UN Climate Change Conference: Government Response

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) for securing this debate. She is not just an excellent constituency MP; she is a leading voice on this issue, here and for the people of Wales, so it is great that she was able to secure this debate and make her speech. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said, the IPCC has told us that we have 12 years to restrict global warming to 1.5°. It has already risen by 1° from pre-industrial levels. This nation was the first to industrialise, which we should be proud of; it was also the first nation to de-industrialise. Many of the comments the Minister made in her intervention relate to our early de-industrialisation and, obviously, our early industrialisation.

The Centre for Industrial Energy, Materials and Products—which includes researchers from the great University of Leeds—has shown that the UK will miss the fourth and fifth carbon budget targets, which are binding on us under law and are part of our agreements under the conference of the parties process. Those carbon budgets take us to 2032, and CIE-MAP has found that one of the five sectors of most concern was construction. What has happened in housing? When the Government came in in 2010, they scrapped the code for sustainable homes—something that would have kept us on track to meet our carbon budgets for housing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) said, the feed-in tariff proposals take us further away from that target. We need to build low-carbon modular housing, and we need to take control of that process and not listen to the siren voices of the volume housing developers.

We need to look at vehicles—an area in which we are way behind. The Norwegians are talking about phasing out petrol and diesel by 2025, just six years from now. We are talking about a target of 2040, and we cannot even give a clear answer on whether we are going to ban hybrids; we can imagine lots of gaming of the rules if we allow hybrids to continue. On food and drink, the Germans have a plan for resource efficiency. We have no such plan; we are way behind. On clothing and textiles, the Government need to look at the Environmental Audit Committee’s report—its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield, is here, as are several other members of our Committee. That report arose from our sustainable fashion inquiry, and we found so much that could be done within the UK fashion industry and its main production facilities, which are abroad, to make fashion more sustainable. In electronics and appliances, we are not doing enough to drive down electricity use. There is no catching up here; there are no second chances. The Government have said that we will be net carbon zero by 2050, but if we do not do the right thing over the 12 or 13 years to 2032, we will not be able to catch up in the 18 years between 2032 and 2050. It will be game over for our global climate. Who wants that legacy hung around their neck?

Lastly, we are on track in energy production because coal-fired power stations are being scrapped. The industry itself has seen the future, and has already decommissioned or moved into biomass and other forms of energy production. However, if we think the solution is continued gas production—undertaking shale gas extraction in the United Kingdom—we will again fall behind our targets when we move into the fifth carbon budget. We cannot allow that to happen. We need to look at alternatives, including domestic solar, onshore and offshore wind, hydrogen, hydro, and obviously tidal lagoons, for which my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North is a great champion. If we do not do that, we will again be behind, and will not meet the legally binding targets that we must meet as a nation. The Government must do better. In the main Chamber, Members are debating confidence in the Government, and part of the reason for my lack of confidence in this Government is their failure to tackle the catastrophic climate change that we will face if we do not meet this challenge.