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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, the gracious Speech included important legislative and administrative objectives for the environment, including preserving the UK's natural environment—which we hope now includes the marine environment—tackling climate change, working with Africa's environment and dealing with the consequences of nuclear and biological weapons. It also included the environment of London, as the GLA has recognised, and as I shall explain, ensuring the success of the proposed Olympic Games. In this centenary year of Einstein's great and much-celebrated papers in 1905, it is a pity there was no explicit reference to science in the gracious Speech, nor in the titles of the House of Lords debates following it, despite all the discussions of science elsewhere. Nevertheless, like others, I welcome the Government's commitment to science. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Bach will take as keen an interest in environmental science as his predecessor, my noble friend Lord Whitty. It would be excellent if, in his winding-up, he could commit the Government to environmental policies based broadly on sound science. I am sure that this is the Government's aim, but a clear statement would give the right signal to his department as it deals with all the contentious issues that face it. In talking about science, I offer my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Sainsbury on his reappointment as Minister for Science. He has been partly responsible for the substantial growth of the science budget. Whereas three-term governments have been known before, he must be the longest-serving Minister for Science in UK political history. I declare an interest as a professor of climate modelling at University College, a director of a small company, the president of an NGO, ACOPS, and vice-president of the NSCA. Although, as my noble friend Lord Sainsbury stated in the debate here on 18 May, more scientists have been trained in the UK, especially in biology, the problems were highlighted by Professor Jones of University College in one of the election opinion broadcasts on the BBC, where he pointed out the need for greater motivation of students entering science. He found in a class of pupils doing science not a single one who wanted to become a research scientist. The Government's steps to increase salaries of scientific researchers, and to publicise the importance of their work, need to be redoubled. Colleagues in the United States and on the continent are astonished to hear that most young researchers in the UK earn less than the barely sufficient salary of bus drivers and transport workers. The Government have made substantial investment in basic science, as I have mentioned. What is needed now, however, is better exploitation, particularly for the environment, better databases, and publicity of successful UK developments. The House of Lords EU committee on climate change, to which other noble Lords have referred, was astonished, when we had the Secretary of State before us, to hear how little she knew about the technological developments in dealing with climate change in one or two notable areas—it is important to emphasise that—and particularly the greater use of Government websites to encourage those important developments. However, as other noble Lords have mentioned this afternoon, while research, both basic and long-term, is essential in both university and government institutions, it is also extremely important that scientists should have the freedom to think widely and speak openly about their work. There are worrying signs of censorship, or at least self-censorship, to avoid criticism or to present work fashionably. The noble Lord, Lord Taverne, has made that point several times in this Chamber. I was a little surprised that my noble friend Lady Andrews, when introducing her speech about sustainable development, did not refer to the fact that we passed an Act to ensure that sustainable development is now an essential component of regional planning decisions. That was one of the many unsung achievements of the previous Parliament. This means that sustainable development is being taken seriously and requires an integrated long-term strategic approach to all government policies at both a local and a national level. Although this is the responsibility of the sustainable development commission in Government, it is actually only Ministers and the Cabinet who can ensure that departments and their agencies work together and increasingly involve local government. It is local government that, through its local planning and other powers, and through local business initiatives, is on the front line in housing, transportation and preserving all aspects of the local environment, such as the atmosphere and the water. It is also responsible for, and increasingly engaged in, relating the environment to general health and the health of vulnerable groups. There is an interesting development in one of the boroughs of London using satellite data to focus air quality data for particular people suffering in that respect. Such objectives require targets. We had a discussion earlier this afternoon about whether the Liberal Democrats believe in targets, and I think I got a muddled "Yes". In fact, at both a national and a local level, targets have been helpful in environments around the world. As your Lordships may have seen, US cities are now focusing on meeting Kyoto targets for reducing their carbon emissions. I suggest that the Government, as part of their G8 initiative, might extend carbon emission targets down to local levels. The National Society for Clean Air in the UK is advocating local government involvement in this area, as many local governments see that reducing carbon emissions is a more efficient use of energy, and that there are many other environmental advantages. In the United States, many universities even have their own Kyoto targets, as I have seen on my visits. I believe, therefore, that this is a widespread and democratic approach, not just top-down targets from one or two ministries. However, the House of Lords has shown in its reports and debates on climate change that there are strong conservative—with a small "c"—blockages to developing some of these climate change policies. Some of these are commercial, some institutional, and some from popular organisations. Many of these resist central science-based environmental policies. I hope the Minister will clarify how his department will be overcoming these resistances to push forward its policies on more efficient and sustainable energy use. One of the points highlighted in two House of Lords reports is the question of allowing local networks of power generation to be expanded. I hope that the Minister will take up cudgels on behalf of his department against the objections of the DTI and Ofgem to allow this kind of development to happen. The GLA certainly advocates this, and one or two cities in Britain, such as Woking and I believe Bristol, have demonstrated it. Not only should the Government be allowing the spread of the remarkable success of some UK cities and technologies, they should also be highlighting them to countries abroad and to other cities in the UK. In fact, the Government have been doing this. The university I am associated with, along with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has been taking British experts to foreign cities, such as Houston, and we have had meetings in Germany, in order that this whole worldwide local approach can move forward. The other crucial approach that central government can take is to introduce energy systems to reduce carbon emissions. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, mentioned in his speech, there are many possible methods of doing this. In the jargon, this is the "portfolio" or "wedge" approach. In the debate in February, we were very pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, say that it is now the favoured approach and there will not be a single solution but a range of solutions. One of the important options that we need to develop is nuclear fission. I believe that the Government, their committees, industry, science and the engineering community now have a major task to explain nuclear energy and its risks and the fact that there are risks both in other environmental policies and in having no policies. If we do nothing at all, we will have more very high temperature events, as we had in 2003, and we may have more events of flooding. They will be caused by unmitigated climate change. In 2003, 2,500 deaths in the UK were associated with the very high temperatures in the summer and there were more than 20,000 deaths on the Continent. It is possible that a conventional nuclear fission energy programme will be started during this Parliament, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, advocated last week. But it is important to think of a much longer, 50-year programme of advanced nuclear systems that must deal comprehensively with nuclear fusion and fission and with the problems of nuclear waste. However, it is disappointing that the UK is not participating in the international meetings on these advanced systems. The United States Department of Energy is thinking about nuclear energy over the next 40 to 50 years and is working with colleagues from Russia and the International Atomic Energy Authority. There are no British officials at these meetings. I am going along as an independent British scientist, and I shall tell noble Lords about the meetings when I come back, but it is important that the UK, as a leading scientific nation, should be part of the debate. I believe that there is a fear that if we participate in these wide-range discussions some environmental groups may be upset, but the Government should have greater courage on this issue. We should have energy centres in the UK that look much further forward. The Government are to be congratulated on introducing, during the past few years, a UK energy centre based at Imperial College; but neither that centre nor the scientific institutions are providing any long-range foresight in the UK. We have no centre such as that at Petten in the Netherlands where the general public can see demonstrations of energy systems that they should be considering for their houses and workplaces. It is important that people should see the vision of new energy systems. That will inform democratic debates. As we heard in the last Parliament, the Government's policy is that there will be publicity costing £12 million to explain and propagandise about climate change, but the effort to explain levels of technology is quite inadequate. Such explanation would be a great advantage to the UK industry in helping the Government. The other important point about sustainable development is that it should be emphasised how appropriate it is for developing countries where environmental degradation is extremely serious. Finally, one of the aspects of climate change that needs to be considered is the way it will affect our cities. The GLA had a small group considering climate change and the Olympic Games. It is forecast by the Met Office that, this summer, there will be very high temperatures in the south of England, comparable to those in 2003. There is a very good chance that there will therefore be strong effects on health in the UK. The Department of Health issued a warning last week, but no action has yet been taken to follow up the technical solutions needed to deal with our transportation systems. It is essential that we inform people about the temperature on the Underground system, which could easily be done, as we know that there is a great danger to health when the temperature is above 30 or 31 degrees Celsius. Systems could also be introduced to ventilate the Tube at night so that in the morning the temperature in the Tube is comparable to the temperature on the street. At the moment, the Tube is far too hot and there is considerable danger. I hope that the Minister will tackle this with London Underground and Transport for London, as it is a serious situation.