Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): I am strongly tempted to go down the transport route in my remarks because I disagree with just about everything that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) said. He said that he supported concessionary bus fares for the elderly, but then immediately opposed the Government extending them to anywhere outside Christchurch. He asserted that we need a massive new road-building programme to reduce congestion, apparently without knowing that in 1992 his own Government set up a committee that conclusively proved that more road building simply postpones the build-up of congestion. His statement at the conclusion of his speech that the enemies of freedom are using the environment to suppress liberties is just too silly to merit a respond.

I want to focus on the security issue and the other wider matters that bear on that. I take it that that issue forms the centrepiece of the Government’s legislative agenda for the coming year, but it goes far wider than anti-terrorism and a tighter law and order crackdown, which dominate the Queen’s Speech. Climate change is the overarching issue that threatens our security, our entire civilisation and our whole way of life.
Until we give absolute priority to combating climate change, there will be no long-term energy security, which is absolutely central to the secure future of everyone, and there will be no food security or water security in this country or anywhere else. That imperative should dominate every aspect of Government policy—not just energy, but transport, industry, construction, agriculture, taxation, fiscal policy, public expenditure and foreign policy. I must, regretfully, say that at present it dominates none of them.
We are nowhere near on track to achieve the 60 per cent. reduction in emissions by 2050 that the scientists say is necessary. That requires a huge shift to renewables, which at present provide just 4 per cent. of electricity generation in this country, compared with an average of 20 to 25 per cent. in the rest of the European Union. It requires a massive drive to ramp up energy conservation, which is in the doldrums. It requires car and aeroplane manufacturers to cut emissions radically. It requires all industries to report on and reduce their environmental impacts year by year, which unfortunately the Chancellor recently ditched. I believe that that was a mistake. It requires big incentives for local food production to cut air miles dramatically. It requires energy efficient building standards for all new build, as already exist in Europe and Scandinavia. It requires a carbon quota for every family according to their size, which should be gradually reduced over time in a way that rewards the conscientious and penalises the wasteful. At present, none of those policies is in place, and most are not even being contemplated.

Nor will reductions in emissions be achieved by a climate change Bill in the Queen’s Speech—which, of course, I welcome—if it lacks annual targets. If the Government choose, as they seem to be doing, a five or 10-year period instead, all that will happen is that such a level of slippage will build up in the early years that too big a gap will be left to be surmounted in the later years, and the target will simply be missed, perhapsby a considerable margin. That is exactly what is happening now. In six out of the past eight years there has been an increase—sometimes a very small increase, I recognise—in greenhouse gas emissions.
What the Government should clearly do on climate change, which I regard as our ultimate security, is commit to the necessary target of a 3 per cent. annual reduction in overall UK emissions, then produce a report on the country’s performance in meeting the target and, where there is slippage—everyone understands that there will be slippage, there is nothing wrong with that—make it clear that the Government will introduce whatever changes are needed to keep Britain on track. If we were to do that, we would acquire the moral and political authority that the Government rightly seek to lead the way internationally in pressing other countries, especially the United States, China, India and the other big countries, to commit to an enhanced and extended climate change protocol, which is the absolute bottom line condition for global action to stabilise and ultimately arrest climate change.
Nor is the more conventional and narrower concept of security in the Queen’s Speech being handled as effectively as it might. Of course the physical security of the nation must be our absolute and immediate priority—no one will dispute that for a second—but endlessly ratcheting up the controls over every aspect of our national life will never deliver real security unless we deal with the underlying factors. I must give credit to the Home Secretary, because he spent some time supporting that point.

If we are tough on security, we equally need to be tough on the causes behind the current insecurity. There are several contributory factors; it is certainly not just one. Material circulated on the internet such as gory images of executions, martyrdom videos and portrayals of carnage, particularly where it involves women and children, can have a big impact, especially on small group dynamics where Islamic networks distance themselves from normal social contacts and create autonomous cells that generate intense fanaticism and dedication. It is among such groups that the rage prompted by the horrendous daily carnage in Iraq, the refusal to condemn the indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon and the widespread perception among Muslims of a grossly imbalanced US-UK policy in favour of Israel to the neglect of the Palestinians, feeds on itself and drives terrorist activity.

Of course, the Government have taken the line that there is no link between British foreign policy and Islamic militancy. Well, I frankly do not believe that—I think that very few people do—but equally, neither do I believe that anger at British foreign policy is the sole cause of extremism. I would certainly view it rather as a key contributing factor. That is one of the strongest reasons why a fundamental review of policy on Iraq is so desperately needed now.

If our forces in southern Iraq have now achieved all that they reasonably can and our continued presence there is exacerbating the security situation—that is, as we know, exactly what the military are now saying—it is imperative that we withdraw our forces on the shortest time scale, although not immediately. I readily concede that it is not practicable to do so immediately, but it should happen in the shortest time scale consistent with securing at least the minimum stability that is still salvageable. That should be our aim. In so far as it is compatible with that goal—I think that it probably is—I very much welcome my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary’s speech yesterday. It is the only way now to bring the disaster of the Iraq war to a close without humiliation. I seek to raise it in this debate because it would go a considerable way towards easing the domestic tensions in this country that arise from the almost daily reports of terrible civilian slaughter.
Setting out a revised Government strategy on Iraq is imperative, but it is certainly not the only essential thing to do. As the Prime Minister has rightly said, we must give the highest priority, through our influence with the EU and the US, to achieve a viable and sustainable Palestinian state. That is probably the best and the only likely way to stop al-Qaeda recruitment. We need a much more even-handed policy between the Arab states and Israel in the middle east. At home, we need to do much more positively to integrate Muslim citizens in the UK in employment, housing and education and to promote a culture that focuses much more on the positive values of both communities.

My last point is that there is also a further gain to be had if those changes of emphasis in foreign and domestic policy can bring about a reduction in the tensions of our society. There have been dozens of criminal justice and law enforcement Bills over the past decade—all in the name of protecting, very sincerely, the freedoms of our society. Those Bills have been so wide ranging, so unremitting in their clampdown on so many aspects of our society and so intrusive into the reality of some of our traditional liberties that we are seriously at risk of undermining the very freedoms that we profess to be preserving.

I refer—hon. Members know this very well—to the use of control orders, the introduction of identity cards, the reduction of jury trials, the limitations on the right to protest, the extension of stop-and-search powers, the anti-terrorism Acts that allow an 82-year-old man to be bundled out of a hall for heckling, a highly unequal US-UK extradition treaty and now, apparently, the attempt to reverse a clear decision of Parliament taken only a few months ago and to extend the 28-day limit on detention without charge to90 days. I beg the Government to look again and to consider whether that is not the wrong way forward.