The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart) I beg
to move, That this House has considered COP28. I am glad to come to
the House today to discuss this important subject. We discussed
COP28 at a recent reception hosted by the all-party parliamentary
group for climate change last month, and also at a recent meeting
of the Environmental Audit Committee. I welcome the interest of
colleagues from across the Chamber. I note that the all-party
parliamentary...Request free trial
The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero ()
I beg to move,
That this House has considered COP28.
I am glad to come to the House today to discuss this important
subject. We discussed COP28 at a recent reception hosted by the
all-party parliamentary group for climate change last month, and
also at a recent meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee. I
welcome the interest of colleagues from across the Chamber. I
note that the all-party parliamentary group on the environment
has just released its report on the subject, including nine
recommended priorities for COP28. That, too, is a welcome
contribution to the debate.
The upcoming conference of the parties, hosted by the United Arab
Emirates, comes at a really important moment in tackling the
climate crisis. Amid record temperatures and emissions, the first
comprehensive stocktake of progress against the Paris agreement
at COP28 will show that the world is badly off track. We have
made significant progress through the Paris agreement, with
temperature projections shifting from a 4° increase before Paris
to an increase of between 2.4° and 2.7° after Glasgow, thanks to
the nationally determined contributions that countries have said
they will make.
But we know that is not enough. In Glasgow, we cemented the goal
of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 1.5° and
made that our north star, and that has been carried forward by
the UAE presidency. The latest science, and the impact that we
see even at 1.1°, shows us why that is so important. A top
priority for the UK is to leave COP28 with a clear road map to
keep a ceiling of 1.5° in reach.
The UK heads to COP28 with a record at home and internationally
that is second to none. The Prime Minister recently reaffirmed
our commitment to net zero and set out a new approach to get
there. This will make it easier for businesses, supply chains and
households to adapt to the new normal. We will build on our
previous successes and continue to lead.
I am not sure that we are always as good as we should be at
sharing this story, of which the nation can be proud. At home, we
have decarbonised more than any major economy on this planet,
cutting our emissions by 48% since 1990. Not only have we
decarbonised faster than any major economy on the planet to date,
but we have the most ambitious plans and the most ambitious
nationally determined contribution for 2030 of any major economy.
Our commitment is to a 68% reduction by 2030. By comparison, the
EU, which has been a genuine force for good in this space, has an
NDC of 55% by 2030, although it hopes and expects to exceed that.
How have we done that? Our inheritance was not a great one. As
recently as 2012, nearly 40% of our electricity came from coal.
Next year, thanks to the policies of this Government, it will be
zero.
We inherited in 2010 an electricity system in which, almost
unbelievably, less than 7% of our generation came from
renewables. In the first quarter of this year, it was nearly 48%.
We have transformed our renewables base. We have eliminated coal.
I am aware of no country anywhere that has done more and gone
further, faster, but leading in that way is not enough for us, as
a country that produces less than 1% of global emissions, right
though it is that we should do so. We also have to lead the
global conversation, and that is exactly what we did at COP26.
When we took on the presidency of COP26, 30% of global GDP was
covered by net zero pledges. When we handed on to Egypt, it was
over 90%, and I am proud to say that this country led that
conversation.
Not only are we leading, but the rest of the world is accepting
the need to act, even if nationally determined contributions and
national plans do not yet match what is needed to meet the net
zero challenge, but I am pleased to say that ours do. We have
ambitious targets, and we will deliver on them. As I said, we
have to make sure that the other 99% of global emissions start to
follow the same trajectory, so our offer and engagement will be
all about encouraging the rest of the world to join the UK on a
net zero pathway.
Two years on from Glasgow, the need to accelerate action is more
urgent than ever. The world needs to decarbonise more than five
times faster than we did in the last two decades. The country in
the world that has cut its emissions more than any major economy,
namely the UK, has reduced them by 48% in 31 years, but according
to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific
body that advises us on this, the world needs to cut its
emissions by 43% by 2030 from a 2019 baseline to keep net zero
alive. That shows us the challenge. We need to be peaking
globally by 2025.
The latest United Nations framework convention on climate change
nationally determined contributions synthesis report shows that
emissions are set to be 2% below the 2019 level by 2030 if all
the commitments made so far are met—2%, when the science says
that we need a 43% reduction. The latest “State of Climate
Action” report from the World Resources Institute carries a
similarly stark message: we need to accelerate the transition
rapidly. Only one of its 42 indicators for the progress needed by
2030 was on track.
We also have to be up front about the fact that we face
significant challenges coming into this COP: geopolitical
tension, conflict and a challenging macroeconomic context in
which Governments are battling inflation and debt. G20 relations
are strained, as I witnessed at first hand when I went to the
Climate Ministers G20 meeting in Chennai. Some countries are
seeking to stoke divisions, to deflect from their own
responsibility to take action. At the same time, record
temperatures and widespread climate impacts are increasing the
need to act on adaptation, loss and damage, as well as reduce
emissions. We need broad-based progress across all pillars of the
Paris agreement at COP28.
Finance will be a critical part of the transition. Developed
economies need to deliver on their promise to mobilise $100
billion in climate finance for developing countries. We all know
that we were due to deliver this in 2020 and, collectively, we
fell behind. In Glasgow, we set a course correction to meet the
goal by 2023. I am pleased that today’s report from the OECD
shows that we are ahead of the projections we set out in Glasgow.
We delivered $89.6 billion in 2021, and the OECD has indicated
that it is likely—not definite, but likely —that the $100 billion
goal was in fact met in 2022. Delivery of that commitment is
something that the UK has championed, and I am pleased to say
that we recently made our biggest ever climate finance commitment
through our $2 billion contribution to the green climate
fund.
There is also an urgent need to realign the financial system so
that it is fit to address the challenges we face today, including
climate and development. The science is unequivocally clear that
urgent action is needed. The vital work done by the IPCC and
other scientists makes clear that the risks and impacts we face
will grow significantly as temperature increases, including the
risk of breaching tipping points, which will accelerate that
negative trend.
At COP28, we want to see progress across five areas, the first of
which is commitments to keep 1.5° alive. Coming out of the global
stocktake, we need renewed consensus and increased ambition to
keep 1.5° within reach. We also need a clear, forward-looking
road map with a commitment to peak global emissions by 2025;
global targets for key sectors, particularly those that are hard
to decarbonise; and commitment to action, including through
initiatives such as the breakthrough agenda and in other key
areas such as forests, the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbons and
clear guidance for the next round of NDCs, which will be a
central feature of the Belém COP in the Amazon in two years’
time.
The second area is clear progress towards a clean energy future,
including a commitment to triple global renewable energy
deployment and double energy efficiency by 2030. That sits
alongside a clear commitment on phasing out unabated fossil
fuels—our position on that issue is unchanged since the G7
commitment that the UK helped to deliver earlier this year—and to
phase out coal power, building on COP26 outcomes.
The third area is reform of the international financial
institutions to unlock trillions for global challenges including
development and climate action, and delivery of our existing
commitments, alongside $100 billion per year in climate finance
for developing economies. As I have mentioned previously, the
OECD’s latest report on 2021 figures shows that developed
countries are on track to meet that goal.
The fourth area is improving adaptation to climate change,
delivering on our Glasgow commitment to double adaptation finance
by 2025, and establishing an effective loss and damage fund to
support countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse
effects of climate change. We are pleased that the transitional
committee that was set up to reach agreement on what that loss
and damage fund should look like has put forward a recommendation
to COP28. The UK was instrumental in securing that
recommendation, and we hope it will be agreed by all parties at
COP28. We will continue to advocate for the priorities of the
most vulnerable: we held a third climate and development
ministerial at the pre-COP event last month in Abu Dhabi, which I
co-chaired, to do just that.
The fifth area is that we want real progress towards protecting,
restoring and sustainably managing nature—for example, by making
concrete progress on the historic agreement we landed to halt and
reverse deforestation by 2030.
Action to deliver net zero is not just a matter of doing the
right thing, or of avoiding harm: it is crucial to our security
and prosperity here in the UK, both now and in the future. The
global net zero transition could be worth £1 trillion to UK
businesses between 2021 and 2030. UK businesses are in the
vanguard of recognising the opportunity that springs from net
zero: over two thirds of FTSE 100 companies and thousands of
small businesses have pledged to reduce their emissions in line
with the 1.5° target under the Race To Zero campaign. Over half
of the signatories to that campaign are from the UK.
Net zero is already an engine for growth and revitalisation of
formerly deindustrialised areas in the UK. We are a leader across
a number of areas: we have the world’s five largest offshore wind
farm projects and the world’s No. 1 ranked green finance centre,
and we are leading the way in developing an approach to carbon
capture and storage, to name a few examples. Action on climate
and nature is also crucial for our energy security and to reduce
exposure to future global shocks, such as those caused by
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The North sea’s transition to a
clean energy powerhouse with 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 will
reduce exposure to volatile international energy markets and be
an engine for clean energy exports. Action on adaptation and
nature is crucial in a world where food security is increasingly
under threat.
However, we need everyone with us on this journey. The
opportunities are huge: in 2023, we will see a record $1.8
trillion invested in clean energy alone. According to the
International Energy Agency, electric vehicles are on track to
account for two thirds of new car sales globally by 2030; the
transition to clean energy and electric vehicles is taking off,
and it will spread to other sectors quickly. At COP28, we need to
show progress on delivering the historic agreement we landed in
Glasgow. We must use UK expertise to scale green finance, support
others to accelerate the transition in key sectors of the global
economy, and set a clear pathway to 1.5°. At this point, I am
happy to hear from other Members.
12.35pm
(Bristol East) (Lab)
Simon Stiell, the UN climate executive secretary, said at COP27
that we need
“everybody, everywhere in the world, every single day, doing
everything they possibly can to address the climate crisis.”
That is the scale of the challenge ahead of us, and the global
stocktake synthesis report has underlined what is at stake. We
are falling short on mitigation, adaptation and finance. Current
NCDs are 20 to 24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent short
of what is needed to limit warming to 1.5°. The conclusion is
stark: there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure
a liveable and sustainable future for all. Indeed, in meetings I
have had recently with climate scientists, they have warned that
although they want to cling to the hope of keeping 1.5° alive,
they fear we are now in the territory of 2°. At 2°, we lose our
coral reefs, for example; that is not a solution that we should
be happy to live with. Echoing Simon Stiell, the global stocktake
report states that
“much more action, on all fronts and by all actors, is needed
now”.
One would not know it from the speech that the Minister has just
made, but we do not have a Government who are taking the action
on all fronts that is needed now: we have a Government who are
not just stalling, but taking us backwards. I thought it was
quite a cheek for the Minister to cite electric vehicles, given
that the Government have just rowed back from the 2030 ban on the
sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles. The motor
manufacturing sector, including the Society of Motor
Manufacturers and Traders and the Ford motor company, was quite
happy with that 2030 date. The only reason that date was moved
was that in the wake of the Uxbridge by-election, the Prime
Minister wanted to play party politics with net zero. The
Minister is quite audacious at times: he said that some countries
were seeking to stoke division at COP, but that is exactly what
his Government have been doing in recent weeks on net zero.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
The rest of the European Union has set the deadline of 2035. It
was right that the United Kingdom Government set the ambition for
2030, but we recognise that things are changing: we have had
covid, and there is still a need to roll out infrastructure. I
think the hon. Lady is being ungenerous, since we will now be in
line with the rest of the European Union, and we have a higher
take-up of EVs than many other countries.
In all the conversations I have with businesses, they say that
they want certainty and a strategic sense of direction; they want
to know where they are going, so we should not move the
goalposts. There was no reason to row back from that target, and
as I have said, the motor industry itself has expressed concern.
That industry needs to develop a market in new vehicles now, so
that in a few years’ time, we will have the affordable
second-hand market that we need so that people can afford to make
the transition. The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that the
infrastructure is not there, but that is a challenge that we
should rise to, getting a comprehensive network of public sector
charging points, grid connections and so on. She will have heard
that from Labour at its recent party conference.
Let me turn to domestic progress. Again, to listen to the
Minister, one would think that everything was going swimmingly.
The Climate Change Committee has assessed that the UK is unlikely
to meet its NDC to reduce emissions by 68% between 1990 and 2030.
The Government’s own carbon budget delivery plan conceded that
Ministers only have plans for 92% of our NDC, but they have said
that they are confident about delivering those emissions
savings—that is something we often hear from the Minister,
without any actual detail about how we will get there. In fact,
it has been assessed that the Government have credible plans for
only 28% of the required emissions reduction. There is a lot of
work to be done.
The Climate Change Committee assessed the Government’s policies
in October with and without the Prime Minister’s climate
climbdown, and found a 20% increase in the proportion of the NDC
pathway covered by “insufficient plans” having taken into account
the Prime Minister’s intervention. It said that the
“widespread uncertainty for consumers and supply chains”,
is more difficult to quantify, but, as I have said, at all the
meetings I have had, people are saying that this has absolutely
knocked them off course. There is a huge amount of enthusiasm for
going down the path to net zero and I am told that there is a lot
of private sector finance ready to invest, but they need a stable
economic climate, not a Prime Minister who is U-turning just when
action is needed.
Following the disastrous contracts for difference auction, the
proportion of the electricity supply pathway with significant
risks increased by over 5,000%. The refusal to help renters
contributed to a fivefold increase in insufficient plans for
buildings. When the Government’s policies are, as the Climate
Change Committee found,
“making Net Zero considerably harder to achieve”
and driving up energy bills, how can Ministers go to COP trying
to boast about how well things are going in the UK? I do hope for
action before COP. We have the autumn statement next week, and we
were expecting some plans—I think the Chancellor promised in the
spring that he would bring them forward—in response to the
Inflation Reduction Act and the measures we then saw in the EU. I
hope that we do get something on that front to at least reassure
businesses that the Government still have net zero in their
sights and see it as an important part of a future industrial
strategy for us.
The UK used to be at the forefront of global climate action, and
again the Minister was being a bit cheeky when talking about the
progress that has been made since 2010. I think he entered
Parliament when I did in 2005. Is that right?
indicated assent.
The Minister may recall being on the Green Benches in 2008 when
the Labour Government introduced the world’s first Climate Change
Act, which was then adopted by more than 100 countries around the
world. It was groundbreaking.
If the hon. Lady wants to have a history lesson—and we did,
indeed, come in together—she will remember that it was , as the leader of the
Conservatives, who was the first leader of a major party in this
country to call for a climate Act. I think the Liberal Democrats
leader followed suit a few hours later, and the Labour Government
then eventually did so. I served on the Joint Committee, chaired
by the brilliant David Puttnam, that put this into place, so I
will not take any lectures from her. It was the Conservatives who
led the charge to get that going—the first major party to support
it—and I was pleased to see it put on the statute book. We were
of course the first major economy in the world, and the first
Government, to legislate for net zero overall.
It was a Labour Climate Change Act brought in by the now shadow
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my right
hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (). I can see why the
Minister may be desperate to try to claim credit for it, because
the Government have so little else that they can claim credit
for, but it was a Labour Act introduced by a Labour Government.
It is because that was enacted that we have seen so much
progress, and as I have said, it was taken as a model for many
other countries to follow. However, we are now setting entirely
the wrong example to other countries by scaling back on our net
zero ambition and last year the Prime Minister had to be forced
to attend COP.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
The Minister will have an opportunity to respond in his wind-up
at the end, but I suppose I will give way once more.
This is a really important topic, and it is important that we get
our language right. The Government have not scaled back our net
zero ambitions for either our NDC in 2030 or net zero by 2050.
The hon. Lady can make lots of points, partisan or otherwise, but
it would be great if she acknowledged that this country has,
under this Conservative Government, cut emissions by more than
any other major economy on earth and has the most ambitious plans
for 2030.
The Minister will also know that the Government had to be taken
to court, because it is one thing declaring targets and
ambitions, but unless they have the strategy—[Interruption.] The
Government were taken to court, and that is why they had to
produce the delivery plan earlier this year. The Climate Change
Committee, which by his account was all his idea because it was
all his idea to introduce the Climate Change Act, has said that
the Government are not on track to meet their ambitions. So the
Minister cannot just rely on grandiose boasts about where he
wants to get us to if he does has not have a plan to get us
there, and it is very clear that he does not have a plan to get
us there.
The Minister said that we represent only 1% of global emissions,
which is true, but the NDC emissions gap is approximately the
total combined annual emissions from the top three emitting
countries. Yes, they have responsibilities, but this does need
everybody everywhere to play their part. I do not think we would
want to try to suggest that we were insignificant in the big
global picture because we represent only 1% of the total
population.
I will move on specifically to the COP agenda and what we hope to
see. Will the UK be calling for the phase-out of unabated fossil
fuels, and does the Minister agree with the global stocktake
report—[Interruption.] I am just about to come to that. I know
the Minister mentioned it, but does he agree with the global
stocktake report that fossil fuel subsidies are stifling
cost-effective low-carbon alternatives? The global stocktake
report states that
“lifetime emissions from existing and planned fossil fuel
infrastructure will exceed estimates for keeping…1.5 °C within
reach”.
My point is that, if the UK will be calling for the phase-out of
unabated fossil fuels, how does he think going to COP when the
Government have just announced the Offshore Petroleum Licensing
Bill in the King’s Speech will sit when he tries to lecture other
countries on moving away from fossil fuels?
The global stocktake report is clear that CO2 removals have a
role, but are
“not a substitute for deep emissions reduction.”
It states:
“A rapid reduction of the world economy’s reliance on fossil
fuels towards clean energy is central for reaching global net
zero”.
That sounds to me like an endorsement of Labour’s clean energy
mission for 2030. Unlike the Government’s short-term approach,
this will increase our energy security, create good jobs and
reduce energy bills—unlike, as the Secretary of State for Energy
Security and Net Zero admitted the other day, the Offshore
Petroleum Licensing Bill—and it will mean that the UK is leading
the world in tackling the climate crisis.
The Minister mentioned nature-based solutions, and I was very
pleased to hear that, but can he say a bit more about what global
action the Government will be supporting with sustainable land
management—I understand that that will be on the agenda at COP in
a way that it has not been in the past—as well as terrestrial and
ocean carbon sequestration? What discussions are there likely to
be on the role of setting up credible international carbon
markets? To give one example, we know that wetlands have huge
potential, but we are still waiting to hear about the saltmarsh
code—the former Secretary of State for Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for
Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), may have something to say about
that—and whether we can add saltmarshes to the greenhouse gas
inventory. With the UK’s leading position as a world financial
centre, we are ideally placed to be playing a role in creating
these markets both on the nature side and on the carbon side.
It is estimated that tree loss last year was 2.1% higher than the
maximum level. Will the Minister update us on that? He mentioned
halting and reversing deforestation by 2030, and on the
international side that is very much about stamping out links to
deforestation in our supply chains. Could he give an update on
how that is going, because as I understand it, it is not going
well? Those issues were all highlighted in the global
stocktake.
The built environment and transport are also on the COP agenda,
and it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us a little
more about the Government’s priorities for the talks. He
mentioned the loss and damage fund, and the work of the
transitional committee. It would be interesting to know more
about what conversations he has had with climate-vulnerable
countries, and the small island developing states in particular,
because it is one thing to set up these financial arrangements,
but in the past the smaller a country, the fewer resources it
has, and it finds it very difficult to access the finance that is
out there.
The Minister also mentioned the need to reform international
financial institutions, which was welcome. I do not know whether
he intends to reveal much about his actual agenda at COP before
he goes—and it would be useful to know who else is going with
him—but one question that has been asked of me is whether he will
be attending the ministerial event on methane on 4 December. I
think it is really important that we start addressing methane in
connection both with the fossil fuel sector and with agriculture
and waste. I hope that will be a priority for him.
To conclude, the UN has previously warned that the world is on
course for a catastrophic 2.8°C of warming, in part because
promises made at COP26 and COP27 have not been fulfilled. We are
running out of last chances, but we can still avert the very
worst of it, because we have the knowledge and tools to do so; it
is just the willpower that is lacking at the moment.
The UK under Labour will, as called for in the global stocktake,
transform our energy system with a plan to double onshore wind,
treble solar, and quadruple offshore wind. Our warm homes plans
will see 90 million cold and draughty homes brought up to
standard, and Labour’s answer to the Inflation Reduction Act will
restore Britain’s international leadership and create jobs across
the country. Our proposals for a clean power alliance will lead
ambitious countries and support the most vulnerable. A net zero
target should not lead to complacency. There is so much more that
the UK can and must do, not only to reduce emissions but to
deliver energy security, reduce energy bills, and enable British
industry to thrive over the long term. That is the vision we need
to see at COP.
12.50pm
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate. COP28 will be
vital, recognising the global stocktake that will be happening,
and I commend the Government on the progress they have made,
while also recognising, not just in this country but around the
world, the necessity of a just transition.
I pay tribute to the Prime Minister, who in his speech a couple
of months ago recognised that we have already been doing so well
on aspects of the carbon budget. He also recognised some of the
impacts that were about to unfold, particularly in rural
communities like mine in Suffolk Coastal, including a transition
away from oil boilers—something that we all want. He is allowing
more time for that to happen, rather than the sudden impact that
such measures could have had on many people in my constituency
and across the country. His speech was also about aspects of
housing and the energy performance certificate. Undoubtedly, in
many rural parts of the country, trying to achieve EPC standard C
is difficult, because there is pretty old housing—not just from
20 or 30 years ago, but considerably older. Trying to make that
change meant that a lot of buildings were at risk of being
removed from the private rental sector, which would not be good
in terms of housing people in our rural communities.
I also commend the Prime Minister on saying, in a key part of his
speech at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh last year, that there is no
solution to climate change without protecting and restoring
nature. That is 100% right. Again, the United Kingdom should be
proud of how it has put nature, and nature-based solutions, at
the heart of ensuring that we achieve net zero around the
world.
In her 1988 speech, my political heroine Margaret Thatcher
highlighted the risk to the world of climate change. She was
pivotal in ensuring that the Montreal protocol, and its
subsequent amendments, was an innovative way—indeed, the most
successful agreement ever reached —to try to tackle climate
change. The Kigali amendment to the Montreal protocol was
ratified by this Parliament in 2017, and I was pleased to be the
DEFRA Minister who led that ratification. The critical outcome of
that is to try to prevent 0.5°C of warming, which will help.
Indeed, that is the single biggest contribution that will be made
towards keeping the goal of 1.5° alive.
This is about how we tackle the issue in a variety of ways, in
particular how we use hydrofluorocarbons—in the past it was
chlorofluorocarbons—and thinking about the global warming power
of the different chemicals we use. In my constituency, GAH
Transport has been in operation for 30 years. It is a small
business, but it is really making an impact with the amount of
research and innovation that it is undertaking to try to use more
of the sorts of chemical that reduce global warming potential.
That will be an important part of the innovation we need not just
in this country but around the world. I am delighted that the UK
Government are funding, through international climate finance and
other aspects of official development assistance, important
progress in India and Rwanda. That is important progress in the
cooling challenges that those countries face, not only when
heating or cooling homes, but also—particularly in Rwanda,
working with other African nations nearby—when thinking about the
impact on agriculture, and how we can try to reduce food waste.
We are supporting that important innovation to ensure that we
keep the goal of 1.5° alive.
I have one request for the Minister. The United Arab Emirates,
which is taking up the COP28 presidency, has not ratified the
Kigali amendment, and I encourage him to raise that with the
COP28 President and Ministers for that country to see whether
they can do that. We need leadership across the world. The
amendment is already in effect because a sufficient number of
countries have signed, but it would show further leadership from
the UAE to undertake that important ratification.
I admit that I am a bit of a veteran of COPs. I went to COP23 in
Bonn in 2017, and to COP24 in Katowice. We had the magnificent
COP26 in Glasgow, with our own president, my right hon. Friend
the Member for Reading West (Sir ). In many ways that was a game
changer for nature, and it was strengthened last year at COP27 in
Sharm El-Sheikh. Going back to Bonn, nature was really the
Cinderella of it all. The oceans—we were already seeing the
change, and the impact of climate change; we were starting to see
acidification. Although the seas are still alkaline, they are
getting more acidic, and it is important to recognise that power
and how nature has helped us.
Oceans have effectively been absorbing so much carbon that the
impacts—what that is doing to nature—are now starting to become
clear. The hon. Member for Bristol East () mentioned the bleaching of
coral reefs and the potential loss of those reefs, and it is
important that nature goes hand in hand with climate strategy. I
am delighted that the UK Government have made that a key part of
what we do.
On other aspects of nature, the Minister and I have attended a
variety of international meetings. Most recently we were together
in India for the G20, and I was with the former Secretary of
State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my right hon. Friend the
Member for Welwyn Hatfield (), in Japan at the G7. It has
been an important part of that journey that we work globally with
partners. To some extent, that has been the secret of what made
the Montreal protocol work so well. Funding was given to try to
help countries around the world with that innovation and
transition. Some of those things are not straightforward. For
example, right beneath us we have the tube system, and the way
that some of these chemicals or gases were used in the past has
been a key part of some of our own infrastructure. We need to
change away from that, in particular by not using sulphur
hexafluoride any more, or by reducing it and phasing it down as
far as we can. It is important that we share our understanding
and technology, and that is why what I said about India and
Rwanda is an important part of making that happen.
Thinking a little more broadly, I will briefly touch on my time
at the Department for Work and Pensions. I do so because I know
that a lot of these measures will need financing. We made an
important decision to make reporting to the Task Force on
Climate-related Financial Disclosures mandatory when it comes to
pensions. If we think about the trillions of pounds of assets
that are in global business and being invested, it makes sense
for businesses to think ahead about the impact of climate change,
and for investors to do so as well. That does not mean that
things will happen overnight. Businesses must be conscious of
what the impact of climate change will be, and frankly they need
to start financing to try to mitigate that impact or adapt
towards it. As a slight aside, I welcome the Taskforce on
Nature-related Financial Disclosures, and I hope I can persuade
the Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions
to adopt that in future as well.
In order to ensure that we achieve net zero by 2050, we do have
to think of the planet—of course we do—and we have to think of
people. A lot of this is quite an uncomfortable transition and a
change to a way of life, and we must make it as straightforward
as possible. I also know that we can be prosperous as a
consequence of these changes, whether that is through green jobs
in the UK, or ensuring that instead of spending lots of money on
having to adapt, mitigate or deal with crises in different parts
of the world, we build such measures into our systematic way of
growing globally in terms of our prosperity. That is why it is so
important that the £11.5 billion of international climate finance
is still a key part of the Government’s strategy.
My constituency contains a nuclear power station, Sizewell B. It
was home to Sizewell A, which is now being decommissioned, and
planning consent has been given for Sizewell C. It really matters
for our energy supply that we have a mix. There is also a lot of
offshore wind in the southern North sea. The impact on the
onshore infrastructure required to bring that into our network is
a source of much concern in Suffolk, and I know that my right
hon. Friend the Minister is well aware of that. I will not dwell
on that—I intend to bring it up another time—but to take the
national and global position, we need to work out how we will
make that transition fair, thinking of the impact on communities
and on nature. I know that my right hon. Friend is wise about
those matters.
The shadow Minister referred to the greenhouse gases inventory. I
agree that we should look to bring saltmarsh, woodlands and so on
into the inventory. I am delighted that DEFRA’s chief scientific
adviser, Dr Gideon Henderson, is undertaking that work. I wish
him well and hope he will be able to work at pace. I will shortly
talk about mangroves—my favourite, they are magic and it would
not be a speech from me if I did not talk about them—and we have
to recognise that saltmarsh is our equivalent of mangroves. In my
time previously in DEFRA and in the past year, I tried but did
not quite get there—I really need the Marine Management
Organisation to work much more collaboratively with Natural
England and the Environment Agency to make it more
straightforward to plant saltmarsh. There have been too many
complications with licensing in different ways, and it is very
frustrating. Like mangroves, saltmarsh is multipurpose. It can
sequester carbon, it can be a good flood defence, and it is a
brilliant habitat for many of the migratory wading birds that
come to our shores. I am very keen that we make good progress on
making that happen.
On emissions, I want to thank Robert Caudwell who did a report
for DEFRA on lowland peat and the impact of farming and
agriculture. I wrote the foreword to the Government’s response
earlier this year and welcomed the investment towards tackling
the emissions, because it is a significant amount. It is of
course important that we have food security, but we also need to
tackle emissions from agriculture in a measured way. Wider work
on the restoration of peatlands has been a passion of mine for
several years.
My right hon. Friend mentioned deforestation, which was one of
the key elements of COP26 in the leaders’ pledge, various
declarations and the coalition of ambitions. I am known for
wanting to make sure we turn ambitions into action, and I know
that the House will share that thought. I was, therefore,
delighted that we were able to contribute to the Amazon Fund,
which will help Brazil in particular. That was announced by the
Prime Minister earlier this year. Progress is being made on
getting the forest risk commodities legislation ready, and I hope
it will be laid before the House before too long. It is important
that as we make these changes we do our best to reduce
deforestation and our demands through supply chains, and I
commend the companies that have already made those changes. There
is more to do, and I hope more will be done very shortly.
Nature-based solutions can be symbiotic and provide much more
value for money in achieving what we want to achieve. It has not
always been the case that actions taken to reduce carbon have
been beneficial to the environment. That is not a criticism. The
dash for diesel had other impacts, especially with particulate
matter 2.5. People did not know at the time, but we should
recognise now that the dash for diesel had an impact on other
aspects of the environment and it is important that we consider
both as we make further changes.
I have a particular passion for mangroves. I tried to brand them
“blue forests” to make them a bit more accessible around the
world, but they are magical. They are magic because, bang for
buck, they are better at carbon sequestration than the Amazon
forests. They have been in place for a long time, but they are
also under threat, because they make brilliant wood for building
homes and boats. I commend countries such as Mozambique that have
put in national protections. We should think about how much of
the Commonwealth has mangroves, because at the moment they do not
get rewarded for the protections they have put in place.
Communities do understand; it is not just about carbon. What is
magic about mangroves is that they provide a brilliant place to
develop aquaculture. The fishing industries locally can be
sustainable because of the opportunities for the growth of fish
stock and protection from other predators, just by the nature of
the mangroves. They also have an impact on coastal erosion and
protection. Haiti in the Caribbean suffered a devastating
hurricane some years ago, but, while the areas with mangroves
were still damaged, they were the quickest to recover. That is
why I am on a mission, and will continue to be so as long as I
have breath, to champion mangroves whether in this House or as I
regularly did in ministerial meetings around the world.
The magic of mangroves needs to be recognised more, and that is
why I was pleased that for COP28 the UAE made a commitment to
plant more mangroves. My right hon. Friend the Minister and I
went different ways after the G20 in Chennai, and I had the
privilege of visiting the second largest mangrove forest in the
world at Pichavaram, and it was exceptionally special. I love
that the community also recognises how special the forest is and
how important it is to protect it. I am conscious that other
parts of the world have had a slash and burn approach in the past
to generate other aspects of the economy, but now Governments and
communities have recognised the importance of stopping
deforestation, as my right hon. Friend mentioned.
On the history of climate change, I give credit to the Labour
Government who introduced the Climate Act 2008, and we took a
generally cross-party approach to it. introduced “vote blue, go
green” and was really behind the change. The Act legislated for
an 80% reduction by 2050, and it was actually my right hon.
Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), when she was Prime
Minister, who made the change to a 100% reduction by law. Those
legal targets matter. We should also recognise that it was who really made a difference
at COP26. He brought nature and the world together to make sure
that we would keep up the momentum.
There is no doubt in my mind that covid was a bit of a body-check
to progress on many environmental matters, but it is important
that we keep accelerating, and I wish my right hon. Friend the
Minister well at COP28. I know that several Ministers are going,
including from DEFRA and my successor as
the Secretary of State. It matters that we are there. We need to
bring others with us, but they will not come with us if we just
attack what they do.
Just last week, I was in Beijing where I met Minister Huang, the
president of the Committee on Biological Diversity that led to
the immense global biodiversity framework agreed last December in
Montreal. We have to work with China and with other countries—I
think in particular of Minister Yadav in India. I was able to
explain what I thought was the Prime Minister’s just transition,
but we certainly cannot reduce our ambition; we have to work with
other countries, and challenge them but bring them along, because
it matters that everybody makes their commitment.
It does not matter if the United Kingdom or any other country is
the first to reach net zero—what matters is when the last country
hits net zero. We need to ensure that as many countries as
possible achieve that by 2050, if not before, and I wish my right
hon. Friend the Minister well in the negotiations. I know there
is ambition in our thinking about some of the different
approaches that need to be taken. I hope that he will also be key
to the Commonwealth playing its part. At the UN General Assembly,
I was delighted to chair the first meeting of Commonwealth
Ministers for environment and climate, and there was certainly
ambition there. Let us turn that into action. I have great
confidence in my right hon. Friend making that happen.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the SNP spokesperson.
1.11pm
(Edinburgh North and Leith)
(SNP)
I will start with a short reality check. Climate scientists are
forecasting with near certainty that 2023 will set a new record
as the hottest year. October global temperatures soared 1.7°C
above the late-1800s average for that month. According to the US
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, September 2023
surpassed the average July temperatures from 2001 to 2010. Those
records are not merely being broken but being shattered.
Heatwaves, droughts and floods have resulted in significant human
suffering, claiming thousands of lives, disrupting livelihoods
and displacing scores of people.
The burden of these climactic shifts falls disproportionately on
those regions and communities that have contributed least to the
crisis. East Africa, a region with minimal contribution to global
carbon emissions, has faced devastating drought and famine, with
estimates earlier this year suggesting that two lives were being
lost every minute. Meanwhile, low-lying nations such as Tuvalu
facing the real threat of extinction in the coming decades are
creating digital back-ups of their entire existence and culture,
complete with ancestral knowledge and value systems.
As we approach COP28, it is therefore encouraging—although long
overdue—that the conference will focus more on frontline
communities, and especially those in least developed countries
and small islands. That emphasis must translate into tangible
financial support. That is an area where Scotland has set a
precedent as the first country in the global north to commit
funds to climate loss and damage, pledging £2 million at COP26.
Last year, the Scottish Government allocated an additional £5
million to non-economic loss and damage, supporting initiatives
preserving the heritage of affected communities. Those sums are,
of course, small compared with what is required globally. Finance
provided by rich countries to help the poorest deal with climate
change remains woefully inadequate. However, the Scottish
Government’s action has encouraged others to follow, with about
$300 million thought to have been pledged globally to address
loss and damage.
At COP27, a landmark agreement was reached to establish a
dedicated fund aimed explicitly at supporting vulnerable nations
and communities who are grappling with the irreversible effects
of climate change. That action must be accelerated, and the
finance offered must be additional to that already available for
mitigation and adaptation—and it must be in the form of grants
not loans. Support for adaptation initiatives is simply
inadequate.
Countries of the global north not only bear a substantial
responsibility for the destructive consequences of climate change
through our emissions but have benefited from the competitive
advantages that the early adoption of fossil fuels and
industrialisation provided. Therefore, surely wealthy nations
have a moral obligation to recognise that historical
responsibility and lead by example. First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Net
Zero and Just Transition Màiri McAllan, who will represent
Scotland at the conference, will make that case to delegates.
Action to address loss and damage gets to the heart of what we
mean by climate justice. It is a principle that is equally
important at home as it is globally. The Scottish Government are
committed to ending our reliance on fossil fuels in a way that is
fair and leaves no one behind. That is exemplified by the just
transition fund: the Scottish Government’s 10-year, £500 million
investment to support projects in the north-east and Moray as
those regions transition to net zero. The principles of a just
transition are also enshrined in the Climate Change (Scotland)
Act 2019, emphasising the creation of green, sustainable jobs and
addressing economic inequality.
The actions needed to reach net zero by 2045 will transform all
sectors of our economy and society, and will require rapid
structural change. In Scotland, and indeed throughout the UK, we
have seen how unplanned structural changes in the past have left
intergenerational scarring and deprivation, most notably in our
former coalmining communities. Our transition to net zero must be
managed differently.
In October alone, we have experienced two extreme rainfall
events, including Storm Babet, which disrupted transport,
destroyed infrastructure and crops, led to the evacuation of
communities, and tragically took lives in Scotland and across the
UK. The health of our environment, economy and society is
interlinked with how well we mitigate climate change and adapt to
its impacts. That is why the Scottish Government are making an
extra £150 million available in this parliamentary term on top of
£42 million annually for flood risk management, and £12 million
on coastal adaptation.
The Scottish Government’s climate change plan update outlines
nearly 150 policies, setting a pathway to meet our ambitious
emissions targets by 2032, including a 75% reduction by 2030. We
have reached significant milestones. In 2020, almost 100% of
Scotland’s gross electricity consumption in Scotland was
generated from renewable sources. Although the Scottish
Government have met targets and missed others, at the last count
the Government missed their annual emissions target by only 1.2%.
That tells us two things. The actions of the Scottish Government
are helping us to track very closely to where we need to be
against the backdrop of some of the most stretching targets in
the world. Equally, there is a great deal left to do.
Of course, the delivery of Scotland’s climate ambitions is also
contingent on action by the UK Government in reserved and shared
areas, and that certainly has not been helped by the Prime
Minister’s recent abandonment of key net zero commitments. The
sheer scale of his policy reversals may have a significant impact
on Scotland, not least in the preparation of our own draft
climate change plan. I am afraid that the King’s Speech only
deepened those concerns. The problems with the announced new
licensing system have been highlighted by both climate scientists
and anti-poverty campaigners, so I do not need to go into them,
but analysis from earlier this year showed that new oil and gas
fields in the North sea will produce only enough gas to meet the
UK’s needs for a few weeks a year. If the Government were serious
about strengthening the UK’s energy security and bringing down
people’s energy bills, they would start by announcing robust
measures to incentivise investments in renewables. I think in
particular of tidal stream—I speak about that regularly in this
House—similar to what we are seeing from the EU and the US, as
well as matching the Scottish Government’s £500 million just
transition fund.
People in Scotland are rightly asking how it is possible that
they are facing unaffordable energy bills when in 2020 Scotland
produced enough renewable energy to power the equivalent of every
household in the country for more than three years. They are also
wondering why in a country where we produce six times more gas
than we consume, Age Scotland’s figures suggest that a scandalous
50% of people aged 55 to 64 are living in fuel poverty.
We are also seeing the damaging impact of Brexit on environmental
protections and standards, which Members on the SNP Benches
warned of repeatedly. The Tories’ Retained EU Law (Revocation and
Reform) Act 2023 threatens the high standards that Scotland
enjoyed as an EU member, before we were removed against the
wishes of the clear majority of people in our country. Just this
week, we heard the UK Government’s plans to reduce the safety
information required from chemical companies to register
substances to an irreducible minimum. The UK’s registration,
evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—UK
REACH—is already falling behind the EU’s regulations, and that
move will only heighten the risk of toxic substances entering the
environment.
In the realm of national security, the Defence Committee’s recent
report on climate change found that the Ministry of Defence could
do much more to measure and reduce its carbon emissions without
eroding military capability.
Dr Coffey
I hear what the hon. Lady says about chemicals; the Government
are planning to produce a new chemicals strategy. She may not be
aware that the European Union refused to allow the United Kingdom
access to all the information on REACH. The cost of replicating
exactly the same information is huge. She needs to be mindful
that we are trying to support business, while recognising that
the European Union could have given us access and refused to do
so.
That is just another complication caused by Brexit, which has
been a disaster for the UK.
As I mentioned, in the realm of national security, the Defence
Committee has taken a close interest for some time, so it seems
that some sort of environmental audit would be appropriate for
Ministry of Defence activities.
Whoever wins the next election faces a long road to rectify the
decisions of the current Government. Hon. Members should not take
my word for it, but it does not bode well for the UK’s standing
on the climate crisis ahead of COP28. , the former chair of the Climate
Change Committee, said in the summer that by failing to act
decisively in response to the energy crisis and building on the
success of hosting COP26, the UK has lost its claim to global
climate leadership.
To restore influence and authority ahead of COP28, the Prime
Minister should take heed of the letter from the all-party
parliamentary group for climate change, which Members from
different parties across the Chamber have signed. It calls on the
Prime Minister to appoint a Secretary of State-level UK climate
envoy ahead of COP28, after the Government scrapped the role of
special representative on climate change within the Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Office. We want the UK Government to
support climate-vulnerable countries by committing new and
additional grant-based finance to the loss and damage fund, and
championing a just global energy transition by engaging with
affected workers and supporting other countries to fairly move
away from fossil fuels.
As we all know, the Paris agreement binds countries to stop the
planet heating by 1.5° by the end of the century. However,
current policies are set to heat it by about 2.4°. That
trajectory spells disaster for the planet. We must play our part
in reversing it immediately.1.23pm
(Putney) (Lab)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for water,
sanitation and hygiene, I declare an interest relevant to this
debate and to the future of our globe. I am honoured to be part
of this debate on such an important issue. No other important
issue is raised so many times by young people when I visit
schools in Putney, Southfields and Roehampton, and by the many
members of the Putney Environment Commission, which I set up
shortly after I was elected for local people interested in taking
action on climate internationally, nationally and locally. Last
night we had a meeting about what we can do to rewild local
streets in London, and are looking forward to playing our part in
action before and after the United Nations climate change
conference, COP28. I will attend the conference, with a
delegation of 10 MPs. It is important that parliamentarians are
at the conference, meeting experts and activists who are all
working towards ensuring a green future and the action on climate
and nature that is so important for our long-term survival.
This year, 2023, will be the hottest year on record. Every day we
witness the climate crisis unfold, from the effects of El Niño to
the UK battered by storm after storm. Currently, between 3.3
billion and 3.6 billion people live in areas that are highly
vulnerable to climate change. The world’s poorest people,
including women and girls so often on the frontline, are paying
the highest price. Under current estimates, we face a 40%
shortfall in fresh water by 2030—not very far away. Water
scarcity is escalating, which affects trade, economies, poverty
reduction, food and nutrition, but also migration—an issue that
is a subject of many debates in this House and will only be
exacerbated by climate change. That is the tip of the iceberg.
The disruption and damage that the climate crisis causes and will
cause to all our lives cannot be overstated. As the Minister
said, the world is badly off track to agreeing the Paris
agreement targets and keeping 1.5° alive.
The right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) mentioned
mangrove forests. I am also a fan, having been to visit mangrove
forests in Bangladesh when I worked for Water Aid. I had the
privilege of visiting a coastal community in Bangladesh, where
the climate crisis is already extremely real. It used to be a
freshwater area where people survived by fishing, but it has been
salinated. I sat with a group of women in that rural area where
they could not harvest or grow anything—there was nothing they
could do. They wanted to move anywhere else, but were stuck in an
area that seemed arid, like a desert from the future, where
climate change was making such an impact on communities. I have
said many times that climate change is not something that will
happen to us; it is happening now. That was understood by the
recent COPs, but needs to be understood even more. If we are too
late, there will be no concrete action to effect change at the
scale we need.
The main outcome needed at COP28 is obvious: an agreement for no
new fossil fuels. Many organisations such as the International
Energy Agency have said that to achieve global net zero emissions
by the year 2050, there should be no new fossil fuel extraction
projects beyond those already committed. How can the Government
believe that approving more than 100 new North sea oil and gas
projects is in any way in line with that, the legal frameworks or
the views of the vast majority of voters? As other countries
forge ahead with renewables, the UK is lagging behind. We need to
keep it in the ground, it is very simple. Unless we and other
countries get this right, there will not be the progress we
need.
Climate justice is very important. Making sure that lower and
middle-income countries can respond to climate impacts is
essential. I hope that will be one of the biggest outcomes of
COP28. In 2009, rich Governments agreed to provide $100 billion
in climate finance annually to developing countries. But that
goal, which originally was meant to be fulfilled by 2020, has
still not been met. The £11.6 billion adaptation and mitigation
finance that the UK pledged in 2019 is more loan-based than
grant-based, and so only increases debt for the world’s most
indebted countries.
Some 85% of our climate finance is grant-based.
I am very glad to hear that. That needs to be the future, because
grant-based instead of loan-based is vital. I am glad that there
have been changes along the way, as a result of a lot of
campaigning.
I highlight five areas of concern. First, on phasing out fossil
fuels, the UK Government must play their part in ending the
fossil fuel era by committing to cease direct and indirect
funding of overseas fossil fuel projects, including those
financed by British international investment, and instead
committing to rapidly scaling up investment in renewable energy
at home. Secondly, on the loss and damage fund, Governments at
COP28 must commit to designing a loss and damage fund with
adequate grant-based funding arrangements and specific plans to
support countries facing economic and non-economic losses and
damage. The polluters must pay. The fossil fuel industry is
posting record profits, but it should be paying for the damage it
is causing. The UK Government must commit to providing their fair
share of funding through grant-based funding arrangements, and
should have specific plans to support countries that face both
economic and non-economic losses and damages.
The third concern is the need to fulfil climate finance pledges.
The UK Government must meet their own climate finance commitments
with additional, new funds, not by re-badging finance already
given to British International Investment or the World Bank. The
fourth concern is the need to reform the global food system in
order to tackle the climate crisis. Action on food and action by
farmers go hand-in-hand with tackling climate change. Governments
at COP28 must to commit to transforming food systems through
progress on the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture.
Alongside that, the UK Government must develop a
cross-departmental strategy on providing support for more
resilient food systems internationally that prioritises the needs
of small-scale farmers. Small-scale farmers are really the
climate activists on the frontline of climate change; they will
be the best advocates, and will take the best actions on climate
change, but they need funding and support to do so.
The fifth concern is the need to invest in climate-resilient
water sanitation and hygiene projects, and the need for policies
that enable people to respond to immediate threats and to adapt
to the impacts of climate change where they are. People do not
want to leave where they live because of climate change. They
absolutely want to stay where they are, but with water for
agriculture, to grow crops and to live in hygienic
conditions.
The climate crisis is also a crisis of health around the world.
As we saw with covid, we need to be able to wash our hands. That
is such a basic need. Healthcare centres need adequate water and
sanitation. The climate crisis threatens advances in sanitation,
which threatens advances in poverty reduction. We must also
ensure we keep clean water, wherever it is found.
Labour will take further, faster action on the environment.
Labour knows that this is an exciting opportunity for economic
growth, for a new industry, and for job creation. We will
insulate 19 million homes within a decade under our warm homes
plan, which will cut bills by up to £500 and create 4 million
jobs. We will act fast to lead the world as a clean and cheap
energy superpower by 2030. We will establish GB Energy, a new
home-grown publicly owned champion of clean energy generation, so
that we can be really world-leading in the action that we take at
home. We will deliver thousands of high-quality jobs to every
corner of this great country.
Labour believes that we need a just transition to a net zero
economy. That cannot be left to the whims of the market, as was
the de-industrialisation of the 1980s. Social justice must be at
the centre of our response to the climate and environment
emergency, and fairness must shape our approach to the green
transition here at home. We have to actively shape that green
transition, so that no one is left behind and people and places
are protected throughout. Ecological breakdown is also a major
problem; the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on
earth. Labour will ensure that we not only halt but reverse the
loss of biodiversity in the UK by 2030.
In conclusion, I look forward to attending COP28 this year. I
went to many international conferences in my previous work before
I was an MP. I always go with high hopes, and always leave with a
high degree of disappointment, feeling that we could have gone
further. I could almost write the conference press releases
before I go, but I maintain a high degree of hope and optimism,
as more and more people work together internationally to take on
the crisis. All around the world, the green sprint has now begun;
there is a surge in renewables, green technology and economic
growth. We are making, at pace, some of the technological
advances that are needed if we are to achieve the necessary
outcomes for our climate, and they are becoming affordable. I
hope we can come together to stave off the worst of the impacts
to climate and nature, and together create a better and more
prosperous world.
1.34pm
(Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (). She may be disappointed
by what she hears from others, but she never disappoints with
what she says in this House. We were in Pakistan back in
February. We have an interest in issues relating to persecution
and freedom of religious belief, and in how we can help through
work on human rights. She is experienced and knowledgeable on the
subject of water, and we visited some encouraging projects, but
we were reminded of the impact in parts of the world where,
unlike here, water is a scarce commodity.
I am very happy to speak in the debate, and I cannot believe it
is again time for the annual COP meeting. This year it is in
Dubai, where I am sure the weather will be much better than in
the UK, given the storms we had recently. This year’s
cross-cutting themes aim to address our main targets: technology,
inclusion, finance and front- line communities.
It is great that we have the opportunity to discuss these issues.
It is always a pleasure to provide a Northern Ireland perspective
in debates in this Chamber and elsewhere, so that we have a
united and joint approach to our climate change and net zero
targets. It is also a pleasure to see the Minister in his place.
I was encouraged by some of the things he referred to, such as
the targets met and the goals achieved. I believe in giving
credit to those who do well. At the same time, if targets are not
met, then we challenge. Let us put on record our thanks where
goals have been achieved. It was also a pleasure to hear from the
Labour shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol East (), and the SNP shadow, the
hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (). They made valuable
contributions, as others have.
I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union,
because I will speak about agriculture. Across the world, we have
fires, floods, droughts and tsunamis. Those things do not just
happen; man and woman have a role to play in the world in which
we all live. Nature, I would suggest, is angry. It is nature’s
way of reminding us that what we do has repercussions.
To go back to Northern Ireland, it is no secret how crucial our
agriculture sector is. I live on a farm. All my neighbours are
farmers and most of them are dairy men. Farming is the largest
emitting sector in Northern Ireland, contributing some 27% of
emissions—and that increased over the 30 years covered by the
statistical bulletin to which I refer. The Government, the Ulster
Farmers’ Union and the National Farmers Union have committed to
reducing those emissions, and it is important that that happens.
It is no secret how challenging it is to cut emissions. Large
organisations such as the Ulster Farmers’ Union and the NFU have
had to cope and adapt in a short space of time, so it is
promising to see that COP will address that this year. It is
important that that happens.
On 10 December, the theme for the day will be food and
agriculture. The aim will be to address innovation investment,
regenerative agriculture and national transformation. That is a
positive sign that our agricultural industries are being given
the means of contributing to climate targets. At the Democratic
Unionist party conference about a month ago, the UFU had a stand,
and it has a paper on how to achieve net zero targets. Be under
no illusion: farmers, landowners, my neighbours and the unions
are totally committed to doing their bit to achieve climate
targets. There is definitely a clear, central role for
farmers.
Many comparisons can be made between the state of our climate and
prevailing health issues across the UK and further afield. As my
party’s health spokesperson, I am greatly pleased that health
issues will also be addressed at COP. It looks like a terrific
conference, and there are lots of key issues on the agenda that I
would like discussed.
I have been in contact with organisations about the clean air
programme, which is tackling the air quality issues facing us
all. For the first time at a COP summit, a full day’s agenda has
been devoted this year to initiatives designed to
“protect livelihoods and support community resilience and
stability”
in the face of the advancing effects of climate change. While
some may say that there is no such thing as climate change, the
facts—the evidence that we all have in front of us—tell us that
there is, and that something must be done about it. There will be
high-level discussions about the importance of clean air, which
has been proven to lead to improvements in both mental and
physical health.
Some three weeks ago, I spoke in a debate about circular
economies and their importance in our local communities. Ards and
North Down Council, which covers the area in which I both work
and reside, has a proven commitment to acting sustainably to
create a vibrant and healthy economy. Recognising the
contribution that local councils and devolved Administrations can
make to net zero targets across the UK is perhaps the smallest
but most important step to take in regulating environmental
sustainability. The Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and
the Northern Ireland Assembly all have a key role to play. We all
play that role in our own places, but when we all come together,
it is the teamwork that delivers. Whether we discuss these issues
at events as large as COP or more internally back home in local
council chambers, we will never progress without having the
conversations. It is great, and commendable, that efforts in that
regard are being made at all levels of government.
I look forward sincerely to hearing the comments made at COP28,
and not only from the perspective of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland. Again, it is no secret that I love
this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and I
believe that it is better together. Some may have a different
opinion—at least one Member who is in the Chamber now,
perhaps—but the rest of us are committed to the importance of
that. When it comes to looking further afield and globally, the
United Kingdom of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland,
as well as all the regions, has a part to play—at all political
levels: council, regional, and Westminster. COP provides an
opportunity for a joint and united approach to meeting our
targets, and that is something that we have to achieve. There are
no “ifs” about it; there are no questions. We must ensure that
efforts are made in this place to achieve those goals.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the Minister to wind up the debate.
1.42pm
I congratulate all the Members who have spoken in the debate,
which is an important one ahead of COP28. Further to the other
interactions that I mentioned in my opening speech, we will be
making a written ministerial statement on our priorities for COP
before we go, and I will be responsible for the negotiations
there.
It has been a very interesting debate, but it is a shame that the
hon. Member for Bristol East () struggled so much to
acknowledge the position that we are in. I have never heard it
come out of her mouth that this country has cut its emissions
more than any other major economy on this earth, which it has, or
that it has the most ambitious plans of any economy on this
earth, which it has. It would be good to have that as a baseline;
there is plenty of room to pick up on issues and concerns about
our performance while also acknowledging that the UK truly is a
global leader. I am pleased to say we are not only leading
domestically, but leading in the international space as well.
A couple of Members mentioned the Climate Change Committee in the
context of the Prime Minister’s speech in September. It is worth
noting that the Climate Change Committee’s analysis shows that
there is “no material difference” in our progress in cutting
emissions since its last report in June. We are tacking, as I
would put it. However, our destination remains exactly the same.
We are reassuring people in rural areas who were fearful that
they could neither afford heat pumps nor be sure of their
functionality, while increasing the subsidy for them by 50%, and
working to build the system and drive the cost curve down, so
that more and more homes can have them. That is right the way to
ensure that we maintain public support for delivering net
zero.
The same applies to zero-emission vehicles. Manufacturers have a
ZEV mandate—an obligation to “green” their fleet up to 2030. That
builds on our successful record to date; we are ahead of the
Climate Change Committee’s and our own projections. We are
maintaining that ZEV mandate. The Climate Change Committee spoke
of “no material difference” in progress on particular changes,
but the focus on grid and other aspects of the Prime Minister’s
speech are all about turbocharging our efforts to deliver not
only the nationally determined contribution in 2030, but net zero
by 2050.
Methane was mentioned, and it is an important issue. The global
methane pledge is a collective commitment intended to mobilise
international action on methane. I am pleased to say that UK
methane emissions between 1990 and 2021 dropped by 62%, one of
the largest reductions in any OECD country, but I should also to
highlight the fact that methane represents one of our biggest
opportunities—the opportunity to ensure that that pledge is
delivered not only domestically but internationally. It should
also be noted that we are the only major economy to set a legally
binding emissions reduction target, of 77%, for 2035 as part of
carbon budget 6. We will see what happens at the 2025 COP in
Brazil—10 years on from Paris—but the expectation is that new
NDCs will come forward for 2035.
Finance was touched on in the debate. We remain one of the
largest and most active donors in international climate finance,
and we are making record commitments. With the aim of helping the
world to adapt to the inevitable climate change impacts that we
can already see, at COP27 the Prime Minister made a commitment to
triple UK adaptation finance from £500 million in 2019 to £1.5
billion in 2025. The UK is also committed to maintaining a
balance between mitigation and adaptation spending, and to
providing at least £3 billion of UK climate finance for the
purpose of protecting and restoring nature. We provide the
majority of our climate finance in the form of much-needed grants
rather than loans—which I think compares well with what is
provided by some other donor countries—and we prioritise our
contributions for the biggest challenges faced by the poorest and
most vulnerable.
Alongside Malawi and Vanuatu, I co-chaired the climate and
development ministerial ahead of the Abu Dhabi pre-COP meetings.
It focused on the issue of access, which was absolutely right. We
hear again and again from countries such as Samoa, whose Minister
has said that the access process takes too long. At the CDM, we
set out a “vision statement” expressing greater recognition of
the need for national programme development to ease access to
money as well as increasing the quantum. The hon. Lady is right:
it is not enough to have this notional money if it does not
actually flow to those who by definition, as she said, are the
least able administratively to meet the requirements of some vast
organisation. We need to make sure that the system fits the needs
of those it serves, rather than the other way round.
I welcome what the Minister has said. I think that another
problem for those countries is coming up with the evidence base
to demonstrate the impact that climate change is having on them.
There are currently some very good initiatives: for example,
science students from the UK are going out to study marine areas.
There is a great deal of interchange. Does the Minister think we
could do more to facilitate that evidence-gathering, which could
then be used as a basis for making an application to show the
need for climate adaptation funding?
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We need to make sure that
technical assistance is there because, even as we try to get the
green climate fund, the global environment facility, the World
Bank and various others to improve their systems and ambitions to
better meet the needs of the most vulnerable—shouting at both
parties is like shoving a nine-pin plug and a three-pin plug
together and wrapping them in gaffer tape—we also need to get a
smoother system that helps them both to step up so that it
genuinely flows, otherwise we will have endless frustration.
Hearing Ministers from Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Samoa and elsewhere
brings it alive, which is why these international meetings are
useful. They remind us of the realities on the ground.
Since 2011, The UK’s climate finance has supported more than 100
million people to cope with the effects of climate change,
improved the climate resilience of more than 32 million people
and reduced or avoided more than 86 million tonnes of greenhouse
gas emissions.
Nature has rightly been mentioned, and we want to see action and
ambition from the presidency and all parties on transforming food
systems and building policy, practice and investment for
sustainable agriculture at scale. That includes endorsement of
the leaders’ declaration on food, agriculture and climate action,
supported by a further commitment to policy action, innovation
and investment through the policy dialogue for sustainable
agriculture and the agriculture breakthrough.
It is always difficult to keep our head around all these issues,
as there is an alphabet soup of initiatives. I always want to
check that they are not duplicative, but they are often
complementary and working together.
(Esher and Walton) (Con)
The Minister is making a very strong case for the disparate
issues that the Government are pressing on climate change. If we
are to reach net zero by 2050, there will also need to be a
massive increase in the supply of critical minerals, whether for
EV batteries or solar panels. When he is going around all these
initiatives at international level, what discussions is he having
with the likes of Brazil, Indonesia and other lynchpin partners
about joining the Minerals Security Partnership? That is the
primary multilateral vehicle for addressing critical
minerals.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, which comes up
frequently. When I was in Riyadh recently, I spoke about critical
minerals with His Royal Highness, Prince Abdulaziz, the Energy
Minister of Saudi Arabia, which is critical in this piece.
Whereas my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr
Coffey) went on to the mangroves, I went on to Indonesia by way
of Vietnam, and these conversations came up all the time. My
right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton () is right that making sure we
have resilient supply chains is fundamental to delivering this.
We are doing more on supply chains, and we are doing it faster
than ever before—even faster than the industrial revolution—and
it is not only happening here. It is happening in other countries
at the same time, as it needs to, so we have to make sure that
our supply chains can meet that action. We can best do that
through collaboration. It is not just about reaching agreement on
things such as critical minerals; it takes many years to develop
projects and bring them through to production, which creates even
more urgency.
To promote improved and responsible governance, we are also
looking for a commitment to support the forest and climate
leaders partnership at the world climate action summit at the
beginning of COP. We also want to see partnership on water
resources at all levels. Donor countries and the private sector
need to be involved, too.
I thank the Minister for mentioning water. He is talking about
the many issues he will cover when he goes to the various
meetings, so does he agree that water, sanitation and hygiene are
important issues to raise? Will he look out for them in the
outcome documents, press releases and statements that come out
after the conference?
I enjoyed the hon. Lady’s speech. Unsurprisingly, when I was in
the middle east recently, water was right at the top of the
agenda, reflecting its importance. I attended the Net Zero
Council meeting in Manchester last Thursday, and it was my
pleasure on the following day to go to the Severn Trent water
treatment works in Stoke. By the end of next year, it is expected
to be the world’s first carbon-neutral water treatment works, for
which I pay tribute to Severn Trent. Again, it shows the
importance of water, which is so often forgotten. Water is one of
the workstreams of the Net Zero Council, which was established
this year to bring together the Government and business to
develop road maps for each sector of our economy.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk
Coastal for her driven, heartfelt efforts to make sure that
nature’s contribution to the climate is fully recognised. The
reason for holding the climate and development ministerial is
that climate and development are two sides of the same coin. If
there could be a three-sided coin—I am stretching my
metaphors—the third side would be nature, because climate,
development and nature go together.
We have talked about the importance of forests, and we have to
make sure that the people who live in and around these carbon
sinks—they are not just carbon sinks; they have many other
qualities—have economic incentives that align with what we want.
We have to make sure that they see development and opportunity
for their families. It is only on that basis that we can even ask
them to protect the nature that has been so denuded here. If we
are to ask others to protect their nature for the general
benefit, we need to make sure that it fits with development, as
well as contributing to climate and nature.
I thank my right hon. Friend for Suffolk Coastal for all she has
done. Her enthusiasm for mangroves is clearly shared across the
House. They are a bit of a miracle. Making a difference often
costs a lot of money, so we have to try to align incentives as
much as possible. We need projects in which very small amounts of
funding can make all the difference, so that mangroves stop
shrinking and start expanding, and so that people return from the
city to work with their families around the mangroves as part of
a prosperous community. The mangroves need to be prosperous while
developing as a carbon sink.
It was very interesting to hear about the importance of
mangroves. I would also be interested to hear what the Minister
has to say about peatlands. How will he be supporting them at
COP?
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The Congo has extraordinarily
large and important peatlands, which have the same basic
dynamics. Everything is different, and every country is
different, which is why we have to pull different things
together, but the fundamental principle is that we have to create
a system in which the local people—from the governor of the
province down to the indigenous villagers—are better off by
maintaining and keeping these peatlands. We are keen to make sure
that the role of peatlands is understood because, again, they are
a critical enabler. Lost peatlands cannot easily be replaced, and
they are part of the negative tipping point we could reach if we
do not take urgent action.
I welcome the Minister’s enthusiasm and recognition that
peatlands have an important role to play but, at the moment, they
are emitting carbon because of how they are treated in this
country, particularly when it comes to grouse moor management.
Does he agree that we need to address those practices? Many
peatlands are also sites of special scientific interest or are
meant to be protected for nature in other ways.
I will not stumble into another Department’s area of
responsibility. We work collectively across Government to share
the burden of making sure we meet our net zero targets.
In wrapping up the debate, I assure hon. and right hon. Members
of the Government’s commitment to delivering on net zero at home
and internationally. Although there is evidence that a peak in
global emissions is within sight this decade, we need emissions
to peak by 2025 and to reduce by 43% by 2030. The sobering
reality is that, this year, global emissions are likely to reach
a new peak, as Members across the House have said. Keeping 1.5°
within reach requires nothing less than a paradigm shift.
As I said in my opening remarks, the UK accounts for less than 1%
of global emissions. Beyond what is directly within our grasp,
the question before us is how we can help to create the will and
the capability to move the remaining 99%, for which the major
emitters, in particular, will be crucial.
I would like to close by offering some reflections on the UK’s
role in helping to drive forward international progress in this
critical decade. For hon. Members who are interested, we have set
out in greater detail the UK’s vision and role in driving forward
international action on climate and nature to 2030 in our 2030
strategic framework, which is available online. It sets out six
key global challenges, and how we will use our international
partnerships, strengths in finance, expertise and domestic
leadership, trade and investment, and world-leading strengths in
science and innovation to drive forward progress.
The first point to make is that though the gap looks unassailably
large, we must not lose hope and fall into a council of doom. The
reality is that efforts to date have succeeded in bending the
emissions curve away from apocalyptic levels of warming of 3° or
more. In some sectors, notably energy and electric cars, the
transition is taking off. The IEA’s latest world energy outlook
predicts a peak in fossil fuel use by 2025, due to what it
describes as the “unstoppable” growth of low-carbon technologies.
Solar and electric vehicles particularly stand out. Since only
last year, the IEA has revised up its global solar 2050 capacity
forecast by 69% and increased by 20% the number of electric
vehicles it expects to be on the roads by 2030, such that it is
expecting electric vehicles to comprise two thirds of new car
sales by 2030.
The lesson we should draw here is clear: rapid, large-scale
transformation is possible. The challenge is that we need to
replicate this success across all sectors of the economy. There
will be no single silver bullet to driving the transformational
systemic change that we need on a global scale. We will deploy
every important lever we have to accelerate action in this
critical decade, building on the framework we put forward in the
Glasgow pact and our 2030 strategic framework. That includes
working through the United Nations framework convention on
climate change, bilaterally and through other channels. Working
with others who are like-minded, and others, we need to see
countries upgrading their climate targets. There is no point in
having a global stocktake eight years after the Paris agreement
if it does not lead to a ratcheting up of the nationally
determined contributions to match the requirements that we find
from the science. In particular, we need the major emitters to do
that. Countries representing more than 90% of global GDP are
covered, as I have said, by some form of net zero target. Those
countries now need to align their near-term targets with the
commitments that they have made. We will harness our global
diplomatic network, international development offer and
partnerships to drive forward action.
We will also be taking action to realign financial flows in line
with the Paris agreement and a nature-positive future. We will
use our strengths as a global green finance centre and role as a
shareholder of key financial institutions to reorientate finance
flows and tap the power of markets to make progress towards
unlocking the trillions required. We will accelerate transitions
globally through targeted collaboration with others, focusing on
the most important, highest-emitting sectors, through initiatives
such as the breakthrough agenda, so that we can reach positive
tipping points and avoid negative ones, and so that clean tech is
affordable and accessible across all sectors of the global
economy. We will also continue to push to accelerate the global
energy transition, for example, through our long-standing
leadership on phasing out coal in the Powering Past Coal
Alliance. We will also champion the need to phase out unabated
fossil fuels and at the same time transition the North sea into a
clean energy powerhouse here at home.
Let me touch on that issue, as it was raised by others. We have
new licences in the North sea for oil and gas because we continue
to need oil and gas. We will need oil and gas in 2050 and beyond.
Our production is falling, without new licences, at a rate of
about 9%. With no new licences and no new investment, we will not
see a greening of the basin. Worse, we will see the loss of the
subsea and offshore engineering capability we need, as it will
either leave this country or be made redundant, rather than being
retained here.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith () raised the issue of a just
transition. There is a true transition to be made, and opposing
new oil and gas licences in this country when we are a net
importer of both, and when the emissions that will come from
imports such as liquified natural gas would be higher, makes the
Opposition parties friends of oil and gas workers, but just not
those in this country. The approach of those parties will not
make any difference to how much we consume, but it will make a
difference to our emissions, and not in a good way, and it will
lose the very engineering capability we need to deliver the
transition, as well as a very material contribution to our
ability to make that change, which is of course the £50 billion
of taxes that we expect to get from the sector over the next five
years. The Opposition parties are in entirely the wrong place.
They have put optics ahead of doing the right thing, and it does
not take a lot of reflection or analysis to come to the
conclusion that we are doing the right thing.
We must globally focus on the positive tipping points we need to
accelerate the global low-carbon transition. I thank hon. Members
from across the House for their contributions to this debate, and
I hope that my team and I will be able to count on the support of
everyone in the House, despite all of the global challenges we
face, to make the upcoming COP the success that the world needs
it to be.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered COP28.
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