Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Climate Change Committee and a former Minister who had to do precisely this: act in a quasi-judicial manner. So I have to say to my noble friend that it would have been perfectly possible for the Secretary of State to turn this down and not agree with the inspector. Can my noble friend explain how the Government are going to say to the rest of the world that they preferred the judgment of a generalist planner to the expert advice of the Climate Change Committee, the International Energy Agency, my right honourable friend Alok Sharma, who led our delegation for net zero at COP 26, and, as the noble Baroness opposite referenced, the chairman of the Climate Crisis Select Committee? It seems we prefer the reference of a planner to all the expert advice that the Government have.

Secondly, how do the Government maintain that this is carbon neutral when it does not take into account the burning of the 85% of this coal that will be exported? We do not know whether it will go to the European Union or to countries that have no interest in fighting for climate change; it could go anywhere.

Thirdly, can my noble friend the Minister explain something? There is a plenty of coking coal in the world. No one is going to dig less coking coal because we are doing it. How do we know that we will be able to compete with them? After all, they are not going to do it to the standards of which my noble friend has spoken.

Why did the Government not say no to this and instead ensure that the 500 jobs would be replaced by jobs in new renewables and nuclear generation? This shows the rest of the world that, when push comes to shove, we do not up stand up for what we promised.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

First, more jobs and money coming into the area will help local services and shops, and the economy of the area. Secondly, I do not know; I have not read the planning application in detail, but I will look at it and respond on what is required. I would be surprised if it did not require local investment; most planning applications of this size do.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

My Lords, I back the speakers who have gone before me, but I will focus on one aspect of this. It was called in on the basis of the international and national implications of the mine going ahead. We have heard nothing about those international implications. Nothing in the inspector’s report nor in the words of the Minister has answered the irrefutable evidence from Sir Robert Watson, the former chief scientist at Defra, who quite rightly pointed out that the biggest impact this will have on the global climate is to justify continued investment in fossil fuel extraction across the planet. That is not even counting the effect of the exported coal that will be burned, over which we will have no control whatever. The Government have said nothing that can answer the problem that this has serious international implications.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, mentioned that this was going to damage our reputation. I believe this is a co-opting of our reputation. The reason this has been pursued in this country by the Australian backers of the project is so that they can go around the planet and say, “Of course we can invest in coking coal and invest in coal. Even the UK, the accepted leader on climate change, is building new coal.” That is the international implication of today’s decision, which the inspector failed to answer, and it is why everybody is outraged that we are doing this in the 21st century. There is no real need for people to be sent underground to pull out fossil fuels that will be burned, adding to concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are already too high. Nothing the Minister has said has answered these questions, and I expect that this will not be the last we hear of this. Whether the mine ever gets built is still open to debate.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I have already said, the application has been agreed this week, and it now has six weeks to be challenged. I am sure the issues the noble Baroness raises about the international impact were taken into account by the inspector at the time, but as I have said before, this mine is to be net zero. The inspector said in his report that he did not expect it to have any effect on climate change, and I would leave it there. However, if I can give the noble Baroness anything further in writing about the international implications, I will do so.