Limiting Global Temperature Increase

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There was a whole series of questions in the noble Lord’s statement. This was an international agreement, involving almost 200 countries. Is it perfect? Is it everything we would have wanted? No, but it is certainly a great achievement by our extremely hard-working negotiating team. I do not agree with the noble Lord on the second part of his question about licensing and increased production in the North Sea. Even if they come on stream, the output in the North Sea will still continue to decline and we are still committed to phasing out oil and gas production.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Will my noble friend reflect that it is not just carte blanche? There will be situations where an oil company finds a new field, perhaps like the one 200 miles north of the Falklands, where the quality of the oil is far better than the oil that we produce in the North Sea, and it would make economic sense to substitute one for the other in the future. Then at some stage, that field will be reduced. It is not absolutely static, is it? We now want a situation where the industry decreases but at the same time improves the product.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend is right, in that different circumstances will apply to many countries, but we are very clear about the trajectory that we are on. We need to bear in mind that this is a transition. It cannot happen overnight, but we are clear on the direction in which we are travelling.