Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Edward Miliband

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend puts it incredibly well and I agree.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. In terms of trust, he will know that the Government have set up a new consultation to determine what public consent is. Does he agree that it is a monstrous waste of time and money to try to determine something that does not exist? There is no local consent for this; plenty of Government Members do not actually want it. If the Government really want to know what consent is, why do they not have a general election?

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Lady makes her point well and anticipates the issues that I will come on to. Fracking will not make a difference to bills, we cannot be assured of its safety, and it is a disastrous response to the climate crisis.

Tackling Short-term and Long-term Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Edward Miliband

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates a later part of my speech. That is the Conservative party today: it will blame anyone else and never take responsibility. The hon. Gentleman should have been supporting our measures, because in his constituency 11,353 people would get our combination of a VAT cut and the warm home discount of £600. If he votes against us tonight, he will have to explain to them why he is denying them the help they need.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I wonder whether he shares my anger at the news this week that the Government have underspent their net zero budget by a staggering quarter of a billion pounds, at exactly the same time as our constituents are struggling to keep their homes warm and deal with accelerating fuel poverty.

[Edward Miliband]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. At every step of the way, the Government have had the chance to act, and they have not done so.

Climate Change and Flooding

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Edward Miliband

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who plays a very important role in the GLOBE organisation of parliamentarians. This debate comes at a timely moment after the Paris agreement, and after the tragedy of the floods that we have seen. I know that many hon. Friends want to talk about the effects on their constituencies, so I will try to keep my remarks reasonably brief.

I want to focus on the question of what the Paris agreement means for UK domestic policy. In doing so, I praise the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who played an important role in the talks. She was the host of the high ambition coalition between developed and vulnerable countries, and her office was its headquarters. She deserves credit for the very constructive role that she played. Having said that, when I listened to her statement yesterday, I felt, while I do not want to be unfair to her, that her position was somewhat to say, “Everything has changed and nothing has changed.” In other words, internationally everything has changed, with high ambitions, zero emissions and all that stuff, but for the UK things are the same as before. I want to make the case that that cannot be right, for four reasons, three of which are to do with the agreement itself.

First, on 1.5°, no previous agreement has enshrined a commitment to try to commit to

“efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5 C.”

This is a higher ambition than there has been in any agreement before. The Secretary of State knows that, because she was one of the people who helped broker the agreement. The reason it was brokered is very interesting: it was because of the case put forward by countries like the Marshall Islands that will disappear with warming of more than 1.5°. Some people fear that the high ambition coalition was a ruse to break up the G77 and China grouping in order to put pressure on the Chinese to get an agreement. I do not believe that it was a ruse. However, we cannot just say, “Our domestic policy will not change,” because if we suggest that our attitude to a 1.5° agreement is the same as to a 2° agreement, countries like the Marshall Islands will conclude, “Hang on a minute—were these people serious after all?”

The Committee on Climate Change picked up on this point in its release yesterday, saying that it would make it even more important—I am paraphrasing somewhat but I do not think I am misrepresenting it—that we met its recommendations on carbon budgets, and that it might be the case that further steps should be taken. It said that it would come back to the Secretary of State on that in early 2016. I would be interested to hear what she thinks are the implications of this more exacting target—because it definitely is more exacting.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very strong case, which I appreciate. Surely the difference that 1.5° makes means that we need to think again about aviation expansion. In yesterday’s aviation statement, which came right after the climate statement, nobody even mentioned climate, and yet aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

[Edward Miliband]

When we were in government, I played one part in the rather unhappy saga that is Heathrow. In response to the demand that we should approve Heathrow, I pushed for a separate target for aviation emissions. Of course that must also be looked at as part of the 1.5° target. There cannot simply be unconstrained expansion of aviation. The hon. Lady makes a good point.

Secondly, the agreement contains not just the 1.5° aim but a long-term goal of zero emissions. When I asked the Secretary of State about this yesterday, she said that she was happy pursuing the existing targets in the Climate Change Act. I think that those targets are very important, because I helped legislate for them, and I am very happy that she wants to make sure that we meet them. However, when I was Climate Change Secretary we had not had a global agreement for net zero emissions. We cannot possibly say, “We’ve got this global commitment to zero emissions in the second half of the century but it has no implications for UK domestic policy.” Of course we have to look at what it means for the UK.

My case to the Secretary of State, which I hope she will consider—I am not asking for an answer today—is that when the Energy Bill comes back to this House in the new year she amends it to ask the Committee on Climate Change to do something very simple, which is to look at this issue and make a recommendation to Government about when we should achieve zero emissions. That would do a number of things. It would send a cross-party message that Britain is determined to be a climate leader; the Secretary of State has talked eloquently about the impact that the Climate Change Act had, with cross-party support. It would also reduce, not increase, the costs of transition, because it would provide a clear trajectory to business and, indeed, to future Governments.

I say to Conservative Members, who have understandable concerns, that it would be supported by business. I am not the most radical person on this issue. The most radical people are, believe it or not, Richard Branson, Paul Polman of Unilever and Ratan Tata. They want not just what I am suggesting, but something much more radical—they want zero emissions by 2050. Perhaps that is what the Committee on Climate Change will concede, but my approach is much more pragmatic, as is that of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart). Let us not pluck a figure out of the air—such as 2050—without having the experts look at it; let us look at what the implications of the global goal of zero emissions are for the UK. That is a very reasonable suggestion.

Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Edward Miliband

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend eloquently makes his point. I am afraid that the truth is that the right hon. Gentleman, in his first few days in the job, has obviously sold down the river his former Liberal Democrat colleagues, and they will take note.

Let us move on to the next part of delivering the low-carbon agenda: nuclear power, which was a very small feature of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. He spoke one line through gritted teeth about nuclear power. I wonder why. I think that I know the reason. Let us be clear that our position on nuclear power is that the challenge of climate change is so great that we need nuclear as well as renewables and clean coal, because the challenge of climate change is so big. That is the position of the vast majority of Conservative Members––they are nodding away, which is great because we agree with them.

Of course, the Liberal Democrat position was against new nuclear power. The Liberal Democrats say in their manifesto that they

“reject a new generation of new nuclear power stations”.

But I am in a generous mood, so let us not criticise them for that, because the judgment is one of whether they have managed to achieve a proper long-term agreement, with a clear position, or whether they have just papered over the cracks.

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), is instructive on the issue. He said about nuclear investment that

“Clarity is essential if new investment is to happen.”

I agree with him, so let us apply his test to the new Government. The coalition agreement says that the Government will introduce a national planning statement and that the Liberal Democrats can continue to maintain their opposition to nuclear power, but it does not end there. It says that

“a Liberal Democrat spokesperson will speak against the Planning Statement…but…Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain”.

Let us be clear that there is not one Government position on nuclear power, not two Government positions, but three positions: the Government are notionally in favour of it; a Liberal Democrat representative will speak against it—I do not know who that will be; it might be the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, or, presumably, the right hon. Gentleman—and the party itself will sit on the fence in any vote. We always knew that being a Liberal Democrat in opposition meant not having to choose, but old habits seem to die hard: they seem to think that being a Liberal Democrat in government means not having to choose either.

The right hon. Gentleman seems to have passed responsibility for new nuclear power to his deputy, the hon. Member for Wealden. The responsibilities of the Department of Energy and Climate Change have come out and the Secretary of State seems to have abdicated responsibility for this issue. Delivering on new nuclear power is a very big task that needs the personal role of the Secretary of State. I used to chair the Nuclear Development Forum, bringing together all the different partners in industry to drive things forward and ensure that we would deliver on time. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will think again about abdicating responsibility to the Minister of State, much as I admire him.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

My right hon. Friend says that the challenge of climate change is so great that we need nuclear power as well as renewables and energy efficiency, but given that we have to reduce our emissions in the next eight to 10 years if we listen to the scientists, we need to consider what is the most cost-effective and the fastest way to do that. Is nuclear power not a massive distraction in that debate? Even if we doubled the amount of nuclear power, we would cut our emissions by only 8%. Putting money into renewables and efficiency is far more effective.

[Edward Miliband]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the House. I wish that the Labour party had won her seat, but she comes to the House with a distinguished campaigning record on green issues, and she will inform our debates and bring great expertise to them.

I disagree with the hon. Lady about nuclear power, because we have to plan for the long term. She is right that we have to meet an urgent challenge, but we also have 80% targets for 2050, and we must drive our targets for 2020 beyond 2020 to 2025 and 2030. The Opposition’s view is that nuclear power needs to play a role.