Climate Change

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:44 pm on 5 November 2009.

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Photo of Clive Efford Clive Efford Labour, Eltham 3:44, 5 November 2009

I accept some of what the right hon. Gentleman says. Some uses of HFCs will need to continue, but they are minimal. I definitely agree with the right hon. Gentleman in saying that this should not be used as a smokescreen for encouraging general use of HFCs or to prevent the Government from regulating. The supermarkets are responsible for about 50 per cent. of HFC emissions, while refrigeration units are the major source of HFCs in the country, so regulation in respect of that would be very welcome, even within the industry itself-indeed, the industry has said that it wants such regulation.

As the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal pointed out, some large companies, including Unilever, Coca Cola and McDonald's have said that they want to stop using HFCs, so there is already a great deal of interest within the industry in such a change. The major UK supermarkets say the same, but make the point that, in order to make progress, they need a level playing field. This is a highly competitive market, in which the supermarkets are always looking over their shoulders to gain a market advantage over one another. They argue that were there a regulatory framework within which they all had to operate, they would be able to make progress, because they would then know that their competitors would have to act in exactly the same way.

We need a regulatory framework and investment in research and development to tackle this issue. In turn that provides an opportunity for our industry, as we could help to develop the new green technology required.

We must also train the technicians. The technical change involved in moving from CFCs to HFCs was minimal, but using carbon-based gases, which do not have the capacity to add to global warming, as refrigerants will require people to be trained to use different equipment. That said, none of those problems is insurmountable.

The agreement that has been secured between the industry itself and those campaigning against HFCs should provide an opportunity for the Government to act to cut the use of those gases, which are up to 20,000 more potent in terms of global warming than CO2. The fact that their use is increasing at 3 per cent. a year should provide a wake-up call to us all. I believe that the Government should take the supermarket industry at its word and regulate. They should set a date, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal suggested, to eradicate usage of HFCs in supermarket refrigeration units. That date should not be too distant, but 2012 or 2013, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested.

In conclusion, I wish the Secretary of State and, indeed, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister every success in the Copenhagen discussions and I hope that HFCs will feature in them. I note from Tuesday's edition of The Guardian that Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is quietly confident that something will eventually come out of the Copenhagen discussions, and I sincerely hope he is right. If the Minister of State is concerned about her carbon footprint, I nevertheless urge her to continue with one important part of her activities-the burning of the midnight oil to ensure that we reach an agreement at Copenhagen. I urge her and other Ministers to be bold, as others have suggested. Some things that might have been thought unthinkable in the past must become thinkable at Copenhagen, particularly if we are to avoid going down as the generation that fluffed it by failing to take the necessary action to protect future generations from the worst effects of climate change. I wish all Ministers every success at Copenhagen.