Climate Change Assembly UK: The Path to Net Zero

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:41 pm on 26 November 2020.

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Photo of Kwasi Kwarteng Kwasi Kwarteng The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 3:41, 26 November 2020

I thank all Members; this is one of the best debates I have seen in the House. I thought it was temperate, with lots of extremely well considered and informative speeches, so I am very pleased to take part in it.

I thank Darren Jones for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. I particularly thank the citizens who gave up their time to take part in the Climate Assembly UK. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spoke at the launch of the report, and we have taken this report extremely seriously in the Department in which I serve as a Minister. Initiatives such as the Climate Assembly play an important role in helping to develop policies that are achievable and fair.

In response to the point from Matthew Pennycook, clearly, citizen engagement—the engagement of our people—is absolutely necessary if we are going to achieve the net zero carbon emissions target that we have set ourselves. I am very pleased that the Select Committees of this House took the initiative and were able to inaugurate this process. Many of the recommendations—people have said this—of the Climate Assembly report have been reflected in the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan that was announced last week, and I will return to some of those at the conclusion of my speech.

Public engagement of this kind, as I have said, is absolutely necessary. We completely agree with the spirit of the Climate Assembly’s recommendation on greater citizenship involvement, and that point was very ably raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), who is not in his place, and it was alluded to by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. The Government will continue to engage with the public on the changes that are needed to develop our ambitions on net zero and to listen very attentively to feedback. People from all over the UK are already doing their bit on climate change, and, with the Together for our Planet campaign, we aim to celebrate this and inspire even more of our fellow citizens to join them.

As a Government, we have also increased dramatically our engagement with the public on policies for net zero. In the past year, we held deliberative workshops with the public on transport, heat, carbon capture and, particularly, on the environment. Last week, as I said and as has been mentioned many times, we saw the Prime Minister announce the 10-point plan. I remind the House that that 10-point plan delivered and reflected many of Climate Assembly UK’s recommendations. The assembly called for a green recovery. The 10-point plan is the Government’s plan for that green recovery, particularly focused on jobs.