Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:39 pm on 13 December 2023.
My Lords, I join with the Minister in accepting that the current draft is a darn sight better than the dreadful draft presented two days ago, but it is still, sadly, deficient. In the run-up to the COP, we not only saw the petrostates and fossil-fuel companies trying to derail any reference to fossil fuels in the agreement; we also saw the IPCC and the scientists warning us that we were well off the Paris trajectory towards 1.5 degrees, to which we are all supposed to be signed up. Perhaps we also ought to acknowledge that any improvement due to the UK Government’s intervention was down to our own Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, with the actual leader of the British delegation being called back from saving the world to saving the Prime Minister. Is not this Government’s moral authority to persuade smaller, more vulnerable and poorer nations to adopt a net-zero policy sadly undermined by our continued licensing of oil and gas extraction in the North Sea and other retreats from our green policies? Can the Minister give us a date for abandoning those polices?