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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I rise to give a cautious welcome to the movement by the Government on this important issue, but we must recognise the scale of the journey. We have moved from a situation, in summer 2007, when those of us on the Joint Committee on the draft Bill were listening to a Government who were saying, ““We are filing the inclusion of aviation in the 'too difficult' box. We don't need to do it because we aren't required to by our international agreements.”” The message from the Government in the Bill is now, ““We'll tell you if we're going to include aviation and shipping in our international targets by the end of 2012, and if we do it, we'll tell you then how we're going to do it. On the way we'll get some advice from the Committee on Climate Change and publish some projections.”” The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) was right: there is no absolute obligation for the Government to include aviation and shipping in the carbon budgets or the targets, and we should be quite clear about that. It has been a modest journey, but a welcome one. That is why the Bill needs toughening, and I extend a cautious welcome to amendment No. 72, tabled by the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who, sadly, is no longer in his place. It adds value by requiring the Government and the Committee on Climate Change to take into account aviation and shipping in their public deliberations. I am concerned that the phrase ““take into account”” is too vague, because it can mean anything to any Government—but there has been an improvement. We recognise that there are tremendous difficulties in calculation—we have to respect that, and we must not get too far ahead of ourselves in the international process. But this Climate Change Bill is very important. It is a landmark Bill, which sets an international lead as a framework Bill. That is its value. It is a new method of setting targets and monitoring progress against targets. The key innovation in the Bill is not the long-term targets, but the carbon budgets. The rolling carbon budgets will allow us to get a grip on the problem of cumulative carbon emissions—a point forcibly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). It is the cumulative carbon emissions that count, not the absolute carbon emissions at the distant date of 2050. The carbon budgets are the key innovation, and we simply cannot undermine them by leaving completely to one side the fastest growing source of emissions, however difficult it is to calculate them. We should take the opportunity to place on record the fact that aviation emissions in the UK have grown by 90 per cent. between 1990 and 2004. The Under-Secretary was unable to answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness about the proportion of future emissions in the carbon budget that the Government think will come from aviation, but she will be aware that there are various estimates from serious people such as the Tyndall Centre and WWF, and the range of projections is between 50 per cent. and 100 per cent. of our carbon budget in 2050. We have to address a serious engine of growth in carbon emissions, and we cannot afford the ““out of sight, out of mind”” message that we received from the Government 18 months ago. As the Under-Secretary well knows, transport, and aviation in particular, is the most difficult in policy terms, partly because there is no obvious short-term technology solution. It does not take much for us to imagine that our children or grandchildren will be driving around in cars that are different from the ones that we drive in, and powered in a different way. We can almost feel the technology—it is out there. But in aviation that is not the case. The best-case scenarios for aviation are for technology products leading to improvements of about 1.5 per cent. a year, which is not enough, given the demand. We are left in very difficult political territory when making policy—having to decide whether we want to manage demand through price mechanisms, taxes or the management of airport capacity. The Government are placing all their bets on the European emissions trading scheme—the cap-and-trade scheme. That make me nervous, because in the Environmental Audit Committee we spend a lot of time looking at the emissions trading scheme. It works as a testing mechanism, but it has comprehensively failed to reduce emissions, because a cap-and-trade scheme is only as good as the cap, which is a function of political will. The great concern is whether there will be the political will in 2011, in the face of the mother of all lobbies from the aviation industry, to set a cap that bites. We know that such a cap will have significant implications for the price that consumers will pay for aviation. There will be significant consequences for the price of carbon credits in the system for other industries. This is an extremely difficult policy area.