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Climate Change

For a start, the landfill tax is rather a bad example, as it was introduced by a Conservative Government. Secondly, Conservatives have always been prepared to regulate. As far back as in Disraeli’s time, the public health Acts cleaned up the River Thames, and I have no doubt that men in stovepipe hats told the then Prime Minister that that legislation would be a terrible burden on business. Similarly, a Conservative Government introduced the clean air legislation in the 1950s—[Interruption.] I do not see any stovepipe hats in the Chamber this afternoon. We are not at all afraid of regulation that is targeted, carefully structured and able to create opportunity. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to learn that, only earlier this week, Conservative Members of the European Parliament voted to toughen the regulation relating to the substitution principles in the REACH directive. That gives a clear signal about our strong commitment to use regulation to improve the environment and the health of everyone. I had just begun to speak about aviation—in my view, the hardest nut to crack in the whole issue of climate change. There is no technological quick fix and it is, by nature, international, but that is not an excuse for ignoring it in the official statistics on climate change. We must recognise and face up to its impact, so of course we must include it in the EU emissions trading scheme and in the existing emission reductions target. In addition, we should look at restructuring air passenger duties, for example, and bear down on emissions rather than passengers. Climate change is the greatest challenge facing this generation of politicians, worldwide. If we are to rise to the challenge, we must put aside politics as usual, and work together. Our door remains open, to the Secretary of State and to the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, if either of them wishes to come and talk openly about climate change and about how we can meet the challenge together. We will not succeed, nor will we earn the public’s respect, if we continue to bicker among ourselves. We should start by recognising that this beautiful, fragile earth has natural limits, to which we are all subject whether we like it or not, and we have a frighteningly short space of time to start living within them.