09:30 Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)

In the case of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, the bottom line was that China did not want a bottom line. As one Danish official observed, “China doesn’t do numbers”. China was not even willing for developed countries to set out their own CO 2 reduction targets. One can understand that China—the largest CO 2 emitter in the world—still sees itself as a developing nation, and would be wary of any target that might be set. However, one is inclined to ask: where were the sherpas? Why had China not communicated its misgivings much earlier, and how was it that others, such as ourselves and our colleagues in the United States, had not picked up on those concerns? Why was it left until the last two days of the conference?

I believe that it is unlikely that China deliberately intended to ruin the Copenhagen conference, or that it wanted to be accused of systematically wrecking the accord. It is interesting that almost immediately after the conference, a senior member of the Chinese negotiating team at Copenhagen was shifted. The media have been speculating that that was punishment for the debacle of the climate change talks. He Yafei, who was at the forefront of the negotiations, was removed as Vice-Foreign Minister, and it is suggested that he was removed for failing to ensure smooth relations between China, the US and Europe.

I attended the Copenhagen conference for one of the days, although I was not privy to that particular meeting. Like my hon. Friend, I would be amazed if China had gone wilfully to try to sabotage the talks. Does my hon. Friend agree that in the past, Hu Jintao has said supportive things about wanting to tackle climate change, and that we must work closely with other countries to ensure that China has nothing to fear from coming to an agreement about what action needs to be taken? Vast tracts of China are developing but are impoverished. China must have no fear of working with the west, so that we can reach an agreement that will not prevent the developing parts of China from progressing into the 21st century.

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10:13 Mrs. Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)

China is realistic about Copenhagen. It has the greatest problem in the world on climate change. The pace of desertification in China has doubled over the past 20 years; 25 per cent. of the land area is already desert, and air pollution is prematurely killing 400,000 people a year. The country is not unaware of the dangers and risks of climate change.

As the hon. Member for Banbury said, many Chinese students come to this country every year and there is a huge opportunity to develop a mutual understanding. It is a way of forming a new relationship. Let us move forward into that new relationship and take the opportunities to forge closer links with China on a new transnational agenda, which covers issues such as energy, the environment, climate change and overseas investment, in a way that respects Chinese interests. Let us find a new, safer world in which we have nothing to fear because we have found a way of talking and understanding.

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10:30 Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)

Two years ago, the Environmental Audit Committee visited China as part of an investigation into the international response to climate change. I was impressed on that visit by how seriously the Chinese were taking the issue, particularly with regard to carbon intensity reduction—if not absolute carbon reduction itself. Their technological advances seemed to be far ahead of the game; the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey called them impressive. Therefore, the Chinese recognise the severe threat posed by climate change, and with a huge number of their population still living in poverty, reliant on melt water from the Himalayas and facing the risk of desertification and other such challenges, one would have expected a different response from them in the international negotiations. Will the Minister tell us what strategy the Government will adopt to bring China back on track? Obviously, securing a transition to a low-carbon world is one of the FCO’s key priorities.

On 5 January, the Climate Change Secretary told the House:

My hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) has said that just as the UN Security Council sits in permanent session, so, too, should a UN climate council. The Climate Change Secretary has said that such an option should be considered, so I am interested to know whether the FCO will take that suggestion to the UN. It would be interesting to know what strategy the FCO is adopting, given that we are hoping for a global climate deal from the Bonn conference in June.

I know from conversations with FCO officials in posts in various countries that climate change is not just a departmental priority written on a piece of paper, but something to which individuals have a great deal of personal commitment. That is a huge asset that we must use. Moreover, we must assess where our policy is not working, particularly in respect of the Copenhagen conference.

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10:40 Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk) (Con)

I do not intend to reprise what I said or to comment on things that were said by others during that debate. As far as this debate is concerned, the crucial point relates to the three specific issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury flagged up and which were important at the end of 2009 and the start of 2010. The first issue was why the Copenhagen climate change discussions failed and who was to blame, if I can put it crudely. The second issue was the conviction and persecution of a number of dissidents in China; that is a continuing issue, but it appears that there have been two or three high-profile cases recently. The third issue, which a number of hon. Members have already commented on, was the execution of Akmal Shaikh.

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10:48 Chris Bryant (Labour)

The hon. Member for Banbury started by referring to Copenhagen. Several hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt), suggested that there might have been a complete failure on the British part and that we somehow did not know what the Chinese were thinking. We certainly did. On many occasions last year, Ministers here expressed our profound concern about the direction in which China was moving in relation to climate change. Many of us tried to put the argument to China that the threat to it from climate change is significant in terms of internal migration and migration from low-lying areas around the world, and that it is in China’s interest to get it right.

The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk said that ambassadors sometimes do not have much wriggle room; that is also true of Chinese delegations. Perhaps if there had been more wriggle room in Copenhagen, we would have got closer to a better and stronger set of agreements. I know that many more vulnerable nations were upset that the equity argument about climate change—namely, that the poorest people in the world will be most dramatically affected by it, whether in Bangladesh or on islands in the Pacific that are likely to disappear under the ocean—did not carry as much weight with China as it perhaps should have done, especially in light of the argument that China wants a harmonious world according to its own understanding.

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