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Climate Change

I speak as a sponsor of the Climate Change Bill, and I urge the Government to consider incorporating such a Bill into the Queen’s Speech. I have listened with great interest to what the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said about carbon budgets, and I hope that there will be some creative discussion in the short time between now and the Queen’s Speech. It may well be that, in the end, some of the aspirations of those who support the Climate Change Bill can be covered by a proposed carbon budget. I came into politics, as I am sure everyone else did, to change the world, not necessarily to save it, but we must begin by saving it. We have a responsibility, to our children and to our children’s children, to ensure that we properly look after the world, which we are only given on trust, so that we can pass it on to our children in a fit state. We are failing to do that at the moment, and we must take that seriously. Of course the biggest challenge is climate change, and the question is what on earth do we do. What on earth do we do, particularly when we as a country are responsible only for 2 per cent. of emissions? Although people are persuaded that we need to do something, they are not persuaded about what they can do to make a real difference. The context in the UK is that about a third of end-user carbon emissions comes from industry, about a third comes from households and about a third from transport. So what individual people do in Britain is important, and it is really important that we change people’s behaviour, but the question is how. Everyone has been talking about the importance of consensus. Of course, I am entirely in favour of that in principle, but what I really think is that we can only tackle something like climate change if we stick to fundamental Labour values. We have to stick to the values of internationalism, radicalism and collectivism. I hear what the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) says about the beauty of regulation and I agree with him, but I am not entirely sure that some of the people sitting behind him—the colour drained from their faces as he spoke—necessarily do so. Nevertheless, if we talk in terms of those fundamental values, we can get somewhere. Obviously, we have to begin with a real commitment to internationalism and an understanding that Britain can play a leading role. It has done so in the development of Kyoto and the European emissions trading scheme. That is fantastic, but we can continue to play a leading role only if we have the moral authority of being able to show that we, as a country—as the first industrialised country—can tackle this issue head on and continue to grow our industries and be all right, and be carbon neutral. We have to be able to show a lead on that. In turn, we can get all sorts of benefits. However, unfortunately, we are not leading in any of the 10 main green industries. Why not? As a country, we are potentially the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. Why do we not have a flourishing wind industry? Of course, I could make all sorts of cheap points about the Liberal Democrats and their planning controls and stranglehold on wind energy in Scotland, but I will not do that because we are talking about consensus.