Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): It is widely accepted—the debate has confirmed it—that the Government so far have a pretty good record on climate change. We played a significant role in securing the Kyoto protocol in December 1997. We chaired the European Council in 1998 that produced agreement on the allocation of carbon reduction targets among all EU member states. We then produced a programme for countering climate change that was probably the most detailed and extensive of any country in the world. It is fair to say that we have been consistently proactive and effective in international negotiations to push the climate change agenda. We have been one of the only two or three countries in the
EU on track to meet our Kyoto target by 2010—so far, so good. However, there appear recently to have been disturbing shifts in policy that I fear are beginning to undermine that excellent record, which is why I have been prompted to speak in the debate.
A few months ago, British officials started lobbying in Brussels to try to persuade other EU countries that the successor regime to be implemented after Kyoto ends in 2012 should contain no targets or time scales. That is of course what President Bush wants, but it would defenestrate the entire global effort to stop and reverse global warming.
Then, a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister stated at a private conference in New York that the way to deal with climate change was not through the Kyoto mechanisms, but by more research and development in improved technology, as has been referred to. In other words, it should be business as usual, but with more scientific ingenuity to try to lessen the catastrophic consequences. I profoundly disagree with that approach.
If the world is to achieve the exceedingly exacting target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions not just by 5 per cent., as Kyoto requires, but by 60 per cent. by 2050, which scientists say is necessary to reverse global warming, a post-Kyoto international treaty that lacks targets, time scales and mechanisms is, to be honest, hardly worth the paper on which it is written. If that is the line that we are now taking as the presidency of the EU at the Montreal conference of parties, which is starting next week—I hope that I am wrong—it is a seriously retrograde step.
We will never solve the problem through business as usual plus merely improved technology. Welcome and useful though that new technology may be, we will do so only if we remove the causes of climate change: the burning of fossil fuels. To those such as the Prime Minister who seem to fear that that will inhibit economic growth—there has been a good deal of discussion about that in this debate—I say that helping developing countries to do that via the clean-development mechanism, which was specifically put into the Kyoto protocol, will not dumb down economic growth. It will increase the opening up of vast new international markets for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
That worrying shift in strategy—there have been some confusing signals, so I am not absolutely clear about the policy—is now beginning to seep into other more specific areas of policy. Over the summer, the national allocation plan targets that set out the carbon dioxide limits that are allowed for each industrial sector were increased by the Government, in one case above the levels already agreed by the EU Commission, as a result, of course, of industrial lobbying. I believe that I am right in saying that we are still intending to take the Commission to court in order to force it to accept that 3 per cent. increase. I hope that I am wrong, but if I am not, we should think about that again.
The building of 250,000 new homes—this point has been made and I very much agree with it—in the south-east of England offers a great opportunity to ratchet up the low energy-efficiency standards in housing, but as far as I can see, so far it has not been taken up.
The fastest rising cause of greenhouse gas emissions is of course transport, yet too little has been done to replace the fuel duty escalator, which was so abruptly dropped in the face of the lorry drivers' blockade of oil refineries in 2000. I know that some things have been done, but certainly not enough.
Air travel, which may soon become the single biggest generator of greenhouse gases, is—let us be honest—being strongly promoted by the DTI. In addition, the Government heavily subsidise the airline industry—all Governments have done so—so that real-terms fares are falling year on year. The Government impose no tax on aviation fuel, which is a huge discrepancy when compared with the undoubtedly high tax on petrol for cars. They are now proposing a huge expansion of airports and a 300 to 500 per cent. increase in air travel in the next 30 years. All I can say is, fine, I know people want to do that, but I should like to be told how that is compatible with achieving a 60 per cent. reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Now we are being told that the only way in which we can reach our Kyoto targets—
Mr. Boris Johnson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Meacher: I will, although I hope that it will be a serious intervention compared with the speech that the hon. Gentleman has just made.
Mr. Johnson: I take it that the right hon. Gentleman does not therefore agree that planning permission should be revoked in the case of solar panels. Is he saying that that is a frivolous suggestion? On the point of air travel, I have had the pleasure of meeting him several times at airports—at Cagliari most recently. Is he seriously suggesting that people should give up their pleasure of holiday travel?
Mr. Meacher: No one is saying that. No one is suggesting that people should give up their car or air travel. I am simply saying that the rate of expansion is incompatible with the requirements that scientists say we must meet if we are to achieve the targets to reduce climate change. We must find a way of reconciling what people want with what is absolutely necessary to stop climate change. I cannot give the answer today, but that is exactly what we need to examine.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con): One way in which we could meet those targets is through the increased use of biofuels. Allscott, the British Sugar factory in my constituency, certainly wants to produce sugar beet for biofuels. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that we need more discussion of biofuels and greater demand for them?
Mr. Meacher: The Government are looking seriously at the question of biofuels. Fuels containing 5.75 per cent. of biofuels are helpful to the workings of engines and are good for the environment, so I welcome the proposal.
We have been told that the only way in which we can reach our Kyoto targets is through the renewal of civil nuclear power. Whatever the opinion of Sir David King, the chief scientific adviser, that is patently untrue. Our target is a reduction, as the Minister rightly said, of 12.5 per cent. by 2010. Even with recent slippages, largely because of the shift from gas back to coal, we are still on track to achieve at least a 14 per cent. reduction. However, we are not doing considerably better, as many of us would like, because of the reasons that I have spelled out and, importantly, because we have made glacial progress in promoting renewables. The Minister is nodding, and I am sure that he agrees with me.
We fall well short of the 10 per cent. target for 2010. On current trends, we will fall well short of the 10,000 MW target for combined heat and power by 2010, and we have not made any commitment to the EU goal of 20 per cent. renewables by 2020. It has even been proposed—I hope that the Minister will say that this is wrong—that the funding support for the burgeoning solar industry should be largely withdrawn. The Prime Minister appears to be gearing up to renege on the energy White Paper of February 2003, which was produced by his own Government and proposed no new nuclear build and a major switch to renewables. He is doing so despite the enormous downsides of nuclear, which is more expensive than wind power, coal and gas and which, over the past 50 years, has accumulated taxpayer liabilities of no less than £56 billion according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. It generates colossal amounts of waste—10,000 tonnes at present, and 0.5 million tonnes according to the Department of Trade and Industry at the end of the century—which Governments have tried, genuinely but fruitlessly, to dispose of. Nuclear plants create a major terrorist risk. They are surrounded in every case, studies show, by cancer and leukaemia clusters. The risk, however small—I am sure that it is very small—of a catastrophic nuclear accident can never be ruled out entirely.
I am not seeking to knock nuclear, but simply wish to make the point that we do not need it. As an offshore island, we have enormous wind power capacity which we have not tapped. Experts, however, have calculated that it is sufficient to provide our entire electricity requirement four to six times over. We need to be much more determined in our pursuit of carbon reduction policies across the piece, and I shall end by suggesting a few.
We should demand—I am sure this is what we want to do—that air travel be brought within the Kyoto protocol, from which it was excluded under American pressure in 1997. We should extend UK participation in the EU emissions trading scheme. It would certainly seem, from the leak of the Government's climate change review, which I have seen, that they are minded to do that, which is good. We should tighten building standards significantly in new build in order to achieve a major boost in energy efficiency, and we should—I do not know why we have not done this—reintroduce the excellent idea of standard assessment procedure ratings for all home sales.
We should introduce innovative proposals to give people incentives for carbon reductions in transport. For example, there is the idea of a fee-bate, which entails giving people a rebate of, for example, £3,000 or £5,000 if they buy a car below, say, 1200 cc. The rebate would be paid for by a fee or charge of the same amount on the sale price if people buy a large gas guzzler. I shall stick my neck out as others have done in the debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen), who has honourably pursued the issue. To sensitise people to the way their activities may generate greenhouse gas emissions, we should consider the gradual introduction of domestic trading quotas. Of course—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman has had his time.
