Clause 2
Climate Change Bill [Lords]
5:00 pm
David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)
That is an important point, but the Bill provides opportunities elsewhere to debate the role and significance of the Committee on Climate Change’s advice. I know that that was discussed in another place.
If we are to have credibility, we must stick with the Government’s position, which is that the final judgment on the 2050 target should be based on the most up-to-date scientific evidence. I need to say at this stage—I think I said it on Second Reading, and perhaps this morning, as well—that we have to avoid the assumption that the science is precise. We have to avoid the danger of getting hung up on an absolutely precise percentage, because the world is not like that; the knowledge that we have is not yet sufficiently advanced and may never be so. We are always going to be looking at figures within a range. To set a minimum, when we know that the latest evidence clearly indicates that we need to go significantly beyond that minimum, is the very least we can do. I also do not accept that, if the Climate Change Committee came up with a specific percentage or if a fifth assessment report from the IPCC suggested another percentage of 82 per cent. or 85 per cent., that should be the only factor, because those figures are not absolutely precise; it is not possible to predict what circumstances will be in 2050.
Simply because of the competing interests in any large, industrialised democracy, how the issue can best be managed has to be a matter of political judgment. In one sense, that answers the intervention from the hon. Member for Banbury. It is important that the voice of those who are generating wealth in our economy are listened to. It is important that consumers are listened to and the impact on their standard of living and way of life is reflected. It is crucial that the survival of the planet is at the centre of our considerations. However, it is also important that we listen carefully to those who have the skills and the knowledge to develop the new low-carbon technologies that are going to get us out of this deep problem.
There has to be credibility. There has to be a balance of credibility within those four different competing interest groups, but there also has to be credibility at international level. Again, I shall try to reflect the essence of the argument put by the Opposition on clause 1. If the Government are going to retain international credibility, it would be a contradiction if, having established such a lead internationally and having been the first country in the world to introduce a Climate Change Bill with binding targets, one of those key targets fell well short of what was proposed by the latest scientific evidence. In order to maintain credibility domestically, and internationally, it is crucial that we stick with the science.
Of course, it is not just the IPCC report; the United Nations Development Programme has also been very clear that an 80 per cent. reduction by 2050 from annexe 1 countries is necessary. In addition, on 21 January this year, the Government received a letter from the chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and, I think, two former chairmen. It may be as well for me to read it into the record again just to reinforce its importance. The letter was addressed to party leaders from the former chairman, the former chief executive of the Met Office and the past president of the British Ecological Society and former chairman of the RCEP. The letter said very clearly that the
“UK Climate Change Bill targets are based on out-of-date science. In tackling the global challenge of climate change, governments must follow the latest science that clearly shows the need for the UK to reduce its C02 emissions by at least 80 per cent. by 2050. This will require much more substantial action by 2020 than the Government is currently considering. The UK Climate Change Bill proposes a reduction in C02 emissions of at least 60 per cent. by 2050. This target is based on a report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) from 2000. Since this time, developments in climate change science show that this target is insufficient to avoid the worst impacts of climate change for people, species and habitats.”
I want to argue the case for an increase in the target at this stage from at least 60 per cent. to at least 80 per cent. I also want to deal with some of the objections that the Government have raised when this point has been made previously.
It has been said, rightly, that the target in 2050 is not necessarily the determining factor in whether we avoid a rise in temperature of more than 2° C. The interim targets for 2020 are equally if not more important. The Minister said earlier that it would be possible significantly to increase the stringency of the targets by 2020 and suddenly to decrease the targets in 2050—highlighting the point that 2050 was perhaps a little bit arbitrary. In theory that is so, but in reality that would not happen. We need two sets of targets—interim and longer term—and if the interim target is sufficiently stringent, the technologies deployed to achieve that target will continue to generate emissions reductions as we move to 2050. I recognise that 2020 is crucial. In fact, the IPCC fourth assessment report argued clearly that, in the advanced countries, CO2 emissions need to peak by 2015 and then start on a downward trajectory, so there is no dispute about the urgency of the situation. Of course, that message was reinforced by the Stern report.
The Government have said that the at least 60 per cent. reductions formula is not necessarily the definitive one, because the Climate Change Committee is charged with the task of reviewing the existing science, considering the first carbon budgets and reporting by 1 December. That is true, but, returning to the question of credibility, it would seem contradictory if the Bill completed its progress through the House—perhaps not before the recess; it will probably come back in October on Report and Third Reading—with a target of at least 60 per cent. and the Climate Change Committee published its review four or six weeks later, suggesting a target of at least 70 per cent. or 75 per cent. It would be uniquely embarrassing if the target figure on which the Bill was based were immediately made obsolete by the Climate Change Committee’s report on 1 December.
The power to amend the targets cuts both ways. If the Climate Change Committee came up with a higher figure, it would be easy to amend the existing formula of at least 60 per cent., but if a formula of at least 80 per cent. was included in the Bill now and the Climate Change Committee on recommended a 70 per cent. target, it would be possible to amend the Bill downwards to mention 70 per cent. It is unlikely that the powers proposed under the Bill as it stands would enable us to do that.
A point of crucial significance has not yet received the debate it deserves—not in the Joint Committee on the draft Climate Change Bill last year, in the other place, or on Second Reading in this place. Let me quote briefly from the Prime Minister’s statement to the House yesterday, reporting from the European Council meeting in Brussels over the weekend, in which he reminded us that,
“This time last year the price of oil was about $65 a barrel. At the last European Council in March it stood at $107. At the June Council, the oil price had risen further still to more than $135 a barrel.”—[Official Report, 23 June 2008; Vol. 478, c. 23.]
The conclusion that we can draw from the relentless rise in the oil price in the past 12 months is that that may achieve as much if not more than any targets that any Government set, because the price of oil will drive a fundamental change in our use of fossil fuels, our lifestyles and our technologies.