Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing levels of both (a) consumption- and (b) territory-based emissions.

As part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process, we report on UK territorial production emissions to an internationally agreed standard. For the purpose of assessing progress towards UK Carbon Budgets, measurement of the country's carbon emissions is on a territorial emissions basis. Although a few countries do publish consumption figures, there is no equivalent internationally agreed methodology for the calculation of, nor the comparison of, consumption emissions. However, we recognise the importance of monitoring the emissions that relate to our consumption, including emissions within the countries we import from.  For this reason Defra has for a number of years published the emissions that relate to our total consumption UK Carbon Footprint.

The carbon footprint published by Defra refers to emissions that are associated with the consumption spending of UK residents on goods and services, wherever in the world these emissions arise along the supply chain.