Climate Change (Political Response)

Part of Opposition Day — [19th allotted day] – in the House of Commons at 6:41 pm on 21 October 2009.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Linda Gilroy Linda Gilroy Labour, Plymouth, Sutton 6:41, 21 October 2009

Like my hon. Friend Barry Gardiner, I regret the tone of the debate. As has been amply shown, there is plenty of leadership at national level. I wish to talk about how that translates through to regional and local leadership.

In Exeter we have the green jewel in the south-west's crown, the Met Office, which the Conservatives' defence spokesman recently seemed to think it would be a good idea to sell off at this critical time. Our regional leadership has come from the former and current regional Ministers, my right hon. Friends the Members for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw) and for South Dorset (Jim Knight), working alongside the South West of England Regional Development Agency. The Conservatives would abolish the RDAs, but that leadership has ensured that there are key priorities in our region on resource efficiency, renewable energy, waste management, climate change adaptation and low-carbon technologies.

That has led to the region being the first to be given low-carbon economic area status as part of the Government's low-carbon industrial strategy. That designation involves £30 million for the wave hub energy demonstrator off Cornwall and £15 million for the peninsula institute for marine renewable energy, which is a joint project of Exeter and Plymouth universities. Those projects will make major contributions to the national targets on which we have to deliver, and they are an important illustration of how we need to continue to invest at a strategic level. That investment will take time to deliver.

Locally, people in Plymouth are doing their bit. Not surprisingly in a constituency with 450 marine scientists and 1,500 environmental students, the university is top-performing in environment and sustainability, as rated by People and Planet in its green energy league table. There are businesses such as the Caribbean Car Wash, which has set a benchmark for high-quality eco-friendly car washing by reducing to half a litre the amount of water necessary to clean and valet a car.

I regret that our Tory council has not signed up to the 10:10 agreement and that its leader set a bad example by objecting to a school's planning application for two small wind turbines and then employing a consultant when the school appealed. I regret the daft proposals to sell the green jewel in our city's crown, a successful bus company that is one of the few in the country to have added passengers in recent years.

The 10:10 campaign is excellent, but no one should use it to talk down what we are achieving and our position of international leadership. Practicality is everything, and as my hon. Friend the Minister said in her opening remarks, some Departments have already taken the low-hanging fruit. Carbon budgets, mocked from the Tory Benches, will build on that success.

There are those who are still sceptical, although perhaps none of them are present in the House today. It took only one small mistake to detract from Al Gore's brilliant film "An Inconvenient Truth". The Government have to act responsibly, especially on matters in which they have already gathered in some of the low-hanging fruit.