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Climate Change: Cancun

I attended the Kyoto conference and those at Cancun and Copenhagen. The atmosphere and organisation was fundamentally different, for which we offer our congratulations to the Mexican Government. However, the Minister may recall that in a debate in this House on climate change I put forward my concerns that the Prime Minister had said that he wanted a legal agreement at Cancun. I did not think that that was possible and announced the five or six principles that I thought were important to finding agreement based on a voluntary agreement and not the legal framework. I must say that the Government have achieved that and, perhaps for the first time in my life, I offer a little congratulation to the Government and the Secretary of State, Mr Huhne, to whom I explained my plan on the aeroplane. However, I am a little concerned about the Statement when it talks about ambition and cuts of 30 per cent et cetera in carbon. Ambition can be the defeat of the good. I worry about the Durban conference and that we may make the mistake that we made at Copenhagen; namely, that we get far too ambitious in our demands. Therefore, for the South African conference, I fear that 12 months will not be sufficient to deal with all these detailed negotiations that took four years after Kyoto. Will the Minister consider and express within the European Union the view that we are thinking of stopping the clock on the 2012 date set for Kyoto in order that South Africa and Durban does not appear to be a failure as occurred at Copenhagen?