Clause 25

Part of Climate Change Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 7:45 pm on 1 July 2008.

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Photo of Phil Woolas Phil Woolas Minister of State (Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 7:45, 1 July 2008

I ignore those organisations at my peril, and spend many late nights signing letters to hon. Members who have forwarded those postcards. I am grateful to people who write in.

May I deal with amendment No. 83 first? The debate has been important and perhaps the important points made by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border have been forgotten. He asked for an assurance that we take account of the carbon sinks in the United Kingdom. As the Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth, I understand the point, because much of the measurement of moorland peat is done in my constituency, and I have been following that for some 10 years.

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the carbon sinks are included in the targets. The Bill relates to net UK emissions—emissions less removals by UK carbon sinks. That provides an important incentive to promote carbon sinks in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the Forestry Commission is one of the most successful organisations in the world at increasing forestation in percentage terms, but not in total acreage, and has responded to that very point. It relates to the subsequent debate about the balance between overseas and domestic emissions. The net emissions are there.

I can provide further reassurance. There are already well-established mechanisms in place to ensure that removals from sinks are properly assessed. Information must be compiled in accordance with the same systems and international methods as for the annual emissions inventory which the UK is already required to submit to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. The UK emissions inventory follows such guidance from the intergovernmental panel on climate change which is reviewed every year by the United Nations—that is, by international experts—to ensure that such practice is followed. We intend to follow exactly the same guidance in compiling the emissions statement, including information on removal by sinks under clause 15. In fact, clause 29(2) requires that the amount of UK emissions and UK removal of greenhouse gases must be determined consistently with international carbon reporting practice, which is defined subsequently in clause 86.

For those reasons, the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment is unnecessary, but I entirely agree that it backs up the point about basing our net emissions measurements on science and not on a political fix. It also, conveniently, helps me with my argument against subsequent speakers, and I shall explain why.

This is the heart of the debate and hon. Members on both sides made their arguments strongly and passionately. Let me try to explain the Government’s argument. We have discussed Government amendments to clause 14 on the balance between UK emissions, action within the EU, and international action. That was a key issue, as has been said, when the Bill was debated in the other place, and the Government have given it significant consideration since then. In the debates on the Bill there has sometimes seemed to be a mistaken idea that this Government, or a future Government, will do anything they can to buy their way out of reducing UK emissions, by purchasing international credits instead. However, we all recognise that the world as a whole will only tackle climate change if developed countries such as ours reduce their emissions significantly. That is why we have tabled new clause 2. If accepted, it will place into legislation for the first time the need for UK domestic action on climate change. The new clause is intended to set out plainly the belief of Government and, we hope, Parliament that we need to reduce our domestic emissions if we are going to meet our targets and encourage others to reduce their emissions as well.

However, we also must not lose sight of the reality that climate change is a global challenge. We need global emissions to halve by 2050, based on the 2 deg C increase that we talked about at clause 1. The international carbon market will be the key to achieving the scale of investment flows necessary to achieve that, which are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, over and above the additional public money—additional to official development assistance—that is required. We need action at European Union and international level, as well as at domestic level, if the world is to tackle climate change. We do not believe that the policy outlined in clause 25 is the right one. Apart from the point that clause 25 is inflexible—I do not want to debate that as it is helpful to specify a figure—the 70:30 limit is arbitrary.