14:30 David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)

Five years or so ago, with apparently irrefutable evidence that the Earth’s temperatures were rising out of control as a result of carbon dioxide emissions, the then Government, with support from left and right, passed the Climate Change Act 2008, which committed the Government to cutting emissions by 80% by 2050. In order to do that, the Act introduced a series of measures, a raft of extra taxes and a whole bureaucracy, which have made it ever more expensive for home owners and, just as importantly, businesses, particularly large manufacturing industries, to buy gas and electricity. That has had the perverse effect of making cheap forms of energy, such as coal and gas, expensive and subsidising expensive forms of energy, such as solar and wind, so that they can operate.

The 2008 Act was based on the belief that reducing CO 2 emissions would reduce global temperatures, or at least stop the increase that was apparently going on at the time. Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions are actually tiny; they are about 1.6% of total world CO 2 emissions, which I believe is less than China’s year-on-year increase. Furthermore, the Government have argued—I respect the Minister greatly, but I am afraid we will have to disagree rather a lot this afternoon—that the costs will not be that significant.

I am delighted to be one of the four remaining MPs who voted against the Climate Change Act in the previous Parliament, all of whom are in the room today. Although my hon. Friend rightly wants to chastise the Government, does he acknowledge that the Act, which has done so much to add to people’s energy bills, was actually steered through Parliament by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who is now Leader of the Opposition? Does my hon. Friend also agree that the Labour party has played a huge part in increasing energy bills, and that it is no good for Labour Members to complain about fuel poverty when they have created so much of it?

A lot has been said about how the science is settled and how anyone who denies the science is some sort of climate change denier, which is nonsense. The very last thing I want to do is to deny that the climate changes. In fact, the climate has been changing probably ever since the Earth was created 4.5 billion years ago. The real deniers are those who deny that change took place before about 300 years ago.

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that although the issue used to be called “global warming”, when the globe stopped warming the fanatics changed the name to “climate change” because nobody can ever deny that the climate changes? As he has just acknowledged, the climate always changes, and by changing the name they admitted that their previous hypothesis was wrong.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for very kindly giving way so early in his speech. I know that I will have some minutes to speak at the end of the debate, but I want to ask him this question now. Why does he believe that 97% of more than 4,000 peer-reviewed studies by climate scientists over the past two years agree, first, that climate change is happening, and secondly, that it is man-made?

First, as I have just said, climate change is happening, just as it has always happened. Secondly, we must consider the nature of what has been suggested is going on. Carbon dioxide is a warming gas—that is a scientific fact. There has been an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since we started industrialising—that is also a fact. Where I beg to differ is that it is not proven that the carbon dioxide that has gone into the atmosphere is responsible for the relatively small amount of warming that has taken place since industrialisation. The total amount of warming that we are talking about is some 0.8° C; it is a very small amount in the scheme of things.

Nobody suggests that the definitive evidence for climate change rests on incremental year-on-year temperature increases. One must look at trends when looking at the science. We are dealing with long-term trends. We are not dealing with weather; we are dealing with climate. Although my hon. Friend is right that there has been no substantial absolute year-on-year increase since the beginning of the century, the fact of the matter is that in terms of average global temperatures, the 1980s were significantly warmer than the 1970s, the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s and the years 2001 to 2010 were by far the warmest 10-year period on instrumental record since 1850. It was not the same year-on-year incremental, but taken across the decade, it was by far the warmest, and I have here the graph to prove it.

I am glad that my hon. Friend is moving on, because what worries me is our attacks on people’s energy bills—the poorest suffer most—and on British industry, because we have such penal energy policies. Tony Abbott recently won an important election victory in Australia saying that for him it was a referendum on the carbon tax, because he simply rejected dear energy for Australia. He was right about that for Australia, and should we not be doing the same here?

I have tabled a lot of questions to the Minister on the issue. In reply to one, he has said that by 2020 around 23% of household electricity bills will be as a result of climate change policy. I have also tabled questions to find out, thus far without success, how much of the NHS electricity bill goes to support wind and solar farms. Another of his answers, which I do not have to hand, suggests that every person in the country will be paying between £4,700 and £5,300 a year towards the Government’s climate change policies. We have embarked on a hugely expensive course of action, which no other country in the world shows any signs of following.

Of course we have to be careful about the costs levied on industry, wherever those costs come from. My hon. Friend’s argument would hold more water, however, were it not for the fact that Germany, Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse, has increased its share of the global market in manufactured goods every single year since the beginning of the century—it has massively increased its global market share—and is at the same time the largest European producer of renewable energy. Germany produces far more renewable energy than the UK, and has paid more for it, because it was an early adopter.

With all due respect to the Minister, one of the things that makes me most suspicious is the attitude of the greens themselves. We can offer ways of providing cheap and reliable forms of electricity without carbon. For example, nuclear power provides 70% of the electricity in France, but the greens do not want to know about nuclear power; as soon as anyone mentions nuclear power, they jump up and down in a rage. Fracking for gas has driven down not only energy prices in America but its carbon dioxide emissions. America is one of the few leading countries in the world to have reduced CO 2 drastically, because it is fracking for gas, instead of getting coal. As a result, manufacturers are now looking to relocate to the United States of America. Surely that is something that the greens should be pleased about.

I do not argue that nuclear is the cheapest form of electricity generation, but it does generate electricity without carbon dioxide emissions. A recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering suggested that nuclear power was certainly cheaper than offshore wind and probably cheaper than onshore wind. No one is arguing that nuclear is the cheapest form of electricity. If we want cheap electricity, we can burn coal; we have loads of it in Wales. There is no problem getting cheap energy; the trick, to keep everyone happy, is cheap and reliable energy without carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear is one way of achieving that, fracking and using gas is another, while yet another way might be a Severn barrage, although I am not sure whether the economic case stacks up. A barrage could certainly generate a large amount of the UK’s electricity without any carbon dioxide emissions, but what is the response of Friends of the Earth? They are all running around worried about natterjack toads. They are not living on the real planet.

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14:58 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

On 27 September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its fifth assessment report on the physical science basis for climate change. It is a piece of global collaboration between 259 authors from 39 countries. It will provide the most authoritative scientific understanding of what climate change is and why it is happening. It has been through an exhaustive multi-stage peer review process involving experts and Governments and, critically from the hon. Gentleman’s perspective, has been open to review by proclaimed sceptics. Already, however, the climate change deniers are lining up to rubbish it. This debate has been good humoured and there has been a lot of laughter at what the hon. Gentleman said. It has been clubbable, but we must begin to pay attention to the science.

I have read the draft summary of the report that has been made available to policy makers. Its 31 pages leave me in no doubt that the window of opportunity to limit global warming above pre-industrial levels to 2° C is about to close. The figure is important, because beyond that 2° threshold, the effects of climate change clearly begin to degrade the ability of our existing social and ecological systems to support human life. Indeed, the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change are now carrying out an urgent review of whether it might be necessary to limit the rise to just 1.5° C. That report will be concluded in 2015

As significant as the 2° threshold is the report’s conclusions about a budget of future greenhouse gas emissions. It concludes that to reduce the chance of breaching that 2° limit to just 1:3, the total cumulative amount of carbon that is emitted in the atmosphere as a result of human activity must be less than l,000 billion tonnes. Some people would say that a 1:3 chance of our planet going wrong is still far too high, but let us work out the implications of the numbers.

No, because we are debating the Climate Change Act 2008, which specifically deals with anthropogenic global warming.

The scientists tell us that since the industrial revolution we have emitted between 460 billion and 630 billion of that l,000 billion tonnes. That means that we have parking space in the atmosphere for a maximum of only 540 billion tonnes of carbon if we are to stand a two-thirds chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Annual global carbon emissions are approximately 32 billion tonnes. The maths is simple. We have less than 17 years left before we bust our carbon budget, and that is on the rather optimistic assumption that annual global emissions do not rise before 2030.

The report considers four different models under different greenhouse gas concentrations over the rest of this century. It specifically states that even on the lowest concentration model it is likely—the probability is 66%—that in the 20 years to 2100 the sea level will be between 26 and 54 cm higher than during the same period to 2005. The report does not point out, but I will, that it is estimated that more than 1 billion people live in low-lying coastal regions around the globe. The effect on those populations of even a 1 metre rise would be wholesale dislocation of refugees. Besides the human tragedy, the estimated cost of the breaching the levees in New Orleans in 2005 is $250 billion. The hon. Member for Monmouth will therefore see that costs are involved in breaching that 2° threshold.

The cost of inaction in the face of climate change is enormous, and the benefits of taking it seriously are that we will create new jobs and technologies that can drive our economy forward. In 2011, just 6% of our economy—the green economy—provided 25% of all growth in the UK. The idea that we can ignore climate change because the costs are too high can be suggested only by a man who is prepared to put his wallet on one side of the scales and his children on the other.

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15:06 Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)

The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) based much of his contribution on what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said, but he ended by saying that the costs of action were far less than the benefits. That is not what the IPPC says. It says that analyses of the costs and benefits of mitigation indicate that they are broadly comparable in magnitude, so it could not establish an emissions pathway or stabilisation level at which the benefits exceeded the cost. The hon. Gentleman’s messianic certainty is not based on what the IPPC said.

Governments make their worst decisions when both sides are united for the simple reason that no one exercises the proper function of scrutiny, which is what happened in 2008. The passage of the Climate Change Bill was a perfect example, and the measure became the most expensive, most ambitious and most uncertainly based legislation that the House has introduced during my time in Parliament. It was introduced with no discussion of cost. I was the only person who considered the impact assessment before the debate, because the Table Office told me that I was the only person to have taken a copy of it. It showed that the likely cost of the then Government’s measures, based on their own figures, and even excluding transition costs and the cost of driving industry overseas, were twice the maximum benefit. That was not discussed at any stage during proceedings on the Bill, not even when, in a spasm of self-flagellation, the target for reducing CO 2 was increased from the 60% on which the costing had been made to 80%.

The Bill was introduced after scant discussion of the feasibility of decarbonising by 80% in 40 years, yet every other transition from one fuel to another—from wind to coal, from coal to oil, from oil and gas to nuclear—has taken far longer or been much less complete over a similar period. All were driven by a step reduction in the cost of cheap fuel driving out a less reliable and more costly fuel. However, the Climate Change Act 2008 requires us to replace cheap fossil fuels with energy sources that are at least twice as expensive and less reliable, which will be difficult to do; it is like driving water uphill.

So far, we have replaced 4% of our energy sources with renewables, against our target of replacing 15% by 2020. In other words, we are just over a quarter of the way there, and one twentieth of the way to our 2050 target. Other things being equal, the extra cost of moving to renewables will be four times higher in 2020 and 20 times higher in 2050.

That does not mean to say that the greenhouse effect does not exist; I am a physicist by training, and of course it exists. The question is: how big is it? If it is of a modest size and it has been offset over the past 15 years by natural variations, is it not possible that in the previous 20 years, when there was a rise in temperature, some of that was due to the opposite movement in natural factors, adding to and amplifying any minor global warming due to CO 2 ?

Does my right hon. Friend agree with the point that I was trying to make earlier to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who seemed to be unwilling to consider it? If one wishes to establish the impact of human CO 2 , one needs to understand all the other factors driving climate change, which might be up or down, and be able to quantify them. Otherwise, one cannot calculate the human effect.

The Act is not just the most expensive, impractically ambitious and uncertainly based piece of legislation that I have ever known; it is unique in being legally binding and unilateral. No other country has followed us down that route. Since we went down that route, Canada and Japan have resiled from Kyoto, and Australia has just abandoned its carbon tax. It is time we looked critically at the Act, repealed or revised it, and do not allow ourselves to be slavishly, legally bound to continue doing something that no longer accords with the evidence or goes along with what the rest of the world is doing.

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15:14 Sammy Wilson (DUP)

All reason and self-critical analysis go out of the window when people address this subject. When I was the Environment Minister in Northern Ireland, I refused to use some of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s scary propaganda and adverts, and I was censured by the Assembly. When I pointed out to the mover of the censure motion that he had driven to the Assembly that morning in a 4x4 that did about 12 miles per gallon; that his mileage claim for the previous year would have taken him twice around the globe; and that his carbon footprint was enormous, he did not seem to see any irony in the fact that I did not believe what he believed about climate change and the man-made contribution to it, or in the fact that he was moving a motion against my position.

That is one of the problems. Even in today’s debate, we have exchanged the science, the figures and the graphs, but people still do not want to believe what they see before their eyes. I do not want to go into all the figures that have been given today, other than to say that, if the Minister talks about trends, is 150 years not a long enough trend? Yet the increase over 150 years is 0.8° C, even though masses of carbon has been put into the air. If we look at short-term trends—when the Climate Change Bill was passing through Parliament, we were told to look at the short term as well—over 10 years we have seen a 0.08° C increase, despite the fact that carbon emissions have gone up.

I do not want to get into the premise behind the issue; I want to get into the cost behind the policy. I started looking at the Treasury’s Budget 2013. The costs were never hidden; at least we were always told that there would be costs—£18 billion a year. Let us first look at the cost to industry. If we look through the Budget book, there are a number of costs. First, there is the carbon reduction commitment, which affects service and manufacturing industries. It costs more than £1 billion a year and rising. There is the carbon price floor, which wipes out—in fact, by more than double—the impact of the reduction in corporation tax this year. Over the life of this Parliament, it will take £4.4 billion away from industry. The climate change levy will cost £1.5 million this year. Put together, miscellaneous environmental levies will cost £6.7 billion this year, and that is only the cost to industry.

Let us look at the cost to consumers. Last week in the Chamber we debated the cost of electricity to consumers. Taking DECC’s own figures on the impact of climate change policies on business electricity bills, bills will be up by 22% this year, 46% by 2020 and 66% by 2030.

Every time we go on our holidays, we pay for climate change. Every time we pay our council tax bills, we pay for climate change. In 2007, £102 million was set aside for climate change advisers, climate change managers, carbon reduction advisers and so on, and the situation is probably far worse now. Whether we are paying our council tax or electricity bills, or looking at jobs, the impact is quite dramatic.

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15:23 David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)

Up until now, there have been two main groups in the debate: those who accept that man-made global warming is happening and, therefore, that we need the Climate Change Act; and those who repudiate the idea that it is happening and who think, therefore, that we do not need the Act. I am actually in a third set: I am prepared, on the balance of probabilities, to accept that man-made global warming is happening and needs to be addressed, but I have some severe reservations about the Act, and particularly about the thrust of climate policy in this country.

Given that the whole House seems to accept that the climate is changing, does my hon. Friend feel it is legitimate to debate whether we should spend taxpayers’ money on renewable energy schemes or on mitigating the damage climate change could do to our communities?

That is a different matter, namely adaption. I have a lot of sympathy with that point, particularly given the world’s record in failing to get people to agree to act over the last decade or so. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) said, the science is clear: greenhouse gases and water vapour increase temperature, and other things do too. What we do not know, and what the whole debate in science is about, is the weight of those factors.

As I say, I accept the science. We have seen the Stern report, warts and all, and the costs involved. Parliament put in place the Climate Change Act and the 80% reduction to try to keep the temperature rise to 2° C by 2100, and it was helped in that by five Budgets. There are some good things in the Act. First, it focuses on carbon, not renewables. EU legislation focuses almost entirely on renewables, which is why we are sucked into the false impression that countries such as Germany, which produces significantly more carbon per unit of GDP or per capita than us, are the good guys, who can burn coal and have renewables. Frankly, if a country wants to reduce carbon, it does not have renewables, it stops burning coal. So that is a good aspect of the Climate Change Act. The Act is also clear and hard to fudge. It is also inflexible, which is a strength and a weakness.

On the Act being uncosted, it may well be right for the world to address the issue of climate change, but that does cause fuel poverty. That might be a price worth paying, although that case has not been made very much, and the Government might pursue it a little more. Of course, carbon leakage also means, at the margin, that we are losing jobs in some industries—particularly heavy industries in the north—because they rely heavily on power. It always strikes me as a little odd, at a time when we are trying to rebalance the economy, that we are putting manufacturing at a potential disadvantage, although that has not wholly happened yet, and we will see how things pan out.

I mentioned that the Act is inflexible. Lord Deben has just written to the Secretary of State, who requested that the climate change targets be changed, because the EU had failed to meet the 30% target that it had set for 2020. He wrote that the Act was “not premised” on the EU meeting its target by 2020, and that therefore that could not be the basis for changing the budget. So, in the end—just get on with it, guys.

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15:31 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

It is difficult—certainly in four minutes—to know where to start. As has been said, if someone does not believe that climate change is happening, and believes that it is all conspiracy, they are hardly likely to believe that there should be a Climate Change Act or that it should affect either how people act in the economy, or how legislation proceeds—exactly as a businessman who believed the earth was flat would not sponsor a round-the-world yacht race.

I understand how far back we are going in the debate; but I think that, as far as where it is heading, it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what science does. There is no final, settled scientific position on climate change; nor is there such a settled position on virtually any other major issue in science. That is how science works. It is based on hypotheses and their refutation, and further hypotheses. As far as scientific hypotheses go, and as far as the debate in the scientific community is concerned, the idea that anthropogenic global warming is clearly producing substantial change in the climate—not the weather, but the climate—is, relatively, one of the most certain.

It is incumbent on us to take note of that science, in relation to the questions of adaptation and mitigation. I do not say that we should opt for adaptation rather than mitigation. The Climate Change Act 2008 has stood the test of time since it was passed in informing our policies in that respect. The question of scrapping it now goes to the heart of what we, as legislators, are here to do. We must take account of what science says, and decide politically what to do about it. That is why it is essential to continue to support the Act, in deciding how to proceed with policy on energy and wider environmental issues.

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15:36 Graham Stringer (Labour)

First, is the Act working in its own terms? I often think that that is the best way to approach arguments—not to start with one’s own premises, but to consider those of the opposition. The Act is supposed to be bringing down carbon dioxide. Is it doing that, or helping to do it? The facts are that since 1990, instead of producing an extra two parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere per year, we are producing three. In Europe, the production of carbon dioxide since 1990 is down by 15%, but consumption is up by 19%, so in fact more carbon dioxide is being put into the atmosphere as the result of activity in the European Union. To put the matter at its simplest, if there is a carbon tax in Europe—if we charge for carbon—and not in China or India or elsewhere in the world, we are giving those countries an export subsidy. If that were to be put down as a straightforward argument, or motion, in the House of Commons, no one would support it. To put things another way, the policy is one of deindustrialisation, as the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said.

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15:40 Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)

I am very proud to be speaking today in support of the Climate Change Act 2008, which was seminal legislation. Passing the first legally binding climate change target showed that Britain was serious about tackling one of the greatest challenges if not the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), I am proud to belong to a party that took action to secure our planet for future generations when we were in government. I am prouder that Parliament passed the Act all but unanimously, with just five Members voting against it. I note that some of those five are in the room with us today. There was a clear cross-party political consensus that something needed to be done and a clear will to get on and do it, so I am saddened by the tone of parts of today’s debate. It reminds me of a film that was released just a few months after the 2008 Act became law. Many people in this room may have seen it. It was called “The Age of Stupid”. The plot is set in 2055 in a world savaged by the effects of global warming. It focuses on a lead character looking back to the beginning of the 21st century and wondering why we did not combat climate change when we had the chance. I am not sure whether the producers are planning a sequel, but at times I have felt as though certain speakers that we have heard today have been auditioning for a starring role. It is very disappointing that the hon. Member for Monmouth, who introduced the debate, is on record as describing the overwhelming scientific evidence and agreement on climate change as “codswallop”.

A number of hon. Members referred to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is to deliver its fifth assessment report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) said, it is expected to report a 95% probability that the global warming that we have experienced since 1950 is man-made. I agree with my hon. Friend that we should take note of that report. It is compiled by 255 experts from 38 countries. The weight of evidence is extraordinary, so I am disappointed that that has not been reflected in some Members’ contributions this afternoon.

Back in 2008, the year in which the Climate Change Act was passed, the then Leader of the Opposition, who is now the Prime Minister, promised:

If we fast-forward to now, I regret the fact that the Chancellor is presenting us with a false choice between tackling climate change and growing our economy and that one Energy Minister—not the one in front of us, but the other Minister of State—has described climate change as a matter of “theology”.

I think that we need to deal with some of the risks. The fact is that the impact of climate change is already threatening to put more people in harm’s way up and down our country and across our planet. The Foreign Secretary’s climate adviser has described the security threat alone as being as grave as the threat from terrorism and cyber-attacks.

Let us take one example—flood defences. According to experts at the university of Colorado, sea levels are already rising at more than 3 mm a year. Just last week, a new study by the Met Office—I reinforce the fact that I respect that organisation; I do not think that it is putting out propaganda—showed that climate change exacerbated half the extreme weather events that happened last year. That has huge implications for us here in the UK and particularly for our flood defences. Last year was Britain’s second wettest year on record. Insurers had to pay out on £1.2 billion-worth of claims for flood damage across the country. Currently, 370,000 homes in England and Wales are at significant risk of river or coastal flooding. According to the “UK Climate Change Risk Assessment”, that number could increase fourfold by the 2050s.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. In a moment, I will show that countries across the globe do think that there is a problem and are investing massively—investing more than we are. That is all the more reason for us to come together with other countries at the future Paris COP—the conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change—to secure that global climate change agreement. It is not that we should be doing it in isolation. Of course other countries should be doing it too, but that does not mean that we should not be doing it.

“For UK business, climate change is no longer a threat to be feared, but an opportunity to grow the economy and lead the world”.

I am conscious that I have only a minute left. Delivering a green economy is about not just seizing opportunities but managing the risks. The hon. Member for East Antrim talked about scare stories. I would ask him to talk to America’s first climate change refugees—the hundreds of people who have been forced to flee the Alaskan village of Kivalina before it disappears underwater.

I shall conclude with this thought. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Monmouth has said, there are countless reasons why it is right, sensible and in our best interests to acknowledge the gravity of climate change and to acknowledge that it is man-made and that we should commit to tackling it sooner rather than later. The Climate Change Act 2008 provides us with a clear framework for doing just that. The Government now need to push on with achieving those targets, not hold back, because a plan is only any use if we keep to it.

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15:50 The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)

We have seen an unprecedented increase in the pace of change over the past 100 years: unprecedented growth in population and the spread of industry; dramatically increased use of oil, gas and coal; and the continued cutting down of forests. Those factors have created new and daunting problems, and hon. Members know what they are: acid rain and the greenhouse effect. In 1989, Margaret Thatcher used a huge slice of her party conference speech to talk about threats to the environment and the specific challenge of climate change, which she took very seriously. She went to the UN, where she was the first world leader to call for concerted international action on global warming. Asserting that that is at odds with being a Conservative is profoundly wrong.

I do not rely on hon. Members for my science. I am not a scientist. I do not profess to understand all the science, let alone to be a definitive arbiter on climate change, but it is incumbent on politicians, particularly Ministers, to take advice from the most respectable and reputable scientific institutions and academies. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth did himself no service by talking down the Met Office. It is not perfect; none of us are and nor is any human institution, but it is an excellent institution, with an excellent global reputation in its field.

Climate change is not a British conspiracy theory of climate science. Hon. Members should look to the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the World Meteorological Organisation; our own Met Office; the European Science Foundation; the American Physical Society; the Polish Academy of Sciences; the World Health Organisation; the national science academies of the G8 plus 5; our own Royal Society; the American Geophysical Union; and of course the IPCC. It is not true to assert that there is unanimity among scientists—there never will be, because science constantly evolves—but the great weight of scientific opinion, and certainly the expert opinion on which Ministers should draw when framing public policy, is clear on where the balance of risks lie. Of course, there is a risk that we have got it wrong, but the prudent action based on the greater risk is to take steps to avert dangerous man-made climate change.

The other key suggestion is that we are acting in isolation. If that were the case, I would have some sympathy for the arguments made. We may have been a leader in climate change legislation, but 32 countries, from China to Ethiopia and Vietnam, now have some sort of climate change framework. Mexico and South Korea have modelled their climate change Acts and legislation on those from Westminster. India’s 12th five-year plan incorporates a range of recommendations from its low-carbon expert group. Indonesia has just passed a ministerial regulation, based on climate science, to expand thermal energy. We may be at the forefront, but we are not totally alone. We must make more progress. The world has a last chance in 2015 to get its act together and come together with effective, concerted international action if we are to have any chance of keeping the rise below 2°.

We will ensure that we drive the negotiations to the most successful possible outcome in 2015. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) alluded to the 2008 Act. She can be proud of the leadership shown by the previous Government on that Act. I was involved as a Front Bench spokesperson and served on the Committee that considered the measure. She mounted a sensible defence of the strong weight of science behind the arguments and pointed out the massive trend in global investment. China anticipates spending $450 billion on renewable energy, dwarfing our expenditure.

I must take issue with one figure; the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said that climate change policy would add one-quarter of a trillion pounds to our projected energy spend. The widely accepted figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that, taking everything into account, we will have to spend something in the region of £110 billion in total over the next decade on energy measures. I do not recognise that quarter of a trillion figure. We must bear in mind the fact that the £110 billion investment will not only help us to prepare for a low-carbon energy economy, but pay for energy efficiency measures, which I hope hon. Members support whatever their views on global warning. Energy efficiency is the surest way to help the fuel poor. There is no good excuse for wasting energy, however it is generated. We should be ever mindful of the need to drive energy efficiency as a way not only of reducing carbon emissions or helping people to cut their fuel bills, but increasing the economic competitiveness of UK plc. The Government have put a greater emphasis on energy efficiency than any of their predecessors.

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