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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

The results achieved by the Liberal Democrats at that time clearly show that they were regarded as freakish. This Bill is very important, and it should help to maintain Britain's international leadership of the climate change debate. That leadership was of course established originally by Baroness Thatcher in her famous speech almost two decades ago. She was the first Head of Government of any serious country in the world to address the issue of climate change. That leadership role has been maintained under successive Governments of both parties. What has changed since 1993 is our understanding of climate change. It has been transformed. The science now makes clear, in a compelling way, that the threat is far bigger and more urgent not to the planet, which will certainly survive, but to the survival of a recently arrived species on the planet—human beings. The economics are also better understood. I pay warm tribute to Lord Stern, whose report has helped to maintain Britain's influence on the subject internationally. His report shows that action today would be far cheaper and more cost effective than action taken in five or 10 years' time. I welcome the Bill, and I shall comment on one or two of its detailed provisions in a moment. First, it is important to remember—in the spirit of cross-party consensus, I think that the Liberal Democrat spokesman made this point—that in passing the Bill we must not ignore some other rather uncomfortable facts, one of which is that Britain, in common with every other country in the world, is not even remotely near achieving the sort of pathway towards the extent of greenhouse gas cuts necessary if we are to get anywhere near meeting the targets in the Bill, let alone those that may be decided necessary in future. In energy, transport and the built environment, low-carbon technology is available but not used. We clearly need more low-carbon electricity generation, but it looks as though Britain will build a new coal- fired power station before a new nuclear power station. That is extraordinary. We need more incentives to encourage distributed generation, such as micro-combined heat and power and so on. Huge opportunities are still being ignored. On surface transport, low-emission cars and trucks are available today, but the incentives to switch to them remain grossly inadequate. While other countries, such as France and Spain, have or are rolling out high-speed rail networks, Britain builds new airports and does not invest in the sort of high-speed rail links that would transform our domestic transport industry.