Lord Lansley
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(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome my noble friend to this House and to congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. It was brief, but it had a moment of humour in it. I think many of us know that my noble friend comes from what we can call a parliamentary heritage. I do not mean the 32 years that he spent in the other place, distinguished as that was, but that over 200 years ago his ancestor was responsible for the only assassination of a Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, just beyond the Bar of the House. Happily, my noble friend is now putting a positive parliamentary legacy in place to offset the Bellingham legacy from many years past. As it happens, it is clear that Prime Ministers did not hold that against my noble friend since he was advanced to ministerial office. Among the many subjects that he will bring to this House, on which we look forward to hearing from him, his ministerial experience will be very valuable, not least in relation to trade and Africa. We look forward to hearing from my noble friend and from all those who have made their maiden speeches in this debate.
I want to make just one point. My noble friend Lord Gadhia said that crises come in pairs. Looking at the Chancellor’s Budget, I think he has addressed with many well-judged measures the pandemic crisis that we face. But, actually, we face two crises because we are also facing a climate crisis. I do not think that this Budget addresses the climate crisis in the way that we need to. Every fiscal event must now be directed towards achieving our climate objectives. In that context, I want to focus on one thing. In two months, we will introduce the UK emissions trading scheme. One month ago to the day, the Government increased the auction reserve price from £15 to £22, but nothing else was done in the Budget. We need to know how we are going to use emissions trading—and, more importantly in my view, carbon pricing—to deliver on our decarbonisation objectives. Industry needs those strategies to be set out.