Clause 1
Climate Change Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
Gregory Barker (Shadow Minister, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
A consensus is starting to emerge, which can only be a good thing. That is the result of a rather robust conversation this morning. It is an example of the robust scrutiny that my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal mentioned earlier during discussion of the programme motion.
I shall summarise the primary arguments in favour of the clause and our criticism of the Government’s argument. The Government’s opposition to this important clause is based on three arguments: that the principal aim is unworkable and unenforceable, that Britain alone has no control over keeping global warming under 2° C, and that the Government have stated in the past that the principal aim is without precedent. We believe that none of those three arguments holds up under scrutiny.
First, we all understand that the UK cannot be held responsible for all the world’s emissions, but that is not what the clause says, or what it aspires to. There is nothing in the principal aim that places an obligation on the United Kingdom to deliver single-handedly the ambition to keep global warming under 2° C. We understand that even if global emissions stopped today, there is no guarantee that we would not exceed the 2° C target.
The principal aim set out in the Bill does not offer such a guarantee. It states that the United Kingdom should be committed to doing its fair share to prevent a dangerous outcome and should show international leadership. The aspiration to limit the global average temperature increase to not more than 2º C above pre-industrial levels is not some obscure aspiration dreamed up by those on the Conservative Front Bench to bait the Government with, or plucked from the sky. The Prime Minister said last November:
“Our vision has one overriding aim; holding the rise in global temperatures to no more than two degrees centigrade.”
The 2º threshold is the agreed policy of this country and, in writing, the stated aim of the entire European Union. If the Government are truly committed to this “overriding aim”, why are they so timid and cautious about saying so in a landmark Bill? Why have they committed to a target with the EU that they will not put in this unprecedented domestic legislation?
Neither the Minister nor any of his successors should fear being hauled off to jail should temperature rises exceed 2º. Even if that dangerous 2º scenario is reached, the UK Government would still have fulfilled the terms of the principal aim as long as they had made emissions cuts which, had they been replicated across the developed world, might have prevented such a rise.
What of the argument that the principal aim is inappropriate, or “unprecedented” in UK legislation? Evidence suggests otherwise, and I thank Friends of the Earth for looking into the matter so carefully. There is a sizeable list of laws on the statute book which set out the broad aims of Acts and the purposes of the bodies that they set up. For example, in the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, section 1 states:
“The principal aim of this Act is to promote the sustainability of local communities.”
For that, I pay handsome tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood.