that is the case, but at least we have a target. It would be superb if could get there as soon as possible. If we want to get to zero carbon emissions very fast, we have to accept the penalties: giving up our cars, diesel and petrol; travelling only by public transport; stopping flying off to exotic locations in aeroplanes; and changing our central heating systems.

We are decarbonising our economy faster, apparently, than any other G20 country, and we have reduced our emissions by 29% in the past decade, but here is the point: every breath we take is full of something called particulates, which, to be honest, I did not know much about until recently. These particulates—particularly something called particulate matter 2.5—are about 200 times smaller than a grain of sand, so they just float through the air and go into our lungs. They pass into our bloodstream and end up somewhere in our brain, or any of our other organs. I am told—of course, I am no expert, and I suspect that very few of us in the House are experts—that this causes illness and death. Having looked at the January 2019 report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I understand that only 12% of particulate matter comes from vehicles.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning particulate matter, which is an issue of air pollution, but we should differentiate air pollution and climate change. They are two separate matters and we need to tackle them differently.

As a good boy, I am now skipping through my pages, Mr Deputy Speaker, to make a final point. We produce about 1% to 2% of the world’s greenhouse gases. If we became carbon neutral right now, it might not make much difference, but that should not stop us doing it —we can become an example to the rest of the world—and the rest of the world is starting to follow and to deal with climate change. Bring it on: let us change the way we live so that the future is bright for those who follow us.

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15:14 Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat)

The green industrial revolution is nothing if not an ambitious title, and so it needs to be if we are to head off the existential threat of catastrophic climate change. Ambition is indeed what we need, but although we can give something an impressive and ambitious title, it is unlikely to earn a lasting legacy unless it actually delivers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s new deal is not still invoked today because of its catchy title, but because of the good it achieved. We marvel at the Victorian expansion of the railways not because the Victorians did good spin, but because the network was actually built. Nations are never built on public relations stunts.

Members can call me a glass-half-empty person if they like, but my fear for the Government is that they will make two significant mistakes as they decide how they are going to use their new majority. First, in order to mask the damage that the UK’s leaving the world’s biggest market will inevitably do to our economy and public sector, it is likely that the Government will max-out the credit card on revenue spending in a way that makes the recent Labour manifesto look fiscally conservative by comparison. Secondly, they will talk about big infrastructure investment, both the green and the not-so-green varieties, but in reality their fear of big government means they will not deliver anything that will make a true difference. In other words, the Government will show largesse when they should observe restraint, and restraint when they need to be ambitious. I hope I am wrong, because what we need is to be wise on revenue spending and ambitious on capital, particularly when it comes to green infrastructure. We must make the big strategic decisions needed to fight climate change.

In South Lakeland, we see nature changing before our very eyes, as climate change takes place with horrific consequences. Our communities are still reeling, four years on, from the devastating floods of Storm Desmond. Indeed, in the past decade or so we have been hit by three floods, each one of them classified as a one-in-200-year event. Storm Desmond flooded 7,500 homes and more than 1,000 businesses. We have to mitigate the impact of climate change on families and businesses while building the infrastructure to prevent a climate catastrophe. That is why Kendal’s flood prevention scheme must be delivered. All three phases of the flood scheme are now fully funded and I am glad that, after much pressure, the biggest concerns about the scheme have now been answered. In the place of every tree that must be removed as part of the scheme, six new ones will be planted in the town, and many of them will be semi-mature at the point of planting.

I was there the morning after Storm Desmond, and in the weeks after. I saw people’s lives ruined; families left destitute; and businesses wiped out. Even today, there are children who are still unable to sleep any time it begins to rain. I could not look people in the eye on Appleby Road, Shap Road, Sandylands, Ann Street or Mintsfeet Road if I did not do everything in my power to deliver them some kind of protection and some kind of peace of mind. After four years of promises—four years of fear whenever it pours; four years of incalculable strain on mental health for the old and young alike—how dare I claim to represent them if I do not see the flood defences delivered? The reality is that we are too late to prevent climate change, but we have perhaps a dozen years to avoid a major climate catastrophe with even more appalling human consequences.

Finally, if our efforts to tackle climate change are going to come anywhere near something that could be classified as a revolution, we need to transform public transport interconnection and that connection between buses and trains. The main public transport route to the Lake District is the Lakes line. Back in 2017, the Government cancelled the planned electrification of the Lakes line on the basis of a massive and flawed overestimation of the project costs. This was and remains a huge let-down for communities around the lakes, and yet electrification of the Lakes line is the easiest electrification project in the country. The 12-mile route carries hundreds of thousands of passengers each year, but it could carry four times as many if we introduced a passing loop at Burneside so that we could run a half-hourly service, and if it were electrified, it would significantly reduce its carbon emissions.

If the Government are serious about tackling climate change, they need to undo their foolish cuts to the electrification project, and the Lakes line is the perfect place for the Government to begin a green U-turn to reverse their mistakes of recent years. The Lakes line is short, but it is iconic. It carries significant numbers and could carry so many more. I plead with the Government to make their actions match their words. They should not just plug the gaps in public transport, but instead revolutionise the system. They should speak not of subsidies, but of investment that multiplies its value in the economy of the rural north. Targets are dangerous if they are simply a fig leaf to cover up a failure to act in the present. The Government must act now, and we will wait to see whether they do.

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15:25 Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)

Failing infrastructure is a big issue in my constituency. Our flyover, on which we have relied for many decades, suffered terminal damage in last summer’s heatwave. In Chelmsford, we have already seen how our infrastructure has to be climate change resilient. That is just one of the reasons why I have chosen to speak today on the green economy. Climate change is the biggest threat to our future. We have only one planet. The science is clear: we have to stop emissions, and we must achieve net zero.

I am proud that we are the first major economy to commit to net zero. We need to turn net zero into reality, and that means we need to have net zero embedded in all the decisions made at national and local government levels. We need a clear pathway.

The hon. Lady speaks of the importance of achieving net zero. How compatible is achieving net zero with the Government’s recent announcement that they will cut air passenger duty?

This year is a unique opportunity, with the UK hosting the world global climate change conference. I will come to the issue of transport emissions in a minute.

It is really important that we are ambitious in the targets we set, but it is also vital that we bring people with us. I look forward to being an observer at the citizens’ assembly on the climate emergency, which is happening in Birmingham over the next few weeks. There is no point in setting an ambitious target if it is not achievable, and the Opposition’s suggestion that we could achieve net zero by 2030 is disingenuous; it is neither honest nor true.

This country has already done a huge amount to decarbonise electricity. We lead the world in offshore wind and in ending the use of coal, but we can do more. It is great news that by 2025 we will be able to have completely carbon-free inputs to our electricity grid, but we know that it needs to be more resilient. It needs investment, which cannot all come from public funds; it needs private investment too, which is why we need a strong economy.

The Science and Technology Committee looked into electric vehicles’ batteries and resources in great detail last year, particularly the demand for lithium and cobalt—precious materials that are a globally constrained resource. The fight for global minerals will be an increasingly important part of foreign policy, and I would like to see that part of the net zero challenge addressed in the Foreign Office as well. I have driven a hydrogen-fuelled car and returned it safely, giving the keys back at the end. Using hydrogen in cars and potentially feeding hydrogen into our domestic gas network could bring huge benefits.

After my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) intervened, the hon. Lady said that net zero should be embedded in every Government decision. If the Government on a whim say, “We are going to review and reduce APD,” how is net zero embedded in that decision?

I am calling on the Government to look at how we can embed net zero in every single decision. I believe that getting cleaner, greener aircraft is one way to deliver connectivity, but more needs to be done on carbon offsetting. In the medium and longer term, we need to look urgently at the issue of aircraft emissions.

I turn to consumer choice. The biggest part of many consumers’ carbon footprint is how they heat their homes. More needs to be done on the decarbonisation of heat, so I warmly welcome the Government’s announcements to invest £9.2 billion in energy efficiency in our homes, schools and hospitals. However, I would also call for more green mortgages. We have one of the most innovative financial services sectors in the world, and should be able to do more in relation to how people finance their mortgages.

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15:51 Alex Davies-Jones (Labour)

One very small word has a huge world of meaning in south Wales, and that is the sort of economy and environment we want and deserve: tidy—a tidy economy, and a tidy environment. To achieve that means a commitment to the kind of green industrial revolution being promoted by the Labour party, not the wishy-washy promises of the UK Government. It means investment in future technologies, and it means working with the Welsh Labour Government on their groundbreaking environmental legislation, and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. From Pontypridd to Perth the climate crisis that we are facing impacts on us all, and I will use my voice in this place to keep the climate emergency at the forefront. I come from a seat that helped power the last industrial revolution, and for the sake of my generation, and the one to follow, I want Pontypridd to be at the forefront of the next one.

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15:57 Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)

Successive Governments have done well in creating the policy framework in which the green industrial revolution is taking place—a framework that encourages technological advance, innovation, and inward investment. The cornerstone is the Climate Change Act 2008 and the creation of the Committee on Climate Change. That was followed by the industrial strategy, the clean growth strategy, and sector deals, including that for offshore wind, which was launched by former Minister Claire Perry in Lowestoft last March. Subsequently, last summer we enshrined in law the legally binding target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050—the first major economy to do that. That target is robust and realistic, and in line with scientific expert advice from the Committee on Climate Change, which stated that there is no evidence that a target date earlier than 2050 is feasible.

We now need to get on with the policies that are required to reach net zero. Provided that we do not dither and delay, we may be able to achieve this target earlier. Such policies include those set out in the Conservative manifesto of increasing the UK’s ambition on offshore wind to up to 40 GW by 2030, enabling floating wind farms and committing £800 million to building the first fully deployed carbon capture and storage cluster by the mid-2020s.

In East Anglia, much has been achieved: 4 GW of offshore wind power is already operational off the East Anglian coast, accounting for over 50% of the UK’s installed capacity. With the potential developments in the pipeline, we can provide much of the Government’s new revised higher target. Investment to facilitate that further development is taking place: in autumn, the £10 million Energy Skills Centre was opened on East Coast College’s Lowestoft campus, and ScottishPower completed the new £25 million operations and maintenance base in the Hamilton dock. Later this year, CEFAS—the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science—will open its new offices and laboratory in Pakefield. It provides, and will continue to provide, the best fisheries scientific advice, but it is also now giving advice on offshore renewable energy to Governments across the world. It is a trusted bridge linking the public sector to academia and private industry.

I commend the Government for facilitating that investment, but now is not the time to rest on our laurels. We need to go the extra mile. The national policy framework must quickly move forward to its next stage, with the Government setting out a cost-effective pathway to achieving our net zero target. Net zero must be embedded across Government. All future departmental decisions, particularly those on spending, must pass a net zero test, to ensure that we achieve, and hopefully deliver beyond, the target.

The offshore wind sector deal has the potential to stimulate the required inward investment in components manufacturing, which will create longer and more resilient supply chains and more local jobs. We need to work with those businesses to ensure that they can realise their full potential. That will also require investment in infrastructure, particularly in ports such as Lowestoft. If we do that, then ultimately opportunities will open up for more UK businesses to develop and export low-carbon goods and services, thereby facilitating the global transition to net zero.

The oil and gas industry has been an integral part of the East Anglian economy for over 50 years. It still has an important role to play as we transition to net zero. Collaborative work is taking place with the offshore wind sector, with both learning from one another, and with further opportunities to pioneer inter-sector training and currency certification. Gas to wire technology and gas platform electrification, powered by offshore wind, are emerging as new advances that provide added resilience in supply while assisting in decarbonising traditional methods of generation.

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16:07 Anna McMorrin (Labour)

A huge area of the west Antarctic ice sheet is likely to break off into the sea—that was on the news today. Vast cracks have been spotted that could lead to a large part of the glacier breaking away. When my father was there over 50 years ago, he saw a very, very different Antarctica. Such a lot has changed since then, and not for the better. The warming of the oceans is posing a considerable risk. People may ask, “Antarctica is a long way away; what difference does that make to the lives of people living up and down the UK?” Altogether, the west Antarctic ice sheet contains 2.2 million cubic kilometres of ice. If it collapses and melts, it will raise sea levels by more than three metres, completely submerging huge parts of our coastline, including London and Cardiff. Moreover, it could happen more quickly than scientists once thought, if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise as they have been. The ice melt is being driven by ocean temperatures rising far quicker and at greater depths than previously thought.

Despite that, the Government are on track to miss all their climate targets and will not meet our fourth or fifth carbon budgets. The Government’s plans for reducing emissions are just not good enough if we are to meet our targets by the early 2030s, let alone the net zero target of 2050, which, incidentally, will be far too late to prevent the most catastrophic climate change. The world is not coming together to address these issues. The United States, one of the world’s top polluters, has begun its withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and the UK Government are still spending billions subsidising fossil fuel projects across the world through UK Export Finance. I pay tribute to Mary Creagh, the former Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, who led the inquiry that showed how billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was being spent in that way through UK Export Finance. When will this stop? When will the Government take climate change seriously?

A bold and transformative green industrial revolution across the UK could change lives, but it must match the scale of change and also undo the environmental change brought about by the first industrial revolution. Let us also ensure that it creates clean and secure jobs in areas impoverished by deindustrialisation, such as the south Wales valleys, which lost thousands of jobs. We can invest there with renewable energies and provide those opportunities, but we need more than just words; we need a green industrial programme that delivers climate and economic justice—because we can do both.

The green industrial revolution will also create much-needed jobs and provide new skills for young people. It is an opportunity to build apprenticeships and stable, secure jobs and income. It is about making sure that the 16-year-old school leaver who may be worried about his or her long-term future has a future, whether it is helping to build green homes or manufacturing, fitting or maintaining renewable energies and technologies. Green apprenticeships and opportunities for new companies must be given the right support, commitment and opportunities by the Government, and must lead to a societal change for the families who really need it: the families who depend on those jobs and on a stable, firm economy—a green economy.

The green industrial revolution will mean cleaner air to breathe, cleaner towns and city centres, and more green spaces. The food security crisis that would come with a climate crisis, leading to higher food prices, would be mitigated, and food could be locally sourced and cheaper and easier to source. This new life, this clean and green new life for our family, would lead to a massive improvement in wellbeing and mental health and perhaps a reduction in chronic diseases such as obesity, thereby—critically—reducing dependence on the national health service. The groundbreaking Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which I was proud to help to develop during my time in the Welsh Government, leads the way in offering opportunities for that to happen, but we need to see it happen throughout the United Kingdom.

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16:18 Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)

It is also a pleasure to participate in this important debate on the Government’s vision and ambition for a green industrial revolution. As I pointed out in an intervention at the start of the debate, Cornwall is ready to play a very active part in that revolution. It has a proud history of innovation and being at the forefront of technological advances, and it is already playing its part in the area of renewable energy. We already have very advanced wind and solar generation power, and we are about to start producing geothermal energy: we are the only place in the UK that will be able to do that. Cornwall will also be at the forefront in the extraction of lithium and other precious minerals that are necessary for battery technology.

Finally, coastal areas bear the brunt of the impact of climate change, and we see that time and again in Cornwall. The extreme weather events that we used to think happened every 50 years now occur on an almost annual basis. We need to prepare our coastal communities for the impact of climate change. A big area of concern in Cornwall is coastal erosion, which is accelerating before our very eyes. Many of the communities that I represent face the impact and costs of erosion, so I urge the Government to do more to protect those communities from the impact of extreme weather and storms. If we spend a few million pounds now, we will save tens or hundreds of millions of pounds in the years to come.

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16:27 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

It is just weeks since the general election, during which all Opposition parties proposed detailed plans for tackling the climate emergency and getting us to net zero emissions as soon as possible, and I have been encouraged by how the scientific consensus and the political consensus have matched. We have known for over a year that we need to keep global temperature rises to below 1.5° C and that our old target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions must change to net zero by 2050 at the latest.

The Opposition parties offer similar commitments to climate action, and we share similar thinking on the science and technology. We share similar aspirations for a just transition and for ambitious targets, but where is the Government’s plan? Climate action is notable by its absence from the Government’s plan for this new Parliament, and I have a term for that: climate action delay. The climate emergency is real, and we need urgent action now. Climate action delay is no better than climate change denial, because if we delay now, we will fail to keep temperatures below the threshold of 1.5° C necessary to avoid global climate chaos.

What does climate action mean in practice for transport, for energy and for our homes? In transport, net zero means that cars, lorries and buses need to be powered without using fossil fuels. For us that means no sales of new petrol or diesel cars from 2030; for the Government the target is 2040, which is too late. Is there a scientific reason for a 10-year difference? No. It is climate action delayed.

The next sector is electricity. In net-zero Britain, electricity must come from renewables and green hydrogen. For us that means massive new investment in renewable energy such as offshore and onshore wind, solar and marine power, starting now. No one should be in any doubt that this is a big challenge. Electricity usage will go up enormously as we transition from natural gas for heating and petrol and diesel for vehicles.

Our target is to generate 80% of our electricity from renewables by 2030. Net zero means completely transitioning out of fossil fuels in this sector. What would the Government do if they were serious about a net-zero Britain? They would support a fast and extensive roll-out of renewable installations, including onshore wind and marine power. They would demonstrate that there will be no fossil fuel extraction in the UK, and they would put a clear stop to fracking now. They would reduce and remove all fossil fuel subsidies.

The third sector is the energy efficiency of our homes. To get to net zero, we need to stop heating our homes with natural gas and oil. We will succeed in that transition only if we have an ambitious programme of insulating our homes to the highest energy efficiency standard feasible.

We know what needs to be done, and the technology is there. We can build new homes to high sustainability standards. What is this Government’s plan? Little or nothing. They are consulting on or suggesting making some changes five years from now. Once again, that is climate action delayed. We cannot afford delay any longer. We need a clear and decisive plan for how to adjust and change almost every sector to deliver net zero, starting now.

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16:42 Clive Lewis (Labour)

Later this year, the UK will host the COP26 gathering of nations still struggling to set up a robust framework to avoid climate breakdown. It is an opportunity for Britain to lead rather than just to host. Are there any measures in this Queen’s Speech to show how we will do this? No, of course there are not. Has anyone actually told the PM that one cannot just turn up to COP and go, “Bing, bang, boom, bong, phwoar, climate crisis!”? We have to stand on our record, and this Government do not have one. Members do not have to take my word for it. In its latest assessment, the Committee on Climate Change said that the UK is not

Ultimately, I fear that nothing we say in this place will change the mind of this Government. The entirety of this Government’s mandate has been founded on one thing, which is to get Brexit done—it pains me to say that. When we understand that this is a hard right political project, we will understand that this Government have no intention of facing up to the climate crisis. Brexit has always been about trade deals that do not give a damn about climate, inequality or the global south. It is about deregulation that lets corporations raping our planet do so with ever more impunity. That is what Brexit is actually about, and that is why the Queen’s Speech has failed even the most basic of tests.

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16:49 Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)

I have risen to speak in support of the green industrial revolution. I looked up the word “revolution”, and it might not be what the Government intend, as the definition in the dictionary is “to overthrow the Government”, which would not help us to achieve the green industrial revolution. We certainly need a definite and fundamental change, and I believe there is an appetite for that in Government. I have been an MP for four and a half years, and a number of times I have discussed with colleagues and members of the Cabinet how we achieve a more decarbonised and greener economy. I have no doubt that there is the will, appetite and determination, as well as the talent and expertise, to deliver that.

I welcome the intention behind the green industrial revolution and the £22 billion that will be spent each year on green technologies for efficient homes, renewable energy, clean heating and electric vehicles. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has heard me speak on this subject before that I will discuss two areas: transport and housing.

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16:56 Charlotte Nichols (Labour)

Let me turn to my own new role. Every Member of this House has a solemn duty to their constituents, and it is a duty that has rarely been so important, as we stand on the precipice of environmental catastrophe. I am proud that Labour-led Warrington Borough Council has declared a climate emergency, and I will be working with it to deliver a green industrial revolution that puts power, in its most literal sense, into the hands of our community. We have a long-standing science and engineering base in the town. Indeed, it is not uncommon to run into nuclear physicists at the pub. Warrington is strategically located to benefit from developments in the wider region in hydrogen gas and tidal power, among other sources of zero and low-carbon energy, so a real, green northern powerhouse is right at the top of my agenda, building on my work on a just transition with the trade union GMB prior to entering Parliament.

There is a tired adage that we do not make anything in this country any more, but while Warrington has a proud industrial heritage that earned it its nickname “The Wire”, it is not about being nostalgic about some halcyon days past. Warrington has a proud industrial future too. We manufacture a fifth of the world’s gin in Warrington North at the G&J distillery, which has been going since 1761, and there is a really thriving local craft gin scene with local businesses like the 3 Pugs distillery started in Orford. But if gin is not your thing, don’t worry—we also have fantastic breweries like Burtonwood Brewery and the Coach House Brewing Company, and many fantastic pubs to enjoy their beers in. But it is not just about booze. According to Make UK, there are 255 manufacturers in Warrington North. The future of manufacturing in Britain depends on the cost and security of energy as we decarbonise, making today’s debate very important.

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17:03 Alex Sobel (Labour)

Politics, as we know, is a conversation about who we are and what is important. I am glad that so many colleagues across the House have come together today to highlight the importance of passing a liveable planet to our children. The UK can stand by its record of passing the first ever Climate Change Act under the last Labour Government and, more recently, the net zero commitment under this Government. I am thankful that, in this country, there is a broad consensus on the principle of the climate emergency. For some time, the climate emergency will be the greatest threat multiplier that we face. For our country, for our way of life and for generations to follow, we can and must do all we can to tackle that threat and build a smarter, greener and more equitable world as we do so.

What concerns me is that the Government are knowingly under-delivering on their own climate action. We have a climate gap between our rhetoric in this House and our action in this country, and this Queen’s Speech does little, if anything, to fill that gap. The point has been repeatedly made by Conservative Members in the short time since the new year, in the build-up to the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, that this is a priority for them. That is all well and good, but as Greta Thunberg likes to say: action, not words. It is actions that the planet needs.

First, there is no mention in the Queen’s Speech of lifting the ban on onshore wind in England, but there should be. Polling proves that many communities are keen to invest in wind technology, so that they can benefit financially, bringing the community together and increasing local opportunities. Onshore wind is also one of the cheapest renewable technologies. By effectively banning it, this Government are making decarbonisation more expensive by approximately £50 per household.

Finally, I would like to touch on the big climate change event of this year, COP26. A huge diplomatic effort will be required, especially with the United States, to bring everyone constructively to the table. The UK must have addressed its climate gap by then and have its own house in order if we want to command any kind of presence, authority or respect at that conference and have a hope of delivering the kind of breakthrough moment that we had in Paris in 2015, when I was present as the lead councillor for climate change on Leeds City Council. Make no mistake: the Paris agreement is a high bar, and I have yet to see evidence that this Government will achieve a comparable breakthrough.

The Secretary of State and the previous Member for Devizes, Claire Perry—now COP president—are aware of the good work of the Powering Past Coal Alliance. I urge him to extend an invitation to all countries, especially those that are still considering investment in new coal-fired power stations, particularly using UK Export Finance credit, that they might join this alliance, and that we might provide them with whatever assistance they require for the transition from coal to renewables. I also urge him and his counterparts to consider a “net zero club” of countries that have committed to join the UK in increasing their ambition, with legislation, not just to reduce their emissions but to bring them down to zero, and to consider getting that number to include every nation at COP. Having that global net zero commitment will achieve an agreement of the type that we saw in Paris, and will create a net zero goal for the entire planet—but only if the UK can deliver our own end and fill that gap between now and November, when COP takes place in Glasgow.

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17:10 Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)

Since devolution we have seen the reopening of the Borders railway, and routes from Hamilton to Larkhall, Stirling to Alloa and Airdrie to Bathgate, with only the former line not electrified. Virtually the whole central belt network now runs on electric lines, which contrasts with years of stagnation and neglect. That programme continues, with preparatory work beginning for the entire west of Scotland network to run under the wires, and longer-term goals of electrification north of Perth and the complete decarbonisation of Scotland’s railways within the next 15 years.

In contrast, the UK Government cannot decide whether they want to make existing fuels cleaner and less polluting, with a decision on E10 petrol still lying in the long grass where it was kicked. Over recent years, those on the Treasury Benches and their Departments have been in a state of complete paralysis. Electrification projects are cancelled on a rolling basis, including in Windermere, on the Nottingham to Sheffield line and in Hull, south-west Wales and Coventry. Towns and cities have yet again been left behind, and jobs and economic growth directly connected to decarbonisation have been lost. Meanwhile, Crossrail spirals out of control and over budget and Crossrail 2 is in the pipeline as if its predecessor never happened. Billions are spent on extension after extension to London’s underground and overground. Why concentrate yet more spending, infrastructure, economic output, resources, and ultimately people in a single city, when we know that a fairer allocation of economic power will result in a better environmental outcome and a less unequal society?

What the shadow Secretary of State said— Hansard can ask him later what he said. If the Government want to be serious about the revolution, that short-termism has to stop. Spending seven times more per person on transport investment in London than in north-east England is not the answer to anything. Learn the lessons from Scotland, make decarbonisation a priority, and the economic rewards of the transition can be spread across the UK.

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17:19 Olivia Blake (Labour)

Today, the seat also hosts thousands of students and researchers from all over the world; students who travelled to Sheffield to study at both our world-class universities. I am delighted to represent this young, diverse and multicultural community. Sheffield is such a great place to live and work that so many of our students stay on in the city after they have finished their studies, meaning that we have one of the highest graduate retention rates in the country. However, we also have our problems. I know that by convention maiden speeches are less political than the other things that are usually said in this House, but I hope Members will forgive me for bringing up austerity, the climate emergency and Donald Trump.

Despite the history of Robin Hood, many areas still suffer from massive inequality. Some of the most deprived areas in the city sit alongside some of the least. In fact, on polling day this was stark. We not only spoke to people on the so-called millionaires’ row, but to families who had been hit by the bedroom tax. Our students are saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt, and mental health issues are on the rise for our young people. Our schools have suffered almost a 10% decline in funding per pupil and inadequate budgets for the needs of our children, with the previous Government acknowledging that they did not give us enough funding for our children with special educational needs and disabilities. As a councillor, I saw first hand our local government budgets cut, cut and cut again. Government grants have been reduced by 50% over the past decade, making it impossible to deliver services—never mind tackle the climate crisis.

The countryside in my constituency is beautiful, but it is under threat. The moorlands are on fire, burnt for grouse shooting. Those acts of vandalism have made flooding more likely and are also putting important species in the area, such as the bilberry bumblebee, at risk. Across the country, peat fires have thrown millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Protecting biodiversity is a key part of tackling the climate crisis, which is why the national park, in its 70th year, is so important to constituents and visitors alike. As we see biodiversity decrease locally, we also see the global consequences of the climate crisis. As the world heats to perilous levels, wildfires have swept across California, dangerous heatwaves and floods have ravaged India, and now fires consume Australia. Across the globe, vast movements of people have left their homes because the coastlines that they once occupied have disappeared or the land that they cultivated has dried up. They join refugees fleeing war and persecution. Those numbers will only increase with President Trump’s actions in the middle east and his climate denial. I am proud that Sheffield calls itself a “City of Sanctuary”—a city that welcomes and defends migrants.

The climate chaos that we all face is unprecedented. Now is not the time for propriety; it is the old way of doing things that brought us to this crisis. Some of the industrial relics of that old way still stand in my constituency, but now we need radical change, and the only way we will get that is by taking radical action now. It is not just urgent; it is well overdue. The science is clear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the absolute hard limit for transforming to a zero carbon economy is 2050, but the world is burning now. That is why I support my party’s pledge to work towards a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

To meet that challenge, we need to channel the spirit of industry and innovation that lingers along the rivers and valleys of my constituency in order to restructure our economy fundamentally. Rather than cuts, it is time to invest, not in the CO 2 emitting factories of the first industrial revolution, but in the sustainable green energy infrastructure and high-skilled jobs of the green new deal.

is if we look after our environment. There is no social justice on a dying planet. There is also no way to tackle climate catastrophe without changing the inequalities at the heart of our economy, and without redistributing power from those at the top to the rest of us.

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17:28 Matt Western (Labour)

Almost 15 years ago, we were told by Lord Stern and others that we had to act urgently to address climate change. Former Vice President Gore called it right when he said that we faced an inconvenient truth. Now, not a week goes by when there is not a catastrophe caused by climate change somewhere across the world, including floods in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, Jakarta and Indonesia, or caused by Storm Idai in Mozambique. Most recently, we have seen the devastation of communities and the ecological destruction caused by the fires in Australia, Alaska and many other parts of the world.

The underlying climate trends are even more alarming. Perhaps most concerning of all was the report published this week in the periodical, “Advances in Atmospheric Sciences”, by a team from Penn State University. It concluded that the heat in the world’s oceans had reached a new record level in 2019, which suggests the “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet. The world’s oceans are the truest barometer of the climate emergency, as they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouses gases produced by human activity. According to the analysis reports of the past five years, those five years have been the warmest recorded for the oceans. The past 10 years are also the hottest on record.

“Firms that align their business models to the transition to a net zero world will be rewarded handsomely. Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist.”

Parliament needs to do the same. It needs to act and show leadership with its own pension fund. What is incontrovertible and irrefutable is still being challenged by the deniers. That is why policy is so vital and why the world’s first climate change Act, passed of course by the Labour Government in 2008, was so important. It provided a true vision of what could be. It showed that we could address the risk of climate change while recognising the huge economic opportunity it presented. That is why the report from the independent Committee on Climate Change is so concerning. It states that the UK is off track to meet both its fourth carbon budget and the fifth carbon budget for 2028-32. Given the more recent statistics showing it is off track by an ever- widening margin, the alarm should be even greater.

When we reflect on the past 15 years—the period since the Stern report—we realise just how great the challenge is and how little time we have. As Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, has warned, the aim of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is

“too slow to address catastrophic climate change”.

There is much to be done. It is all about our ambition, and what the Government choose to do. However, addressing the climate emergency is not an option but an urgent necessity. We should be thankful for the students, the young people, who have been campaigning widely outside our schools and in our town centres. How on earth can a group such as Extinction Rebellion, which is so peaceful in its actions, be considered to be a terrorist organisation? All that those people are trying to do is raise this issue and make sure that the Government act with the urgency that is demanded by society.

Let me end by saying that it is crucial for us to lead by example. Whether through the fleet of vehicles run by the Government or through our pension fund, we must show that we are serious about addressing the climate emergency. I believe that we must divest from fossil fuels in the parliamentary pension fund.

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17:38 Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)

I could have spoken on any number of subjects in the Queen’s Speech debate—the NHS, local government, social care, the police—but I chose to speak in this debate not only because we need urgently to address climate change and global warming, which could see large parts of my constituency under water in the not too distant future, but because the need to tackle the climate crisis provides unique opportunities for former manufacturing-based coastal communities such as mine.

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17:44 Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)

Turning to the subject of this debate, I was delighted to hear that the UK Government will finally be taking steps to address greenhouse gas emissions. Equally, I was disappointed, but not even slightly surprised, to find that the target date for doing so is sadly 30 years in the future. It is not so much too little too late as turning up with the fire safety manual long after the building has burned to the ground. We had a statement just last week about the devastation caused by the worst Australian bushfire season ever, and I pointed out then, as I will point out again now, that Australia is not the only place on fire. We have seen the Arctic burning, too, with huge swathes of Siberian forest on fire in Greenland, Alaska and Canada. Fires in the Amazon are also beginning to threaten the ecosystems of the rainforests.

The UK Government claim to want to lead the way in addressing climate change, but they do not seem to be doing much to address climate change, so let us take a donder with the IPCC. The latest report tells us that three quarters of transport emissions are from road transport, so if the Government were serious about addressing climate change there would be massive investment in electric vehicle technology—charging points and other infrastructure, to be sure, but also research into better, less expensive technologies. Where is the commitment to do that? Where is the commitment to build more capacity for rail freight and take some of the wagons off the road?

The biggest emissions culprit is heating and power. Will there be a zero rating of VAT on renewable energy from construction to use? The Government will say they have no power to do that until they are free of the EU, so when can we expect to see that Brexit benefit?

There is no evidence that this Government intend to do anything actually to lead on climate change, and there is a similar lack of evidence that they have any idea of what to do about air quality. The 25-year plan has an ambition, if that is the right word, to reduce five air pollutants by half in 11 years—that is only five of the pollutants being pumped into children’s lungs, and maybe only reducing them by half, eventually. It is like having an ambition to paint every third plank of the garden shed, but only halfway up and only at some point in the future. In the meantime, the garden shed is rotting away and will collapse long before the painting is finished.

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17:52 Andy McDonald (Labour)

On the green industrial revolution, the issue at hand, the absence of commitments in the Queen’s Speech means it would appear that the Government think that because they won a general election with a campaign that ignored the climate change crisis, they can continue to ignore that crisis. I know that Government Members will protest at that characterisation, but it is accurate. The Prime Minister refused to attend a debate on the climate crisis during the general election campaign precisely because he knows it is true that the Conservatives have not addressed and do not plan to seriously address the climate crisis. [Hon. Members: “Rubbish!”] Conservative Members shout “Rubbish”, but this was a Prime Minister who during that campaign took a plane from Teesside to Doncaster. Let us just think about that. He was getting on a jet that could hardly have become airborne before it had to land again—it is ridiculous. Of course the Government’s own advisory body on climate change, the Committee on Climate Change, stated that

This inaction not only condemns us to a more dangerous and insecure world, but exacerbates existing social and economic problems in the UK by failing to take advantage of the opportunities presented by decarbonising the economy to create well-paid, secure jobs and reduce social and regional inequalities. Transport is the problem sector for the UK. It is the UK’s single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and the worst-performing sector on reducing carbon emissions. Indeed, transport emissions have risen since 2010. This is both a crisis and an opportunity. There is an opportunity to invest in our transport networks. We could upgrade our railways, have a long-term vision of their electrification and invest in them going forward. We could invest in bus services throughout the entire country, and in e-bikes and electric vehicles. This would not only achieve the sort of carbon emission reductions needed to meet our climate targets, but close the huge regional inequalities in transport spending and create thousands upon thousands of skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs as part of a green industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, the Government do not plan to take that opportunity. Indeed, within the past 24 hours they have responded to the troubles at Flybe by reportedly allowing the company to avoid paying more than £100 million in aviation tax—air passenger duty. Plotting to slash aviation tax in a climate crisis makes a mockery of the Government’s supposed commitment to cutting carbon emissions, and also demonstrates that they have little plan to support industry and create jobs beyond handing out tax breaks. Instead of handing out taxpayer-funded tax breaks for a small number of wealthy passengers, the Government should be electrifying the core rail network, boosting investment in the railway and slashing fares to encourage people to take the train. [Interruption.] I see the Transport Secretary chuntering about fares, but he has presided over a further 2.7% increase in rail fares, taking the rise to more than 40% since 2010. We can compare and contrast that with the Labour offer of a 33% reduction in rail fares.

Without a genuine green industrial revolution, the Government are condemning the country to economic stagnation and a climate crisis. The Labour party did not win the recent general election, so sadly we cannot implement our programme, but the need to address the climate crisis and revitalise our economy remains every bit as urgent.

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18:04 The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)

There have been many eloquent and good contributions to this debate. They clearly set out the huge challenges that we face in decarbonising our economy. One point I would make straight off the bat is that, although there has been quite a bit of heat and light in this debate, there is actually an awful lot on which we entirely agree. This House has, after all, voted under this Government to get to zero carbon by 2050. There is almost an auction of ambition about how we get there in the fastest way. It is right and proper that we challenge each other with different ideas, many of which have come through the contributions this afternoon, in order to come up with new ideas. Some of them are, I think, ideas that could be taken further, particularly in the field of transport. Other ideas, I know, have problems. None the less, all were presented and suggested in the best possible light and, because of that, I think that all parts of the House will agree that this has been a very good and useful debate this afternoon.

With hon. Members’ permission, I will make a little progress first. I have not even touched on anyone else’s speech yet, so let me talk about this afternoon’s debate. We know that global warming is one of the biggest threats to humanity. That is why tackling climate change is so important, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy set out some of the measures we are taking.

Let us not forget what this country has achieved so far. We ratified the Paris agreement. More than half our electricity—53%—now comes from low-carbon sources. We fostered green industry, which is now worth £45 billion; and that goes to my previous point that we need to have a period of transition for industry. The new green sector now employs 430,000 people, so it is growing all the time. We are setting a net zero target, and have committed around £2 billion to green growth initiatives. An awful lot is happening.

To manage these great efforts, we know that there has to be a framework—an industrial strategy. The clean growth strategy, which details our carbon-cutting plans through to 2032, is exactly that document. In July we published our green finance strategy to trigger investment in green infrastructure technologies and services, from offshore wind to energy-efficient housing. Of course, the Prime Minister will chair the new Cabinet Committee on Climate Change to help co-ordinate the effort of the whole country to get to zero carbon. Later this year the UK will have the honour of hosting the climate change summit in Glasgow.

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