John Redwood in the House of Commons

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): I have declared my interests in the Registerof Members' Interests.

There is a central tension, referred to in the report accompanying thedebate, between development and the need to clean up the planet. I do notthink that we heard any serious attempt to reconcile the two-except in theexcellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry),whosaid that, if forced to choose, he would choose development and greaterprosperity for the world's poorer nations rather than meeting ever moredemanding targets for control of pollution.

How, I asked the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), would the LiberalDemocrats resolve that obvious tension? The hon. Gentleman replied that hewould want to see a global target for ensuring that pollution fell year onyear worldwide, whatever the rate of growth and whatever the rate ofincrease in pollution from the world's poorest countries. That is a nobleaim, but a dangerous aim for anyone in government, or serious aboutgoverning, to recommend.

We cannot know how successful development policies will be, and we cannotknow how many millions of Chinese or Indians will soon have fridges andcars, and far greater energy demands. It would be quite wrong of us in therich west to tell those people that they have no right to enjoy the energy-intensive technologies that have powered ourprosperity in recent decades, and it would be very difficult for us to saythat we will definitely tax and regulate ourselves stringently enough-intheway that Liberal Democrats usually recommend-to offset all the potentiallyhuge growth in energy use in the developing world.

I am sure that those who have spoken today-including the Minister-who areangry about poverty in the third world, about the deaths of children andabout the hundreds of millions who have no access to fresh water of adecentstandard or to energy of any kind that we would recognise are right to beangry. I am sure that our priority should be to extend the hand offriendship, trade, prosperity and technology to the hundreds of millionsinthe dozens of countries all over the world who have no access to the mostrudimentary of the home and creature comforts that we all take forgranted.

That surely must be the priority of this mighty summit as, once again,65,000 people assemble to try to put the world to rights.If we ask ourselves what the UK Government can do to tackle the monumentalpoverty that disfigures our world, we realise that the issues are toonumerous to mention in this short debate, but let me highlight just a few.The first is surely that where we have influence and the ability to use itfor the good, we must try to stem the conflicts and move developingcountries towards regimes that put economic prosperity and liberty aheadofwar and of declaring war on their own people for their own political ends.

There is no credit to be gained by advancing money in the form of grant or loan to regimes that use it to buy new Mercedes for the generals runningthecountry and new military hardware to repress their poor people if theydareto complain about the rotten system under which they live.

I ask the Minister to remind the House of the Government's policy, which Isupport, of not offering grant or debt retirement to regimes that willclearly abuse our money and our trust. It was not easy for the SecretaryofState to defend that policy and I admire the fact that she has done so,butwe need to go beyond that and move from the negative to the positive.We need to use our influence and that of the other rich countries who areour allies and friends both in the Americas and in the European Union totryto move more countries into a position where they can establish a civilsociety. Without a civil society and the rule of law, there is absolutelynochance of those countries having the opportunity to become better off andhave decent food and water. If we cannot support Governments and regimesandforces of legitimate opposition that wish to establish a decent civilsociety, we will have no chance of doing all the other wonderful thingsthatwe would like to do to help their development, such as encouraging privatesector investment and money flows, which are usually the best way ofsecuring prosperity.

We should understand that not only does five times as much money flow fromthe private sector to the developing world as it does from Governments,butthat the money that flows from the private sector to the private sector indeveloping countries is much more useful in lifting the living standardsandaspirations of people than is much of the Government-to-Government money.Many good studies show how much Government-to- Government money is wasted or diverted into less legitimate causes by theGovernments who receive it. Even where we believe that to some extent aregime is worth backing, corruption or misappropriation still occurs,makingit difficult for the subjects of that country to benefit.

Finally, we should attempt to understand the mighty log in our eye when welook at the moral issue of the world's poor. Surely the biggest log in oureye, collectively, in the European Union and in the UK is the commonagricultural policy. Many developing countries are most likely to producecrops for export before they have industrial products for export. Iunderstand the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), but one of the best opportunities that these countries have istosell agricultural exports for hard currency. One reason why the globalmarkets are so depressed is that the EU runs a protection racket in manysectors, so that a big block of the world's most mighty and rich countriesis not generating sufficient demand on the world markets to encouragedeveloping economies.

I welcome all the charities and interest groups from outside the House whohave been and will continue to lobby for fair trade. It is a very goodidea,but it must also be reflected in Government policy on the EU. We haveheardfor many years from Governments of both persuasions about reforming theCAP.

We have heard from this Government that they have far more influence inBrussels than the outgoing Conservative Government had. Would it not begoodif we could be told tonight that at last this influence will work andtherewill be some reform of the CAP that will be good for consumers andtaxpayershere in Britain? It would be very good for the world's poorest countriesifsome of that protection racket were at last torn down and their farmersgiven the chance of a decent life.

I believe that we in the rich United Kingdom should make ever biggercontributions to reducing the pollution that we inject into the planet'satmosphere. We have made good strides, and we need to make more. The twomost dramatic developments in recent years came about in rather surprisingways. Following the privatisation of the electricity industry, it suddenlybecame possible to build the combined cycle gas stations that thenationalised monopoly always refused to build. We leapt from about 38 percent. fuel efficiency to 55 or 60 per cent., which made a huge differencetothe amount of pollution that we churn out.

As the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) pointed out in athoughtful contribution, this Government now face an even biggerchallenge.

The previous Conservative Government were able to implement a super-greenprivatisation policy, which made far and away the biggest contribution toour success so far in reducing pollution. We now need from this Governmentapolicy on what to do when the nuclear stations need to be replaced. Iftheyare not going to replace nuclear with nuclear-it is very unlikely thattheycan replace it with non-fossil fuel of any other kind, given the patheticefforts so far-what else do they intend to do to get us back to where weshould be? We will take a mighty step backwards if nuclear stations arereplaced by gas, or some other fossil fuel technology.

Paradoxically, the second area in which we have made enormous strides isthepariah-according to the Liberal Democrat lexicon on environmentalmatters-ofthemotor car. Huge improvements have been made in the performance of thetypical family saloon in the past decade. Current family saloons pollutetoonly about 4 per cent. of the extent of comparable vehicles built some 12or15 years ago. That has been achieved through a combination of incentive,technology and regulation. Such massive improvement shows that technologyinfree markets can make a big contribution to cleaning up the planet. We nowneed to make a similar attack on pollution from old and dirty dieselrailwaylocomotives, and from old and dirty diesel buses. We have not renewed thebus and train fleet as quickly as the car fleet, so proportionately publictransport vehicles-particularly those that are not used by enoughpassengers-pollute more than do the modern versions of motor cars.

I hope that the Government want the car industry to progress from 30 or 40mpg vehicles to 80 or 90 mpg vehicles. The technology exists, and it canbedone. I hope, too, that they want to make yet further progress in cleaningup exhausts through a mixture of incentive and regulation. That brings metoa very important principle. We make so much more progress if we work withthe grain of human nature by offering incentive, rather than workingagainstit by trying to stop people enjoying our society's marvellous inventionsthrough a mixture of high taxation and regulation. The two successes ingreen policy-first, under a Conservative Government, and now under aLabourGovernment-involved offering a tax discount for good conduct, rather thanclobbering people for alleged bad conduct. The Conservatives began gettingrid of lead in petrol by offering an incentive to buy unleaded fuel, andthis Government are getting rid of sulphur in petrol by offering a similardiscount. That is an excellent scheme; let us go on with it.

One major way in which we can contribute to greening our country-andtherebymodestly contribute to greening the planet-is to use a similar range oftaxincentives to tackle the dirt and pollution generated by the typical homeheating system. A generation of boilers that are very old-compared withtheaverage age of car engines-and inefficient remain in use. Many homes arenotproperly thermally insulated. A few small programmes exist to help peopleonlow incomes get better insulation and achieve better fuel efficiency inthehome, but we need to attack the problem much more manfully. In terms ofpollution, the space heating problem is far bigger than the car problem.

Wealso need to establish a better tax incentive policy to tackle the abuseofwaste, to which reference has already been made.

I am conscious that many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shallconclude by urging the Government to put development ahead of everythingelse at the summit. It is the blight of poverty that we should be mostappalled at and worried by. The Government should understand that we needtocontribute to stronger regimes that can create a civil society, and tobackthe private sector, which will be the main agent for change andimprovementin such countries. We need desperately to deal with our commonagriculturalpolicy problem, and with the other remaining barriers to trade within ourEuropean trading framework.

We need to make much better strides at home towards greening our owncountry. However, that should be done by judicious regulation and taxdiscount, and not bytreating anyone who drives a car or behaves in a way that the Governmentdonot like as a pariah who must be taxed out of existence.

We can enjoy the benefits of modern technology, and we can make them evergreener. Wealth and technology will win the battle against pollution, nottaxation and backward thinking.