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Fourth Carbon Budget

The hon. Lady raises an important issue that people periodically talk about, which is that no matter how well we do in the UK, we are not making a difference to the world as a whole if we are merely outsourcing production of carbon-intensive goods to economies such as China. However, I would make two points in response, the first of which is that we should not underestimate the progress being made in economies such as India and China to grapple with and move very fast on this agenda. The Department and the Government are working with the low-carbon pilot areas in China and the developments are truly impressive, so I urge her to look at them. We are aware of this issue, but I do not think that any time soon we will be able to move globally towards a situation where we are taking into account the embedded carbon emissions in trade. The reality is that most of the nearly 200 countries that are members of the United Nations are fiercely protective of their own territorial sovereignty, so it seems likely that our major efforts to tackle climate change will be based on states' control of their own territorial integrity.