Schedule 6
Climate Change Bill [Lords]
12:45 pm
Gregory Barker (Shadow Minister, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak to this amendment, and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on tabling it. I should first like to remind the Committee of events that took place in Committee Room 11, down the corridor, on 23 October last year, when a Delegated Legislation Committee met to vote on the renewable transport fuel obligation. Despite the fact that the Government’s own briefings admitted that
“There is currently no internationally agreed definition of a ‘sustainable biofuel’, nor a working standard that could be imposed”,
the Government Members on the Committee proceeded to vote in favour of making the RTFO law. The only MPs on that Committee to vote against the RTFO on the grounds that it had no sustainability criteria attached to it were from the Conservative party—the Liberal Democrats abstained—so the RTFO became law.
I am therefore delighted—genuinely pleased—that the Liberal Democrats have looked more closely at the issue and that they have clearly decided that things must change. Although I am happy to support the amendment, it is a shame that we could not have halted the RTFO in its tracks earlier.
What exactly does the RTFO require? It stipulates that all fuel suppliers must ensure that 2.5 per cent. of their sales in the UK come from biofuels from April this year. That figure will rise to 5 per cent. by 2010. The RTFO is designed to help bring the UK into line with the European Union biofuels directive, which sets targets for all EU countries to achieve biofuels usage rates of 2 per cent. by the end of 2005 and 5.75 per cent. by the end of 2010. A failure to ensure that such a vast amount of renewable fuels are obtained sustainably will negate any positive efforts to tackle climate change that such biofuels will supposedly bring, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. The notion of destroying vast swathes of pristine rain forest in a bid to protect the environment—