Results 1-20 of 624 for (in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates') speaker:Colin Challen

Climate Change (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: That makes a change.

Climate Change (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: It is a great pleasure to follow the distinguished right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who seems to hit more bases in one short speech than the rest of us put together, even if some of those bases are slightly awry. I may return to that point later. It was also a pleasure to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) talk about...

Climate Change (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: That would call for the most radical transformation of our economy. Many people are working on that, but they are still on the fringe, perhaps in the way that people who spoke about climate change were on the fringe 30 years ago. I do not necessarily include Margaret Thatcher, but I bet that some people in her party thought that she was a bit on the fringe when talking about climate change to...

Climate Change (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: I am always fascinated by cast-iron guarantees, so I shall look forward to reading that document as soon as possible. I want now to turn to our plans. The Committee on Climate Change has been bold in the recommendations in its first annual report to Parliament. I hope that, as with the Kelly report, we will adopt the CCC's entire recommendations without equivocation. That would call for a...

Climate Change (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: Most of us present today would agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has just said—perhaps up to the point when he mentioned Hayek—but can we get some focus here? Does he agree that the 100 billion euros or dollars of finance that should be achieved by 2020, which the Prime Minister has mooted and which the EU supports, is the right figure? Should it be more? How will that...

Climate Change (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, not least for making that last point. Just lately, a number of those siren voices have been saying that there has been a little bit of cooling in recent years. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is entirely explicable within the models and the overall trend of global warming?

Business of the House (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: Now that the House looks set to adopt the Kelly review in full, will my right hon. and learned Friend introduce a similar review of all taxpayers' money, whether it is spent by quangocrats, senior civil servants or retired civil servants, or whether it applies to the recipients of Government money through contracts, so that businesses—including newspapers that take Government...

Energy and Climate Change: Carbon Mitigation (Developing Countries) (5 Nov 2009) has video

Colin Challen: Given the difficulties in the Barcelona talks this week, particularly in getting the annexe 1 countries to agree to more ambitious targets, does my right hon. Friend sympathise with the Africa group for walking out of those talks?

Opposition Day — [19th allotted day]: Climate Change (Political Response) (21 Oct 2009) has video

Colin Challen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Opposition Day — [19th allotted day]: Climate Change (Political Response) (21 Oct 2009) has video

Colin Challen: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I apologise to the House for intervening, but I have something on my chest. Last week the Climate Change Committee's first annual report to Parliament, containing many recommendations, was published. He does not have to wait until next year to respond to it. Will he say now whether a future Conservative Government will accept all its recommendations?

Bills Presented: Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (16 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: I wonder why it would be convenient for politicians to want to invent climate change. Surely climate change is the biggest inconvenience to our normal politics that has ever been conceived of.

Bills Presented: Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (16 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: We are told that heat waves of the intensity of 2003 will become a regular occurrence by 2050, yet the French will not say how many of their nuclear power stations were about to be closed in 2003. It is an official secret, but many of them would face closure at precisely the time when the demand for summer cooling will be at its highest.

Bills Presented: Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (16 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: It is pleasure to take part in this short debate on climate change. The fact that it is a short debate indicates that more immediate problems tend to come ahead of climate change in our consideration—I do not intend to undermine the importance of the debate on Afghanistan in any way. I look forward to a longer debate on climate change in the autumn. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of...

Bills Presented: Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (16 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: I could not agree more with that assessment. If my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State goes to Copenhagen and tells his colleagues—or tells the Americans or the Chinese before Copenhagen—that he is under constant pressure in the House to do a better deal, that is of great value. I make no apology for sometimes sounding critical of my Government. The criticism should come from...

Bills Presented: Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (16 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again on this subject. In what year would he estimate that a new nuclear power plant would deliver a new additional watt of so-called low-carbon energy, as opposed to what comes from the replacement plants that the Government are talking about first-off?

Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: UK Low Carbon Transition Plan (15 Jul 2009)

Colin Challen: I very much welcome the statement, because I think—or at least, I hope, because I have not read the White Paper yet—that it represents a big break from the energy policy of every Government since the time of Gladstone, which has been "Dig it up and burn it." Latterly, of course, that has included uranium. I hope that we are going to shift away from that territory, but I would...

Bill Presented — Sustainable Energy (Local Plans) Bill: National Express East Coast Franchise (1 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: This time around, the public ownership option will not be brushed aside. In the period of calm reflection that we will now have, will the Minister undertake an urgent review of all the other franchises? He has said that none of them is about to default, but can we have a review so that we can understand how healthy they are?

Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: Engagements (1 Jul 2009) has video

Colin Challen: Does the second franchise fiasco on the east coast main line in two years not tell us that the Tory rail privatisation experiment has finally hit the buffers? Now that we are taking the east coast main line back into public ownership, can we keep it that way?

[Mr. Jim Hood in the Chair] — Railways (North of England) (1 Jul 2009)

Colin Challen: People have a similar experience in my constituency in Leeds, which has two stations that are the last on the line before Leeds City station. The best way of tackling that problem is to increase capacity—increasing the number of carriages. Surely that is the cheapest way of getting people out of their cars, making the modal shift and reducing the number of those short commuting journeys...

[John Bercow in the Chair] — Personal Carbon Trading (18 Jun 2009)

Colin Challen: I wonder whether my hon. Friend has a fix on the extra amount that everybody has to pay on their energy bills to cover the cost of the ETS and the raft of other upstream schemes. There is a cost to poor people there. How are we addressing that?