Queen’s Speech

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall focus my comments today on the environment. I know that the Minister who will respond will not deal with this issue, but I should be grateful if he would draw my comments, particularly what I am going to say about defence forces and biofuels, to the attention of the relevant Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Astor.

The Queen’s Speech is too thin on environmental issues. I welcome the policy on plastic bags; I do not think that it is a laughing matter—the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made the point well about the impact on wildlife. My noble friend Lady Sherlock made a very interesting point about the degradation of biodegradable bags, where the plastic itself does not degrade. That brings me to the heart of what I want to say. We still do not do enough in this country to put science and technology in the driving seat on climate change. I have expressed concern about climate change since I first wrote about it in the early 1980s, but I have never believed that the way to deal with it is to try to stop people driving, flying or whatever. When the developing world looks at us, they ask us—forcefully at times—why, when we cut down all our forests several hundred years ago, we are lecturing them on reducing their forests now. That is a powerful point, although of course it does not alter the factual situation that we have to address.

Science and technology are also important because, at times, people forget that Britain has been at the forefront of some of the science on climate change precisely because we are an advanced scientific nation, and particularly the advances made by what is still the second largest, second most advanced aerospace industry in the world. That is how we know about climate change. If we did not have the measurements available from the science learnt from the aerospace industry, we would not know a fraction of what we do about climate change. It is crucial to have science and technology in the driving seat.

Although it is now a declining number who deny the dangers of climate change, I make two passing points. The first is that if you are warned of a danger of this type, it is foolish to do anything other than adopt the precautionary principle and address the issue. If it turns out not to be as fearful as you expect, the damage is relatively little; if you do not do anything, the damage could be very severe.

The second common-sense reason for wanting to do something about it is that, by and large, it is a bad idea to encourage production without doing so in a non-polluting way. Think of the dramatic expansion in the world’s population, who are all going to want to fly, drive and have a living standard comparable to that of the UK, the US and western Europe. We cannot do that without the application of science and technology.

That brings me to my point about the defence forces. I make no apology for asking the Minister to draw it to the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Astor, because I tabled a Question on this issue, which I shall refer to in a moment. I also hope to get a short debate on the issue. Let me give my examples in very bald form from the various scientific journals and the Governments concerned. Our allies in the Royal Australian Navy make it clear that it plans to make all its ships and aircraft biofuel-capable within six years. The United States Navy plans to launch what it calls a “biofuel-enabled Great Green Fleet”—a bit of a dramatic title that—by 2016, a couple of years away,

“complete with fighter jets, helicopters, destroyers, and other ships”,

able to use biofuels.

It is not commonly known that many of the advanced fighter jets deployed by the United States in Afghanistan, and indeed many of their other aircraft, were using biofuels in the form of algae. A large part of the reason was not cost, because they are not cheap to produce, but security. If you are having your fuel lines blown up as it is brought in through Pakistan and Afghanistan, it is easier to produce the fuel on site—and that is what they did. The Italian navy currently has a ship deployed off the Baltic states, partly as a result of the NATO response to Crimea, which is a biofuel ship. They are also planning to increase the use of biofuels through one of their major companies. The Dutch air force is also now flying Apache helicopters with a mixture of biofuels.

I give those four examples—I could give others from other countries—because I want to read out the Question for Written Answer that I put down in January this year to the Ministry of Defence. I asked,

“what is their policy on the use of biofuel by the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force”.

The Answer was:

“The Ministry of Defence … uses biofuels in road transport (petrol and diesel) where EU legislation obliges fuel manufacturers to include a percentage of biofuels in the fuel they produce. The use of biofuels in marine and aviation fuel is governed by the requirements and approvals of MOD equipment manufacturers. The MOD is encouraging these manufacturers to work towards adopting biofuels in the future”.—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. WA 37.]

That is an awfully sad reply. I then turn to our Royal Navy’s Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, the UK’s former climate and energy security adviser, who went to the United States a couple of years ago and came back recommending that the US and UK collaborate more closely on the development of strategic, high-performance biofuels.

These biofuels are not the ones that take up land use—that is, some of them are but the majority are designed to be renewable. One extremely important point that I have made to this House before is about algae, which can be produced in any type of water—salt water or dirty water—and is a very powerful additive. Why are we not doing anything and why is there nothing in the Queen’s Speech to put this science and technology drive right in the front seat? If you took out the green argument and just asked who would develop these fuels if we do not use them for our defence forces, they would be developed in the United States, Italy, Holland and other countries.

We are losing that high-tech bit which we won on when, through the aerospace industry, we spotted the dangers of climate change. People forget it now but quite a few years back when the ozone layer was being depleted by the use of chlorofluorocarbons, it was British science instruments based in the Antarctic which discovered that. The science and technology response to it means that the ozone layer is now recovering. Climate change is a problem of pollution, just as the depletion of the ozone layer was. We can solve it but it requires science and technology.

That is the message which I would like the Minister to take back to the noble Lord, Lord Astor, and alert him to the fact, if he is not already aware of it, that I am trying to get a debate on the Armed Forces. Frankly, I feel slightly ashamed at the nature of the Answer I got compared with what is being done in Australia, the United States, Holland, France, Italy and elsewhere. We are not doing very well, yet we have been at the forefront of the science and technology.