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Amendment of the law

The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. If it ends up stimulating the more frequent purchase of new vehicles, it could well contribute to carbon emissions. Once again, it may be more of a prop to the car industry than a genuinely well thought out green measure. Perhaps more research and analysis needs to be done on that. As I said, the Government's record has been said to be "mainly hot air", and some of their practical programmes sound a lot like some of the economic stimulus programmes. The four-year-old marine renewables deployment fund has yet to part with a single penny. The low carbon buildings programme has taken household grants for renewable energy to a five-year low. As we heard in questions earlier today, the office for renewable energy deployment has not been set up as such. The implementation of the carbon reduction commitment is threatening to close on-site renewable energy at companies such as BT. The Government's first attempt at a carbon capture and storage competition did close carbon capture and storage projects, and the National Audit Office has recently concluded that Britain's participation in future phases of the EU emissions trading scheme might result in hardly any reduction in real UK carbon emissions. To give him his due, the Secretary of State made a string of important concessions when he took office last year, from the 80 per cent. target for greenhouse gas reduction to the Climate Change Act 2008 and to the promised introduction of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy in the Energy Act 2008, but even those were relatively easy to concede in the short term, just like the Government's stimulus package, because they are putting off all the really tough decisions. For years, Ministers cheerfully claimed to be on target to meet their Kyoto greenhouse gas reduction targets, despite knowing full well that they had been met years previously because of the so-called dash for gas in the power industry. That was made quite clear in Sir Nicholas Stern's report to the Government. With a cool economist's eye, Stern also pointed to another successful example of carbon reduction in a major economy—Russia's reductions in the 1990s, achieved through the spectacular collapse of its economy. Come to think of it, perhaps that was the bit of the Stern report that the Prime Minister did read. Let us hope that neither he nor the Secretary of State attempts to make similar claims in future that the inevitable fall in greenhouse gases that will result from recession are anything to be proud of. Instead, we should be wary of the false message that those possible reductions could send. They could mask a dirty but rather shrivelled economy that will be just as dirty or even dirtier when it reflates. If we have started to build a third runway at Heathrow and an unabated coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in the meantime, that outcome seems pretty likely. If the Department for Communities and Local Government ignores the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Friends of the Earth, the Environmental Audit Committee and tens of thousands of public objections to its regional spatial strategies—up to 35,000 in my own south-west region alone—it will wake up to see any revival in house building taking place first all over an area of England's green belt the size of Birmingham. Much of that will be prime local, food-producing agricultural land, while a million properties lie empty elsewhere. The regional spatial strategies assume an annual year-on-year growth forecast of 3.2 per cent.—that is plus 3.2 per cent., a fantasy assumption that makes even the Chancellor's growth forecast for the economy as a whole look pessimistic. Incidentally, the Government's reply to the Environmental Audit Committee's call for the suspension of regional spatial strategies on environmental grounds was due in January, but I understand that the Committee is still waiting for a reply. Perhaps the Secretary of State will lend the Minister with responsibility for communities a hand. Even if his Department does not have that much clout across Government, thank goodness this Secretary of State is at least listening to the Committee on Climate Change. The committee has provided clear advice that we should commit to a greenhouse gas budget that represents a 34 per cent. reduction by 2020, which may give us a chance of challenging other policies. We obviously welcome the Government's acceptance of that target, even if it is comparable to the Chancellor's decision not to cut pensioners' winter fuel allowances or the decision not to beat one's mother—correct, obviously, but anything else would be unthinkable. Let us make it clear that 34 per cent. is the minimum interim target recommended by the committee, assuming no ambitious global deal is struck in Copenhagen. Liberal Democrat Members also welcome the committee's recommendation of a tougher 42 per cent. reduction target, which is compatible with an EU-wide cut of 30 per cent. by 2020. I would be interested to hear why the Government have not agreed to that recommendation. I realise that the global deal has not yet been struck, but the Climate Change Committee and the EU have made working assumptions and set intended targets, so why are the Government not doing likewise? Whatever the carbon budget, the test is whether we produce the policies and actions to deliver it.