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Climate Change (Political Response)

We have had 17 excellent speeches. Although the tone of the debate has been sparky, as a couple of hon. Members have commented, that edge has illuminated the issues before us. I noted that when the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) opened the debate, he said that he would applaud the Government for the things that we have done well, and he did so in his speech. However, we did not fail to notice that no credit is given in the motion for anything good that the Government have done, and I regret that. I have signed up to the 10:10 campaign. In fact, that benefited me in this debate, because I first heard that it was taking place today in a text message from the campaign. The campaign is valuable for the reasons that many hon. Members mentioned in the debate—it is a bottom-up campaign that draws people in, persuades people to take action and is voluntary. I wish that I had only a fraction of its skill in communications. Only a couple of weeks ago, I launched the carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency saving scheme. That massive cap-and-trade scheme, which starts next year and covers every Department, most of local government and most of the local bodies referred to tonight, did not get a patch of the coverage that the 10:10 campaign has received already. It is remarkable that decision makers in the House during this debate gave no recognition of the fact that, starting next year, the CRC will begin to reduce emissions across the entire public sector. Some people say that to start now we have to sign up to 10:10 across the entire sector. Have people such short memories? This year, the House passed the carbon budgets, which we have already started to implement and which will put us on a trajectory to get us to the 34 per cent. reduction in our emissions that we need to reach by 2020. The Government’s record to date is fine. I accept what the Committee on Climate Change said about the need for a faster rate of improvement in the years up to 2020, and that is what our plans intend to achieve, but please do not ask us to dislocate the plans made to 2020 that start now and involve the efficient allocation of resources. Please do not ask us to sign up to something different now, instead of the things that we are doing already.