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Climate Change

That is a point to take up with the shadow Chancellor. The point that I want to make about tax is that there seems to be increasingly common ground among Conservative Members about the need to re-examine the system. Although taxes are important levers, they are not the only one. I want to pick up on a point that was made from our Front Bench. It seems to me that there ought to be common ground where there is silence in terms of the cross-party debate—that is, the attitude to constructive regulation and standards that we will expect from the key products that drive our energy consumption, such as the car, the home, the office and the light bulb. We can take people with us on a journey to revolutionise the standards of the products that are causing the problem, so I urge the people engaged in that cross-party consensus perhaps to focus on that in the short term as an opportunity to send a signal that will be heard by the manufacturers of those products and those who consume them. My next point to reinforce the opportunity for cross-party consensus relates to procurement in the public sector. About £500 billion is being spent, and that is an enormous lever with things attached to it. The evidence given to the Environmental Audit Committee over many years suggests that, although the Government are making progress and making the right noises, they are very inconsistent. In my intervention, I gave the example of the DHL contract—the largest Government contract in recent times. My understanding—the Minister might deny this—is that it does nothing to reduce the Government’s carbon footprint. That opportunity has been missed, but I hope that the opportunity that the massive investment in the school building programme represents will not be missed. That carries with it a great opportunity to demonstrate the technologies that will make a difference and to connect young people in this country with the issue. Those are levers that we can pull and they provide opportunities to build credibility and prove to people sitting in Ruislip or Shanghai that we can do something to manage the risk of climate instability, which has the power to inflict huge financial and human costs on our society.