13:45 Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)

I warmly welcome the opportunity to debate the UN framework convention on climate change process—a subject in which the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change takes a close interest, and will go on doing so during 2014. Our previous report on the subject was published in July 2012, and I will run through some of the recommendations.

In general terms, we attach importance to the UNFCCC process. It is the international route for trying to reach agreement on how to tackle climate change. It is clearly—evidence shows this—a tortuous route, so while we affirm our belief in its vital importance, we should not feel dismayed or frustrated by the lack of progress. There is a danger in thinking that unless we reach a global agreement, nothing much will have come out of this. I believe that the existence of the UNFCCC process is a valuable spur to countries doing things individually. Many of the commitments that have been made on emissions targets and the progress on achieving climate change legislation around the world have resulted, at least in part, from the fact that we have the parallel process taking place—international negotiations—which focuses the minds of individual Governments.

In that context, I commend the work of GLOBE International, with which many members of my Committee and several hon. Members present are closely engaged, in helping to spread awareness of the benefits of climate change legislation. As we speak, the Chinese version of the latest GLOBE legislative study is being unveiled in Beijing by some of our colleagues. Does my right hon. Friend the Minister want to intervene?

Let me deal with some of the key recommendations and the responses to and outcomes of the report—first, on monitoring, reporting and verification. We recommended that the Department of Energy and Climate Change push for a single accounting regime to ensure effective MRV. DECC agreed that a common accounting framework was necessary and hoped to see progress on that at Doha. The outcome was a number of changes to the MRV framework to improve transparency and accountability.

On the role of the UNFCCC, the Committee considers it the leading multilateral forum through which to combat climate change. The Government share that view. We should not allow the rather tortuous progress to be a reason to despair. Alongside the international process, the bottom-up process should give every possible encouragement. We increasingly see individual countries making national commitments.

I shall touch briefly on one or two other recommendations. The Government agree with the Committee that we should work with industrial sectors and stakeholders to develop a sectoral trading scheme between developed and developing nations. The Government also accepted the Committee’s recommendation that the second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol should last eight years and include a review clause to allow for more ambitious emissions targets, if necessary. They also agree that efforts should be focused on developing the Durban platform, because countries such as Canada, Russia and Japan were unlikely to sign up to a second Kyoto period.

“there has been, yet again, a very big mismatch between the scale and urgency of action required to effectively manage the huge risks of climate change, and the political will and ambition that has been displayed in Doha. Current commitments and pledges by countries to reduce emissions by 2020 are clearly not consistent with the goal of giving the world a reasonable chance of avoiding global warming of more than 2 centigrade degrees. We are headed on current plans for likely increases of 3 centigrade degrees or more”.

Gladly. I am pleased that my hon. Friend has raised that point. I was suggesting a 30% target for the EU, rather than for just the UK. I believe it is highly probable that global concern about climate change will intensify substantially in the next 15 to 20 years, and that by the mid-2020s large areas of the globe will be covered by emissions trading and have carbon pricing mechanisms. It is also likely that that will be supplemented, in many countries, by carbon taxes. If that turns out to be the case—of course, I cannot be sure it will—I believe that countries that have moved more quickly towards low-carbon transport systems and electricity generation, and energy-efficient low-carbon buildings of all kinds, will have an economic advantage, as well as their having done the right thing environmentally. The probability is that in that situation the costs attached to fossil fuel consumption will become very high.

I entirely accept that if my expectation is wrong, and if concern about climate change decreases rather than increases, with the world being quite happy to burn huge quantities of coal and gas, my judgment will turn out to have been wrong and a fairly small competitive disadvantage will have been suffered by countries that chose to diversify their energy mix in the way I suggest.

I agree with what I think is the point that the Chairman of the Select Committee is making, which is that if the world continues to show great concern about climate change, the first movers might have an advantage. Does it not give him pause for thought, though, that the EU in particular now appears to be showing some reluctance on building in a persistent competitive disadvantage to the United States? That would be one interpretation of the vote this week. If that were to become more pervasive, it would create some issues with respect to my hon. Friend’s analysis.

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14:06 John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I do not intend to take up too much time, but I was fortunate to be the representative of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change at COP 18, and I thank my colleagues for allowing me to do that.

Mexico has been mentioned. Along with some of the other countries, Mexico is really taking on board the leadership that has been shown by this country. I met a number of Mexican delegates and people who told me that they were trying to emulate what we did here some years ago, going down the route of a Bill that would give them an energy and climate change policy written in statute. They were impressed by what we had done, to such an extent that I have since met more of them, with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is well known in Mexican circles. I met their energy and climate change MPs when they were here, and saw how important the subject was to them.

If a country such as Mexico, which is an emerging nation, can take that subject on board, perhaps there is hope for some of the countries—Brazil, and even China for that matter—that we might say have not been helpful in promoting climate change properly. However, we are all talking, which is a good thing, but talk is cheap and we must ensure that we get some kind of development from it.

GLOBE hopes that countries such as Mexico and Brazil will sign up to more on climate change; I think that Mexico will—it has done so—and I hope that other countries will, too. The one country not mentioned by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) was the United States. It has not signed up to anything, but I must say that some of the work done there is way beyond much that we have done. The Select Committee recently went to California, which is still ahead of us on this kind of thing. People there tell us that we are doing a great job, and they look to us; yet what they are doing on efficiency levels and such matters is way beyond what we have done until now. We will get better, however, and we will do it.

I believe that, with the support of the Select Committee and my party—I look forward to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger)—we can ensure that this country is still one of the leaders. In years to come, we will think of Tony Blair as the man who started it all off in relation to bringing energy and climate change into the political arena.

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14:13 Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)

It is a great pleasure to participate in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. Like the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), I must draw the Chamber’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—not that I am aware of any way in which the outcome of this debate or the issues raised in it could affect my well-being through those interests.

I admit that I was not a member of the Select Committee when it drew up the two reports that we are considering, so I cannot claim credit for them or share in any blame. I put myself forward for the Committee precisely because I was concerned about the rather over-cosy relationship between it and the Government, which has allowed them both, and the whole intellectual establishment in this country, to live in a dream world on energy and climate change issues. Mercifully, through the operation of a secret ballot, I was elected to the Committee.

The aim of displacement activity is of course to avoid facing up to reality, so I will just point out a few facts that have not found their way into the report or into discussions of such matters, but seem to me to be rather pertinent. The original aim of the Kyoto protocol and the agreement in 1992 was to reduce emissions by the contracting parties by 5% by now—or by last year—but world emissions have actually gone up by nearer 50%. By happy chance, the rise in the world temperature over that period was much less than anticipated, despite the fact that the supposed cause of that rise in temperature was even greater and more powerful than anticipated.

Since the Kyoto agreement was signed, Canada, Japan and Russia have resiled from it. Far from making progress in getting countries to sign up, we have lost three very important world players. The US will not sign up to Kyoto or its successor, or to any legally binding agreement, as long as developing countries are allowed to continue to increase their emissions unconstrained. It was not President Bush who prevented America signing up, but the Senate. Senators refused to sign up to Kyoto by 98 votes to zero.

May I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman is advancing a false prospectus? No one is suggesting that developing countries should not use fossil fuels. We are saying that they should use a sensible mix, and be encouraged to have access to renewables. That is why, for example, Ethiopia is building dams to generate hydroelectric power and China has a huge investment programme in renewable energy. They know that they have a mix. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be arguing that there should be no mix.

For the sake of accuracy—I may have misheard my right hon. Friend—let me say that the target in China is for 11.4% of its energy mix to come from non-fossil sources by 2015. That is in less than three years from now. I might have misheard my right hon. Friend, but I think that he mentioned a later date. May I also put on record that China’s explicit goal is to reduce substantially the use of coal as a proportion of its total energy mix over the next two decades, and it is already the world’s largest investor in renewable energy sources?

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14:32 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

I will focus my remarks more clearly on the UNFCCC itself and the process of the UNFCCC. I begin by outlining why a change in climate should matter at all. The UNFCCC is the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the world has occupied itself with this problem of climate change for a very long time now; why should we? It is certainly the most complex and intractable question of justice that the world has ever seen, in that it is not simply about justice between peoples separated by geography and wealth, but about justice between peoples separated in time, across the generations. It has proved a singularly intractable problem to reconcile those competing interests.

Why does a change in climate matter? In and of itself it should not, were it not for the fact that species—biodiversity—find it difficult to keep pace with the rate of climate change. What we have seen is a change in the rate of extinctions in the modern era that has gathered pace to such an extent that we now have, in comparison with the fossil record, a 1,000% increase in the rate of extinctions. That is higher than in any other period in the whole of the fossil record. We are living in the midst of that, and sometimes when living in the midst of things it is difficult to see the wood for the trees; but that is what is going on. The rate of extinctions that we are experiencing is really quite remarkable.

The hon. Gentleman said that we were living through the biggest extinction since perhaps the Palaeozoic era, and he implied that that was through climate change, but he has been unable to cite a single species that has been rendered extinct through climate change. I invite him to do so, or to give me a source where I could find that information.

I think that the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden will not dispute the fact that we are living through the greatest period of extinctions that has been known in the fossil record; he has not disputed that. What he has sought to dispute is whether it is in any way linked to a change in climate, and therefore whether it is in any way linked to the rise in the use of fossil fuels. He should look at the way in which species are migrating—he talked about a loss of habitat, but the reason why there is a loss of habitat in many parts of the world is, of course, because of the change in climate, which has actually destroyed the habitat that used to be there. I do not think that he can separate out, in the way that he seeks to, the effects of climate change from the effects of habitat destruction. To do so is precisely to ignore what is going on.

We have to understand that 50% of the GDP of the poorest people in the world is dependent on their immediate environment, and it is that immediate environment that is under such significant threat. In parts of Africa, we have seen whole habitats destroyed. I sometimes wonder why we spend millions of pounds protecting our vessels as they pass the coasts of Ethiopia and Somalia but never give a thought as to why the pirates that we are protecting them from are there in the first place. Of course, they are there in large part because of the desertification that has taken place in that part of Africa—because of the loss of agriculture and of economic opportunities there. Not to link what is happening with climate change to the sustainable development goals would be a serious error indeed.

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s analysis, particularly in respect of the national point and Russia. Some countries—how can I put this?—might benefit from climate change, including Russia, because there is a lot of tundra there. I wonder whether the COP might look at the possibility of globally taking advantage of that phenomenon, given that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) may be right in saying that we are not going to stop coal being burned at the present rate.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I do point out that he has conceded that climate change is real, and that it will have a differential effect in different parts of the globe. It is difficult to predict what that differential effect will be, but one of the core predictions is that there is every expectation that parts of Russia that are now tundra and unfarmable will gradually be released as good agricultural land. Therefore, from the Russian point of view, climate change, if and when it happens, will not be a significant problem. However, the problem is that with the release of that land into farmable condition, a lot of methane will be released into the atmosphere, which will turbo-charge the process. But the hon. Gentleman is right to mention that.

The international negotiations must take on board the fact that although there are real downsides for some economies—indeed, small island states are in danger not just of their economy, but of their whole territory going down the pan—countries such as Canada and Russia may make substantial economic gains through this process. That is why we cannot simply go into the negotiations with the viewpoint that climate change is a universal disaster and we must stop it at all costs. We have to understand that some people expect to gain and some expect to lose. That makes these negotiations all the more intractable, and makes it more difficult to get a just resolution. I absolutely endorse the hon. Gentleman’s point.

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14:57 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

The world simply cannot do that over the next 100 or 150 years. That seems to me to be a fairly self-evident fact, assuming that people agree that there is some relation between what we do—burning fossil fuels in particular, and human activity in general—and the state of the world’s atmosphere and the extent to which the Earth will warm up as result. Someone who thinks that there is no connection whatever would presumably not be concerned about finding all the fossil fuel in the world and burning it all. Someone who thinks that there is a connection, and an urgent one, would presumably wish to do something about it fairly urgently. Since climate change and, in particular, the results of the burning of fossil fuels know no boundaries, the only way that we can do something about the situation over the medium term is through interaction and discussion between states throughout the world about achieving an outcome that is not as disastrous as it would be if every country went its own way individually.

That is why the international COP process and, contributing to it, joint targets backed up by individual country targets are important. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North mentioned the extent to which, almost under the radar internationally, countries are beginning to take the sort of action that we in this country have already taken with climate change legislation. One of the ongoing processes recorded in the Select Committee report is that countries, even those that might be advantaged by global warming, are undertaking their own climate change legislation.

It is vital the UK does everything that it can over the next few years to support countries to develop their own climate change targets and to join us in ours, so that progress towards a level playing field can be considerably advantaged as the negotiations take place. One thing that we should resolve today not to do is to indulge in any tinkering with our climate change targets, as we try to move towards international agreement on other people’s climate change targets, given that that would send a very bad signal indeed to other countries, some of which are beginning to take their climate change legislation directly from what we have done in the UK.

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15:09 Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)

As the Chair of the Committee said, events have moved on somewhat since the report was produced, not least because COP 18 has taken place. During the conference, four Gulf states—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates—announced that they were ready to submit emission reduction plans to the UNFCCC. I listened to what the right hon. Gentleman said about the developing world, but I am not sure whether he knows that, last month, the group of 49 least developed countries also announced they are now prepared to commit themselves to binding cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.

While some progress has been made, many challenges remain. Canada, Japan and Russia have all said they will not be part of the extension of the Kyoto protocol, and yesterday the International Energy Agency warned that the continued global reliance on coal and the rapid development of emerging economies meant that despite

“a boom in renewable energy over the last decade, the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago.”

In some ways, that is depressingly familiar, but it reinforces the point that any solution to climate change requires a global agreement that limits carbon emissions, as well as a rapid expansion of low-carbon energy generation. In that context, the main consensus on the proceedings at Doha was that they were a modest step forward.

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15:22 Luciana Berger

There was not the forward movement we hoped for. Only one country—the Dominican Republic—signed up to new carbon emission targets. Although I welcome the fact that four Gulf states made a commitment to submit reduction plans, that has yet to happen. The most important thing was that the conference agreed an extension of the Kyoto protocol and re-established a timetable for agreeing a global deal in 2015.

The UK is responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions. We have a responsibility to reduce them, for all manner of reasons, but on our own we cannot solve the problem of global climate change. Part of the leadership role that we can play in international climate negotiations will be as part of an EU bloc, so why are the Minister and the Prime Minister allowing the UK’s credibility to be undermined by Conservative MEPs? I know from previous exchanges on such matters that the Minister has a habit of dismissing anything that he does not want to hear, or that highlights the shortcomings of the Government, as partisan rhetoric, but it is not partisan to point out that the view of the UK as a climate change leader on the international stage is diminishing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West said during the Committee’s hearing following Doha, the message that he heard from our European partners was that they felt the UK was backing off from the leadership it had shown in the past.

In an ideal world, between now and 2015 the Prime Minster would go around Europe and the rest of the world championing Britain’s low-carbon progress, but we know that he cannot do that. He can try, and I hope he will. He can go to China, the United States and our European neighbours, and I am sure they will listen politely to his spiel about how the Government are the greenest Government ever, and nod as he tells them how personally committed he is to combating climate change. I am equally sure that they will then disregard what he says, because they read newspapers, too, and they know the Government’s record as well as we do. They know that under this Government investment in renewable energy has halved, and that the Prime Minister barely talks about climate change any more—he has not yet attended an international conference on the matter, and cannot get his own MEPs to support an increase in carbon reduction, let alone ask them to do more. No matter what the Prime Minster says, he cannot change the reality.

Does my hon. Friend agree that leadership from this country is important in the international arena, mainly because we were the country that set the pace, with the first ever Bill that had climate change in it?

We were, proudly, the first country in the world to do that, when we passed the Climate Change Act 2008, with a view to reducing our emissions by 2015 in relation to 1990 levels. The Act is held in high regard in countries that I have visited, but legislation is not enough if it is not acted on and if the Government’s actions do not match it. That is why it is important that the Government do all they can to live up to their ambition to be the greenest Government ever, and not slip behind. Then they would be held in high esteem on the international stage.

We were the first country to introduce a climate change Act, but other countries, such as Mexico, have followed suit, and many others are considering how to reduce their carbon emissions. I agree with the Chancellor’s comments back in 2007, when he said that investment in low carbon could go hand in hand with growth and support our economy. We have seen global trade in low carbon surpass growth in all other fields. Without domestic investment in low carbon in the UK, our national growth figures last year would have been much worse. I believe the two go hand in hand.

What should the Government do? First, they should back the cross-party amendment proposed by the Chair of the Select Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North, which would put an explicit target for decarbonising the UK energy sector by 2030 in the Energy Bill. That would give businesses the confidence and certainty they are crying out for to invest in low-carbon and renewable generation, and would signal to other nations that we were serious about meeting our climate change targets and moving to a low-carbon economy.

Secondly, the Prime Minister should get a grip on his MEPs and force them to vote in the European Parliament in accordance with the UK Government’s position. That is the only way to regain our lost credibility in the eyes of our EU neighbours. Thirdly, the UK should renew its role as an international political leader on climate change.

This month, Lord Stern, author of the world famous Stern report, said that the only thing missing in the efforts to tackle climate change “is the political will”. There are signs that that is beginning to change. In his second inaugural address, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to tackling climate change. Even emerging economies such as China—we will discuss this in more detail in our next debate—are making progress.

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15:33 The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) because I thought this might be a slightly dry debate with the usual suspects in violent agreement, but it has been much more rigorous, thoughtful and lively. The real thanks for the debate must go to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), the Chair of the Select Committee. I thought at the outset that this is a strange time in the calendar for a debate on the United Nations framework convention on climate change, because the reality of seasonality in such matters is that negotiators do not start to clear their throats and focus on COP until the second half of the year. The debate has shown that there is a great deal to discuss, and some important points have come out.

I am particularly interested in plurality and retaining public support. As a political institution, Parliament can act only with public support. Does the Minister accept that, whatever avenue the Government go down that impacts on our climate change policy, public support is important? We have a disconnect growing between the people and the Government. Eventually, the Government’s policy will fail.

On the issue of Lady Thatcher, perhaps because of the week of that extraordinary and very moving funeral, it is worth remembering that it was Mrs Thatcher, as she was then—a scientist by training and a Conservative by conviction—who more than any other world leader acted to put climate change on the international agenda. At the Royal Society, of which she was a fellow—one of the very small band of Conservative MP scientists—she said:

Pursuing that line of inquiry—Lady Thatcher did not just make one speech on climate change, but several important interventions—she went to the United Nations the following year, in 1989, and crystallised her thinking. More than 20 years later, what she said then is relevant to this debate today:

“the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.”

Lady Thatcher’s actions led, in large part, to the Rio Earth summit of 1992 and to the UNFCCC process that continues today.

As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) pointed out, here in the UK, that is a sizable factor in our growth, not only in terms of the narrow subsection of wind or subsidised renewable energy, as the low-carbon sector runs much more broadly than that and includes energy efficiency and a range of innovation of products and services. That is why, this year, in recommitting the coalition to being the greenest Government ever, our Prime Minister said that not only are we in a global race, but the countries and economies that will win the global race are those that are most efficient, and the most efficient will be those that drive after energy efficiency and renewable energy.

We also made progress in further building and implementing the key elements of the UNFCCC regime, including on climate finance. I must say to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree that, far from trailing, the UK has a strong reputation on climate change, and our international reputation as a leader is rising, particularly in relation to private sector finance and investment, adaptation, technology and the rules set to measure, report and verify countries’ emissions. Getting the process right and continually building elements are vital to tackling a global problem of the scale of climate change, which is why each annual conference is a step forward.

I am listening carefully to what the Minister is saying about the COP process. One of my thoughts is that some of the time would be better spent considering abatement, as well as deals. We talked earlier about the fact that many millions of square kilometres in Russia might become usable as a result of climate change. Should we not be thinking about that globally as well?

I said that the UK is an internationally renowned leader in climate finance. In Doha, the UK demonstrated that it was on track to deliver our £1.5 billion fast-start pledge by the end of 2012, and as the hon. Member for Brent North said, we have delivered it. We also set out for our developing country partners what the UK climate finance contribution will be in the period to 2015.

However, the key thing—we are good at this globally, and we have a strong representation—is to make the point that public finance can only go so far. We cannot push British taxpayers—or, come to that, any other taxpayers—to keep increasing the amount of public contribution. Public finance, like subsidy, is there to catalyse private sector interventions. We are seeing increasing private sector interest in scaling up investments, so I think there is a realistic possibility of meeting the pledge made at Copenhagen to mobilise the $100 billion a year from developed economies into climate measures in developing economies, not principally from the public sector or the pockets of taxpayers in developed economies, but from mobilised private sector sources that see the opportunity to make returns on attractive clean energy and climate mitigation solutions. On that point, I bring my speech to a close and thank the Committee for its report.

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