Climate Change: COP 26 and Civil Society

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

That was an extraordinary link, but I fully endorse the noble Lord’s belief that Scotland, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, must remain part of the United Kingdom. We are stronger and better together: I am happy to confirm that. We should have more international conferences outside London, and Scotland is a perfect place for that; so are the north of England, Wales and the West Country. We have an extraordinary country with extraordinary offerings. Let us do more outside London.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. COP 26 gives this country the opportunity both to show leadership and to showcase achievement. However, welcome though the commitment to net zero in 2050 is, does the Minister agree that by the time of the Glasgow meeting we need a sector-by-sector detailed road map of how we will actually achieve that target?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. The White Paper will be a part of that, and will set out exactly how we will both achieve our own domestic targets and show the leadership required to bring about the necessary negotiations to deliver a good outcome in Glasgow.

International Climate Action

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Lord is right that the challenge will not be addressed on a global scale even if we were to achieve net zero in this country tomorrow, because we are responsible for around 1% of all climate-related emissions. There is clearly much more to be done by others. The atmospheric sequestration of greenhouse gases is an important area. I am less familiar with research on that, but I will enquire further into it and will write to the noble Lord with my findings. I would certainly hope that every possible avenue can be explored to ensure that we are able to address this global challenge.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister’s Statement, in particular its acknowledgement of the seriousness of the crisis that we are facing. One of the many tragedies of our current political discourse is the way that it sucks the oxygen out of other debates, including this one, which is, in his words, the most significant challenge that we as a planet face. I also welcome that he said very clearly that the funding referred to is new. It would be a tragedy if this very welcome funding were to detract from the DfID programmes for health, women and education that are so important.

The Statement refers to offshore wind. Does the Minister accept that we are missing a trick in our reluctance to pursue onshore wind opportunities? Internationally, COP26 is a huge opportunity for action, but we also have the CHOGM meeting in Kigali next year. Are there plans to involve the Commonwealth in corporate action? Finally, the Statement speaks about cross-party working. A group of us in this House are committed to finding a way to do that. May I issue an invitation to him, with his new brief, to meet us as soon as possible?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness reminds us again that Brexit seems to consume a lot of the bandwidth. We cannot lose sight of these issues. Long after Brexit is resolved—whichever direction it is resolved in—this will remain a challenge for our country and for all countries.

On the question of onshore and offshore wind, we are certainly global leaders in offshore wind but we need to consider much more carefully the entire renewables sector and how we move it forward. Nothing will be ruled out. We need to be careful as we move forward and, again, every aspect of renewables needs to be considered on its own terms. Offshore wind has been very successful; indeed, pricing in the offshore wind sector has shown a remarkable change in a very short period of time. We are reaching the point now where it is all but self-sustaining, which is an extraordinary achievement given that we anticipated that being a much more distant prospect.

COP26 is an opportunity for this country to focus its attention but there are a number of international meetings. We are on the glide path to COP26 and we have to work out several things. How do we form the right alliances? How do we meet the right people? How do we offer the right advice? How do we engage directly with the right levels of funding? How do we ensure that we are all facing in the same direction? One of the biggest challenges right now is encouraging those countries responsible for some of the more significant current emissions, whether that be the US, China, India or wherever, to meet the net zero target by 2050. It is all very well for me to tell noble Lords that 70 nations have reached that level of commitment; if those 70 nations do not include the principal emitters then, while it is all very interesting to see how they stack up, in truth the impact on the global climate is modest.

The Commonwealth has a vital part to play in this because it represents not just those who can provide the support but those who need the mitigation and adaptation aspects as well. We have a perfect fraternity, if you like, for dialogue about what is most needed and best supported. I would love to come to the cross-party group.

Localism Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I hope that I will be able to deal with these amendments quite shortly. Last Thursday my noble friend Lord Shipley made an admirable speech on the clause stand part debate before the amendments came up, and advanced all the arguments that I would have made in support of this group. The main difference between my noble friend and me was that he expounded his objectives—eloquently and adequately, I thought—and I have tabled the amendments that would give effect to them.

I do not intend to take the House through each of these several amendments. However, I can say that the amendments have four main purposes in relation to the possibility of a referendum on the council tax in an area where it is thought that the council tax increase has been—to use the word in the Bill—excessive. It should not be for the Government to lay down what is excessive. There has been a lot of talk about this being a new form of rate-capping. I know something about that, having dealt with that in an earlier part of my political life. This is intended to be a protection for council tax payers against an increase in council tax which goes beyond what they feel to be fair.

The first point that I would like to make is that it should be for local people to determine whether they find a suggested council tax increase excessive. Therefore, my amendments in a sense come under four groups. First, there are amendments which would delete the Secretary of State’s powers to determine what constitutes an excessive rate of council tax—this is likely to be very different in different circumstances in different areas around the country. Secondly, it should therefore also be for the local authority to decide when a referendum should be held. That should not be determined by central government. If localism means anything, this is exactly what it is supposed to mean. Thirdly, it should be the councils, rather than the Secretary of State, which should decide how the referendum is going to be conducted. Finally, there are amendments which would delete powers for the Secretary of State to make a whole raft of regulations, on, among other things, setting out the question to be asked in a referendum, the allowable publicity accompanying a referendum, and how votes ought to be counted.

I have dwelt on this issue before. The rhetoric of Ministers in this Government has been that this is a brand new start, a real decentralisation of power from Whitehall to town hall and county hall, and that it is going to be a rejuvenation of local authorities. Yet one only needs to look at the size of the Bill to realise that, while that may be the objective, it is certainly not being produced in this Bill. The Bill is full of detailed directions, and powers to make regulations to give further detailed directions, as to how local authorities are to use what is supposed to be their new freedom.

I am not going to say more than that, or go through all the details. I hope that Ministers—who are going to have an unusually long gap between this Committee stage and the Report stage, which will come after the Recess—will have a good, hard look at this Bill, to see whether some of this centralisation and central direction, and this business of telling local authorities how to have their freedom and how to behave themselves, can be removed from the Bill. I can assure my noble friends on the Front Bench that it will be extremely popular among the local authorities, which have had their hopes raised that they are at last going to have freedom from central direction, and then find that this Bill does nothing of the sort. I beg to move.

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)]

I have to inform the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to I cannot call Amendments 129LZZA to 129LZZF by reason of pre-emption.