Climate Change (G8 Summit)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:41 pm on 29 June 2005.

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Photo of Elliot Morley Elliot Morley Minister of State (Climate Change and Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 4:41, 29 June 2005

The G8 is not the forum for that because international agreement is required. The appropriate forum would be the United Nations framework convention on climate change. I believe that we should take action on global aviation and we have raised the issue. In all honesty, I would have to say that, at the moment, a majority of the international community is against taking global action. I greatly regret that, but that is where we are. That does not mean, however, that we cannot take action on aviation in the EU. Indeed, as mentioned in the debate, one of our objectives for the UK presidency is to bring forward proposals on how best to include EU aviation within the EU carbon trading scheme. I am optimistic that we will be able to do that, but we will not be able to complete the negotiation process under our presidency, because the time scale is longer than six months. We can get it on the table, start the process and build support for our approach, which is very important.

I conclude by returning to the point that Gleneagles, the G8 presidency and the process are all important, but that Gleneagles is but one part of the process. There are some key new summits scheduled for the autumn—the EU-India summit, the EU-China summit and the EU-Russia summit, for which the UK will be in the chair as president. We have already discussed with those countries, in connection with the ministerial round table discussions, the issue of climatic change and we expect it to be a feature of those summits. That will represent an important step forward.

On 5 and 6 October, we will host an international business conference on climatic change. The purpose is again to stress the point that taking action on climatic change is not necessarily bad for the economy and that there can be advantages in it. Furthermore, on 10 and 11 November we will host a joint EU-G8 conference on environmentally friendly vehicles, which will be held in Birmingham. Those are all steps towards building consensus, raising the issues, getting support internationally and moving forward to the crucial next COP in Montreal of the United Nations framework convention on climate change. That is where we have to aim to achieve global agreement. At Montreal, we will press for the conference to agree to start negotiations on the framework beyond 2012, which we hope will produce a regime capable of tackling this most pressing challenge.

I have spelled out the Government's proposals in some detail and what we are doing both nationally and globally. I have also set out what we have done to tackle climate change and what we are doing for the future review. I do not believe that any other major industrial nation has a record that can rival the UK's.