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G8: 2007 Summit

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I would like to repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows: ““With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the G8 Summit, which took place between 6 and 8 June in Heiligendamm, in Germany. I pay tribute to Chancellor Merkel’s outstanding chairmanship. ““The purpose of the summit was to take forward the agenda first established at the Gleneagles Summit of 2005 on climate change and Africa. ““On climate change, the scale of the challenge, environmentally and politically, has been becoming clearer month by month. There is now a scientific consensus that the planet is warming dangerously. If we do not halt and then reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, we face a potential catastrophe. Sir Nicholas Stern’s report has shown that early action will save money; late action will cost it. So, for the environment, this is urgent. ““Politically, the problem has been clear but daunting. The United States was not part of the Kyoto treaty. The major emitters in the years to come will include China, India and developing nations. They want to grow their economies. They fear that action on climate change will limit their growth and hence keep their people—hundreds of millions of them—poor. ““Added to all this, Kyoto barely stabilises emissions—it is now obvious that we need substantially to cut them—and it expires in 2012. ““At Gleneagles, we set up the G8 plus 5 dialogue, the first time the US and China sat round the same table debating how to put a new deal together. ““There is still a long way to go, but for the first time an outline agreement can be seen that meets the environmental test of cutting substantially the harmful emissions and the political test of bringing developed and developing nations, notably America and China, together. ““We agreed at the G8, for the first time, thata new global climate change agreement should succeed the current Kyoto treaty. ““We agreed, for the first time, that at the heart of that agreement should be a substantial cutin global emissions. And the summit sent an important signal that the global target should be of the order of a cut of at least 50 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the target set by the EU, Japan and Canada. ““We agreed at the G8, for the first time, the process for such a new agreement. We agreed that the UN is the only body able to finalise a global deal on climate change and that a comprehensive agreement should be reached in 2009. We calledon all countries to see the UN climate change meeting in December as a first step to achieving a comprehensive climate change agreement. ““The most important change was the position of the United States of America. Again, for the first time, President Bush signalled that he wanted the US to be part of the new global agreement and would lead the attempt to get consensus among all the main countries, including China and India, so that that consensus could shape the final global deal. ““This is crucial. There will be no effective climate change accord without the US. The US will not agree without China being part of it. Now we have an agreement in principle, a goal and a process to achieve it. Much remains to be done; but on any basis, this is a substantial step forward. ““We agreed that tackling climate change and addressing energy security are complementary goals. We highlighted the importance of tackling energy efficiency, addressing emissions caused by deforestation and helping developing countries, which are likely to be worst hit by climate change, to adapt to its impacts. We agreed on a renewed effort to develop and deploy new low-carbon technologies, and we have sent a strong message that emissions trading schemes, within and between countries, will play a key role in giving incentives to business to invest in low-carbon technologies. ““Heiligendamm was never going to be about finalising a deal; it was about sending a clear signal on the shape of the post-2012 climate change framework. That is exactly what it did. The UK will work hard in the G8, UN and elsewhereto deliver this objective of such fundamental importance to the future of the world. ““Two years ago, the Gleneagles G8 agreed a global increase in aid and debt relief of $50 billion by 2010, with $25 billion extra for Africa. It also agreed universal access to HIV/AIDS treatmentby 2010, to tackling other killer diseases, a commitment to funding primary education, to supporting an African peacekeeping force and to a big debt write-off. ““Britain is already meeting its commitment to increase aid to Africa. We have trebled it. Before the summit, Germany announced an extra €3 billion over four years, and America an extra $15 billion, for treating HIV/AIDS, over five years. Overall aid has risen. We should not ignore what already has been done or the almost $40 billion additional debt relief for Africa since 2005. But we will need to do substantially more to ensure that the Gleneagles provisions are kept. ““However, on HIV/AIDS, the G8 reiteratedits commitment to delivering universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010. Since Gleneagles, around 1 million people in Africa have been receiving the anti-retroviral drugs that they need; the G8 has now agreed to fund a total of 5 million. This is more than the G8 share of this commitment as predictions currently stand. But we can do more in years to come to fulfil the 2010 goal if the need arises. It committed to providing $60 billion over the next few years in Africa to help to achieve this. It committed to filling the estimated $6 billion to $8 billion shortfall in funding for the global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, and, reflecting UK policy, committed to providing the long-term predictable funding necessary to achieve the fund’s goals. ““The G8 also committed to taking specific steps to tackle the alarming feminisation of the AIDS epidemic whereby in sub-Saharan Africa 60 per cent of adults living with HIV/AIDS are women and three out of four young people living with HIV are women and girls. So the G8 committed to scaling up its efforts to deliver universal access to services to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to their children, to paediatric services and to maternal and child health services, at a total cost of nearly $5 billion. ““On education, the G8 committed to working to meet the immediate $500 million financing gap for the education fast-track initiative. Again in line with broader UK policy, the G8 committed to help to provide long-term predictable funding to ensure that every child gets to school, and reiterated its commitment to ensure that no country that is seriously committed to education for all will be thwarted in achieving its goal by a lack of resources. This will help to meet the millennium development goal of universal primary education by 2015. ““The G8 also committed to identifying, agreeing and supporting lasting solutions to the financing of peacekeeping missions in Africa—essential if key missions, such as the African Union mission in Darfur, are not to limp on hand-to-mouth, month after month. ““We agreed a strong statement on the crisis in Darfur. The truth is that President Bashir of Sudan has consistently refused to admit a hybrid UN-AU force and that he has consistently moved only under the threat of pressure from outside. Unless he now agrees to the G8 and UN demands, we are now committed to a new and tougher package of sanctions through the Security Council to force him to do so. ““Our last session was dominated by discussion of the World Trade talks. The gap has now narrowed. There is the real possibility of agreeing an outline deal by the end of June. The outstanding elements amount to only a few percentage points either way. We are therefore closer to the headline numbers than ever before. But we have to move from wanting to do the deal to doing it. The meeting of the G4 between 19 and 23 June will be absolutely crucial. Britain will continue to do all we can—and we have done much over these past months—to bridge the gap. The benefits of an agreement for the wealthy nations,as well as the developing ones, are enormous. It would be good for business and jobs, good for the multilateral system and good for the world's poorest. I urge the US, the EU and the G20 to get this done. It will be great to succeed, a profound shame to fail. ““As is usual at G8 summits, I also had bilateral meetings with a number of leaders and in particular a long and frank meeting with President Putin covering the range of issues presently under discussion: the Litvinenko case, Kosovo, ballistic missile defence and energy policy. I set out our view that people were becoming worried and fearful about the implications of present Russian policy. The president set out with equal frankness his views. ““It was right to have such an exchange. The issues were aired with complete openness onboth sides. I said to him that we wanted a good relationship with Russia. He affirmed his desire to see Russia/UK relations strong. But the truth is that these issues remain unresolved. ““So this was a summit that made a real breakthrough on climate change and some more progress on Africa, and it showed once again the value to Britain of its transatlantic and European alliances. I commend the outcome to the House””. My Lords, that concludes the Statement.