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Biofuels

We agree in essence with the report and its conclusions. We believe that many of the biofuels now being used are not sustainable. We therefore need to be sure that all biofuels are contributing to a reduction in CO2 and not making the problem worse. The report is valuable as evidence, as it will enable us to come to a firm conclusion. I agree with the majority of points made during today's debate by members of the Committee. The issue has also been raised by a number of other Committees and on the Floor of the House. Our severe concern is that we are locked into a target despite the environmental evidence given in the report. There other ways of improving the carbon footprint of transport. We need to consider greener cars. As we heard yesterday at Prime Minister's Question Time, the way to encourage people to use greener cars is not to tax them on decisions that they made seven years ago when they bought their cars. We should consider car sharing. My car has a CO2 production of 214 g/km if I am on my own. If I am with my wife and three children, it produces 44 g/km for each of us. Car sharing could make a valuable contribution. This morning, I met some people from iTrans, a company that is looking at formalising car sharing in a way that will allow them to participate in carbon credit trading schemes—so when Mr. Branson's aeroplanes fly across the Atlantic, they will be offset because someone at home is sharing the car to school. I was concerned to hear that Pindar, a company in Scarborough that wanted to set up a car sharing scheme among its employees, was told that data protection rules meant that it could not communicate to them where their colleagues lived. We should also consider car clubs, another way of getting people out of their cars and on to public transport, but still giving them the convenience of having a car at weekends or in the evenings. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response. In particular, I would be pleased to hear whether he has had any communication with the European Commission or his 26 colleagues in the Council. I have some experience of the way things are done in Europe, particularly in relation to the nitrates directive. Once something is written into the European Union statute book, it is very hard to get it changed—even if subsequent evidence shows that not everything that has been written in stone is what people would wish. I would be interested to hear what communications the Minister has had with the Commission and, just as important, with other member states that are not as pinned to the farmers' shirt-tails as others—about which we know all too well. I want to see whether we can turn around the supertanker of the European movement, and get a little bit more science into the debate and a little less of people merely sounding green.