The Climate Emergency

Alan Brown Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State mentioned that trees are a natural carbon sink. The Scottish Government have a target of 10,000 hectares of tree planting per annum, which they are currently exceeding. The UK Government’s figure works out at an average of 5,000 hectares per year, and they are only delivering a third of that. Last year, 84% of trees planted in the UK were planted by the Scottish Government; when are the UK Government going to catch up?

[Theresa Villiers]

The UK Government have a strong record of protecting nature and biodiversity, and we will continue to build on that with the Environment Bill that I am talking about.

The trees, plants and peatlands that make up nature’s own carbon capture technology are crucial in meeting the net zero target, and I welcome the opportunity today to reiterate the Government’s determination to address the two massive environmental challenges of nature recovery and climate change. We were the first major developed economy to make the historic commitment to meeting net zero, and we are taking action right across government to deliver on our climate commitments. The Cabinet Committee announced today will co-ordinate that work under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, demonstrating his personal determination to safeguard the environment.

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[Theresa Villiers]

My right hon. Friend makes a hugely important point, and I wholeheartedly agree and will return to it in a few moments.

We have committed to building on the record of success I have outlined, and we will accelerate the low-carbon growth that already provides more than 400,000 jobs in the United Kingdom. For example, we are supporting clean growth with investment of more than £3 billion in research and development. As we look ahead to the date when we end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, we are generating £2.7 billion in exporting ultra-low emission vehicles. One in five battery electric cars sold in Europe was built right here in this country.

A decade on from the landmark Climate Change Act 2008, which enshrined ambition in law and marshalled action across society, we are forging ahead with legislation for the second great environmental task: nature recovery.

[Alan Brown]

To go back to the number of low-carbon jobs in the UK, does the Secretary of State agree that more could be created if the licensing process for contracts for difference auctions looked not only at price, but at quality and value added in the use of local supply chains? That would help to get preferential treatment for UK companies.

[Theresa Villiers]

We will certainly look at all the options to create low-carbon jobs, including the ideas that the hon. Gentleman speaks about.

Just as the Climate Change Act set a path to reducing carbon emissions, so our Environment Bill will embed environmental principles at the heart of Government decision making. It will mandate the Government to set ambitious, legally binding targets on the pressing environmental concerns that we face as a nation, including air quality, water, resource efficiency, waste reduction and safeguarding nature and habitats.

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[Deidre Brock]

Me, sarcastic? The very idea! I appreciate the cross-party nature of some of the talks in the Scottish Parliament—that is of course welcome—but at a time when the UK Government are suggesting putting up VAT on renewable technologies, including solar, wind, biomass and heat pumps, from 5% to 20%, I think there is still a lot more discussion to be had between the different parties.

[Alan Brown]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is such cross-party support, it is ridiculous and shameful that the previous Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), continued to block onshore wind in Scotland? That is not cross-party consensus; that is affecting investment in Scotland.

[Deidre Brock]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. When it is still the cheapest of renewable energy technologies, it is shameful that onshore wind is excluded from competing for Government-supported contracts. I hope the Secretary of State is paying full attention to that point.

The United Nations climate action conference will be in Glasgow next year, and I understand that the Prime Minister wants to take a day trip to it for flag-waving purposes. May I advise him to take the train, not the plane, and to take the time to listen, rather than just bluster? He might even come away from it with some ideas to start implementing a plan to help with the problem that the world faces.

Perhaps the Whitehall mandarins could take a leaf out of Scotland’s books and work towards zero-carbon aviation. Scotland is decarbonising Highlands and Islands Airports and working with Norway on electric trains. We all know that transport is the second-biggest dumper of greenhouse gases, because we have all read the IPCC report. The same source tells us that, in fact, road transport is even more of a problem than air transport. Nearly three quarters of transport emissions are road-based, while around a 10th are accounted for by aviation. It is everyday transport that we have to address. Where is the UK Government initiative to copy the Scottish Government in supporting the roll-out of electric charging stations? Where is the parallel commitment to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the next dozen years?

The biggest greenhouse gas pest is electricity and heat production. Where are the incentives for renewable energy production? Not only are there no new incentives, but the old ones were taken away, and the costs of connecting Scotland’s vibrant and growing renewable energy producers to the grid are far too high. When will we see Government action to address those issues?

As the shadow Secretary of State asked, given that there is a climate emergency, to which the UK Government have finally admitted, where is the ban on fracking? This unconventional source of gas is banned in Scotland because there is no good case to be made for it. In some parts of England it is damaging people’s houses, impinging on their lives and possibly damaging their health. Get rid of it—it is a nuisance at best.

The Environment Bill, over which we will cast a jaundiced eye next week, seeks to embed in law the 25-year environment plan that was created under a previous Government. It was unambitious at the time, became rapidly outdated and is now a bit of a joke. Ministers should not withdraw it—we have wasted enough time already—but they should be prepared to make major changes to it during its progress through Parliament, and to accept amendments from others to make it something worth passing. I have a suggestion to offer that the Government and the Secretary of State can do relatively free of charge: why do they not invite the climate protesters into the room, ask them what they would put in the Bill, see whether they can get a bit of support in the House, and then pass something that is actually worth passing?

In closing, we all know that really doing something will not be easy. We know that it will entail changes in lifestyles that we have not yet properly considered. We can call it pain if we really must be dramatic about it, but if we do, we should at least compare it to the pain that comes from doing nothing. If not enough is done, some of the people who park their comfortable bahookies on these Benches might find themselves representing constituencies that start to disappear. Frankly, I do not expect the Government to make any real moves in the near future—if Brexit has taught us anything, it is that denial and delusion sit comfortably on the Government Benches—but I do hope that somewhere over on that side of the Chamber exists someone who will raise a questioning voice and ask whether it might be a good idea to do something. Who knows—there might even be a Thatcher fan who thinks that some action should be taken in her name. In the name of the wee man, though: it is a climate emergency, not a coffee morning. It is time to start acting like it is important. Talking is always good, but action is even better.

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[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), but I have to say that while it is a great thing that we have generally seen more consensus on this issue in the House recently, she and the hon. Members for Workington (Sue Hayman) and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) have constantly made the point that the Government are doing nothing about climate change. That is a quite extraordinary accusation. We have just had the first ever quarter in history in which the energy produced from renewables exceeded that produced from fossil fuels. That is real; it is what happened in July, August and September this year for the first time ever.

I want to refer also to the speech made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whose passion on these matters I admire. She said that it was all well and good to have historical reductions in emissions, but I must point out that the 40% reduction since 1990 did not happen by magic. The biggest part of that—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith is speaking from a sedentary position. She would not take my intervention on Margaret Thatcher earlier, but the point is that the biggest part of that reduction, by far, was due to the move from coal to gas. The closure of the coal mines in this country was the single most divisive and bitter industrial dispute that this country has ever had. We know what happened in the miners’ strike and what happened in the 1990s with the miners’ march through central London. We did not want that to happen, and I say this with no relish, but it was a necessary policy to put through in the national interest. There is an idea that people can jump on top of a Jubilee line train or spray fake blood on Government buildings to cut CO₂ emissions, but it takes real action.

[Alan Brown]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is trying to wind Members up, but he knows that when Margaret Thatcher shut down our indigenous coalmines and imported coal from abroad, that was an ideological attack. It had nothing to do with a gas strategy, and he should tell the truth.

[James Cartlidge]

I was being generous in giving way but, with hindsight, perhaps I should not have been. The point is that coal use has definitively slumped massively and our CO₂ emissions have fallen massively.

The good news is that I do not think we will ever need to take such difficult, divisive decisions again, because of what is happening around our coasts, and particularly —I am proud to say this as a Suffolk MP—off the coast of East Anglia. Now, 52% of our 4 GW of offshore wind-produced electricity is coming from the East Anglian shore. This debate falls at a timely moment. Had it not been for the Supreme Court decision, I would have been able to speak, during the original planned Prorogation, at the launch of Norfolk & Suffolk Unlimited. That is a new enterprise from the New Anglia local enterprise partnership based in Norfolk and Suffolk to promote inward investment into our region and to promote exports. At the heart of that will be clean growth and a drive for even more wattage to come from offshore wind.

I have a question for Ministers. We are incredibly ambitious about seeing more growth, more jobs and more electricity being produced from offshore wind, but will he assure me that investment in the grid and support from the National Grid for the greater electricity output will be sustained? There needs to be a co-ordinated strategy if we are to make the most of our potential off the coast of East Anglia and around the whole of the United Kingdom.

Having started back in the dark days of the miners’ strike, I now have another positive thought for the House. Whenever I visit primary schools in my constituency, of which there are 40, I find it incredibly uplifting to see that the next generation is so besotted with this issue. My last four primary school visits were about the issues of waste, cutting down on plastic use and using renewable energy. I think that we can be positive and optimistic about the next generation. Seeing as I took an intervention, I am now going to wind up and give others a chance to speak. The picture that needs to be painted is very positive, and this Government have played a huge historic role in that, of which I am very proud. Now we need consensus so that we can continue with these positive measures.

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[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It does not say much about the self-proclaimed world leader in climate change that there are no definitive proposals in the Queen’s Speech on this subject. We still await a long overdue White Paper on energy policy. We need to recognise that it was a Tory Government who pulled the plug on carbon capture at Peterhead, but meanwhile, all 2050 zero emissions projections rely on carbon capture.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is talking about carbon capture. Does he agree that, instead of wasting billions of pounds of the public’s money on new nuclear, the Government should be investing in projects like St Fergus, which in a very few years could be storing at least 5.7 gigatonnes of carbon, or 150 times Scotland’s 2016 emissions?

[Alan Brown]

I agree wholeheartedly. The Government should be moving heaven and earth to get these carbon capture schemes up and running, making use of redundant North sea oil assets and taking advantage of the skills base in the oil and gas industry, which can be transferred over. It is ridiculous that we have a nuclear sector deal but no sector deal for marine or tidal energy. There should be a focus on those too.

This is a Government who continue to block onshore wind. At the last auction, offshore wind was £40 per megawatt-hour, so it is madness not to allow onshore wind to bid in the contracts for difference auction process. A RenewableUK report by Vivid Economics estimates that new onshore wind projects in Scotland will create more than 2,000 jobs by 2035, so why did the previous Scottish Secretary fail Scotland by blocking those jobs and that investment in environmentally friendly projects?

Meanwhile, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) said, this Government still have a nuclear obsession. Hinkley has a strike rate of £92.50 per megawatt-hour for a 35-year concession. It is sucking money away from other projects that will count towards tackling climate change. Given that the UK Government pledged to respond to the National Infrastructure Commission this autumn, I hope a Minister will confirm that they will take on board the recommendation of abandoning new nuclear in favour of renewables.

With onshore and offshore prices at an all-time low, it is time that the UK Government considered the UK supply chain when it comes to the licensing process of the CfD auctions. Rather than concentrating on price only, bids should also be considered in terms of quality and added value if using local suppliers. Not only could that allow greater continuity of work for yards such as BiFab and suppliers such as CS Wind in Campbeltown, but it avoids the absurdness of bringing kit in from around the world when we are trying to clamp down on climate change and emissions.

Another National Infrastructure Commission recommendation is that there should be an energy efficiency infrastructure programme, which it is estimated could reduce home energy demand by up to 25%. Scotland already has an energy efficiency programme, with the programme and energy advice set-ups complemented by not only the industry but the third sector. Wales is also doing its bit. When will the UK Government invest directly in home energy efficiency measures?

Heat accounts for approximately one third of greenhouse gas emissions, which shows not only the value of energy efficiency measures but the need for a long-overdue strategy to decarbonise heat. I co-chaired a cross-party inquiry that produced a report on heat decarbonisation. I have the report here, printed by Policy Connect and Carbon Connect. I really recommend it to the House, because it contains recommendations that the Government will have to adopt.

Another simple measure related to transport is the introduction of E10 fuels. Cars are designed to run on E10, and the Department for Transport estimates that it reduces vehicle CO₂ emissions by 2%, so why prevaricate? The Government should get on with it and make it mandatory.

Our environment can be improved with tree planting. The Scottish Government lead the way on that, and it is another measure that the UK Government need to step up to the plate on. Scotland has the most ambitious targets in the world with regard to climate change. We cannot afford to be dragged down by the UK Government’s inaction.