---

Climate Change

I do. I was nearing the point during that intervention at which I would have said that there was some woolly thinking creeping in, but the Minister rescued herself a little. The point is not that the science might be nonsense; rather, we should ask whether in response to the science, we should attempt to remove carbon from the atmosphere or find other ways of addressing it. That is the key question—the Stern review was set up to address that, but made a mess of it. I shall address how to come to the right answer in a moment. The Stern cost-benefit analysis is almost certainly not correct; it is way out. Anyone who has looked at the evidence would have to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with it. We need to ask ourselves how much would it really cost to decarbonise the economy. The truth is that we simply do not know—the experts are only in the foothills of the subject. In answer to the Minister, while that controversy rages, the right Government response should be to prepare for global warming in case it happens, not to rapidly decarbonise. That means adaptation through, for example, allocating a much more sensible budget for flood and sea defences, not least, if I may say so, in my constituency, where the Government are not providing enough even to maintain existing defences. It also means more research into the best adaptive techniques, for example, in agriculture, sea defences and so on.