18:04 Matthew Pennycook (Labour)

As the Minister made clear, as this is the first carbon budget to be set since the House legislated for a net zero target in 2019, the sixth carbon budget marks a critical point in our country’s contribution to delivering on the ambition of the Paris agreement and thus keeping alive the hope of limiting global heating to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels.

Labour very much welcomes the Government’s decision to accept the Climate Change Committee’s advice that the budget level be set at 965 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent for the 2033-37 period. I also put on the record the Opposition’s thanks to the CCC for the comprehensive nature of the advice it produced in December, as well as the road map that it set out alongside that advice for achieving a fully decarbonised economy by mid-century.

“there is no alternative to the legal requirement in the Climate Change Act to set a sixth carbon budget level with a view to reducing UK emissions to net zero by 2050”.

The problem is that, as a country, we will achieve net zero by mid-century and realise its promised benefits only if the carbon budget and its two predecessors are met. However, as things stand and as the Minister knows full well, the Government are still off-track not only on the net zero target with which the order aligns the carbon budget framework, but on the less ambitious target that preceded it.

So, for all those commitments that are now aligned with the net zero target—from the pledge to bring forward 40 GW of offshore wind by 2030 to phasing out petrol and diesel cars and vans by the same date—there are scores of other areas, from low-carbon heat networks and heat pumps to peatlands, where ambitions have either not been set or have been set but fall far short of what is required.

Therefore, a huge amount rests on the comprehensive net zero strategy that the Minister mentioned and that we have been promised will be published prior to COP26 in November. That strategy needs to set a coherent vision, filling in the gaps and clarifying the ambiguities that remain. However, if we are to have an effective policy framework to ensure that this carbon budget is met, we also need the full range of detailed blueprints that have been promised by the Government, but not yet delivered.

Where is the heat and buildings strategy, which was promised for spring 2020 and has been repeatedly delayed? Where is the net zero aviation strategy, which was promised for early 2020 and of which there is no sign? Where is the hydrogen strategy that the December 2020 10-point package stated would be published in early 2021? Where is the transport decarbonisation plan, which was announced in 2020 and then delayed until spring 2021? It is still nowhere to be seen.

Crucially, where is the final Treasury net zero review? In an answer to a written question that I tabled on 18 May, the Exchequer Secretary stated that it would be published “this spring”. By my calculation, spring ends today, and there is still no sign of it. As the Minister knows, we need that review, not least because calling any net zero strategy that had not fully incorporated the conclusions of such a review “comprehensive” would be a misnomer.

The Minister knows that net zero requires a whole-of-Government approach. As it has real implications for giving effect to the order we are about to pass, I would be grateful if she gave the Committee some sense of why certain Departments seemingly get away with lagging so far behind others. Why do the Cabinet Committees on climate action strategy and climate action implementation not appear to be doing what is required in leadership and co-ordination to drive progress across the board?

Finally, even if the Government close what remains of the ambition gap and introduce detailed strategies in each of the remaining areas, meeting the carbon budget and achieving net zero will still require a step change in delivery. As things stand, only a fraction of the emissions savings required to meet the sixth carbon budget are on track to be implemented in full. Given that the Government are not doing what is necessary to ensure that the change takes place at the pace required, any further fiscal opportunities to lock in a genuine green economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis cannot be squandered. From road building to planning, there needs to be a renewed focus on ensuring that all Government policy is compatible with the net zero target, but greater priority must also be accorded to ensuring that well-designed schemes, particularly those that relate to the decarbonisation of challenging sectors such as buildings, are up and running by the end of this Parliament.

The recent green homes grant fiasco is a case in point. It is not good enough simply to scrap the scheme for homeowners and take forward the local authority delivery element. Given the scale of the challenge presented by energy efficiency in the residential sector, Ministers need to introduce a replacement scheme as a matter of urgency—one that draws on the lessons of what has gone before. I ask the Minister to provide some assurance not only that work is being undertaken to that end, but that there is an impetus within the Government more generally to ensure that the gap between delivery and stated ambition is closed at the pace required to comply with the order and get us on track for net zero.

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18:13 Anne-Marie Trevelyan

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful words and for the depth of his commitment to the subject. We all appreciate that this is, in every sense, whole-of-Parliament legislation. None of us underestimates the challenges of decarbonising the economy, but this legislation will ensure that we give ourselves a marker to move towards.

Can we be more ambitious? Well, we are incredibly busy. I have published the industrial decarbonisation strategy already, and I will be imminently publishing the hydrogen strategy. The heat and building strategy, which is clearly within the remit of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, is doing the final stages of its tour around Whitehall before it can be published.

I cannot directly speak to the challenges that the hon. Gentleman raises about the Department for Transport’s strategies, but I would like to give him confidence that there really is whole-of-Government thinking on net zero in a way that has never really been visible before. The Climate Action Implementation Committee, on which I sit, meets regularly and is really driving incredibly hard and fast. It is drawing together, at both official level and ministerial level, that criticality of thinking through both the key policies and the most effective policies that can have the biggest impact as quickly as possible.

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise time on the Treasury’s net zero review, but I know that it, too, is coming close to completion. Its focus will be on the exposure of household sectors and regions to these changes. The Treasury is providing important oversight by understanding the risks and making sure we make the journey safely and inclusively. This must be a just transition. If it is not, we will be leaving parts of our communities behind, which is not something any of us wants to do; quite the opposite. This affords us the opportunity to think in a forward-leaning, world-leading way to set technologies in place and drive forward private and public sector investment. That gives us the opportunity to give the world leadership and technology to help it decarbonise.

I hope I have provided the necessary assurances to allow the statutory instrument to be approved. It will keep the UK on a credible path to meet our 2050 net zero target and try to keep the temperature rise to 1.5°. It will build on the current momentum, and we will continue to drive new policies that enable us to capitalise on the opportunities that net zero brings and credibly urge other countries to do the same for the benefit of our planet.

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