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Durban Climate Change Conference

I very much welcome the right hon. Lady's response. It is very valuable, when going into negotiations such as those at Durban, to know that there is widespread consensus across the House on the key goals we are aiming for. I pay tribute to hon. Members on both sides of the House, particularly those who have been following these issues closely, in helping to sustain that consensus. The emissions gap is too large and we will work on it. As the right hon. Lady rightly said, one of the key issues has been the importance of monitoring. One thing that the UK Government have actively encouraged has been the development of the emissions gap report from the United Nations Environment Programme. I had a very fruitful meeting with Achim Steiner in Durban, and I know that the programme will continue to build on that. I very much hope that that monitoring will build gradually over time to become the environmental and climate change equivalent of the sort of regular reporting that we have from the OECD and particularly from the International Monetary Fund on the world economic outlook. It would be good to have a regular world climate change outlook or global climate change report. On the legal side, the step forward is very significant. As the right hon. Lady will no doubt have read in the press, there was an attempt, right up to the last moment, to insert into the final text the words ““legal outcome””, which had been defined in the past by India and China as merely decisions of the conference of the parties. That would not have been adequately legally binding for our purposes in terms of an overall treaty. It was therefore an essential objective of the European Union's team to take out those words and insert words that could not be interpreted as a voluntarist approach but could mean only that there was a legal agreement with real force. The compromise from the Brazilians which we finally adopted does exactly that—on the advice we received from the very able international lawyer on the UK team. That was confirmed at the time by our legal advisers—under some great pressure, I have to say, as we huddled at 4 in the morning, or whatever time it was, in the plenary room. They also advised some of our partners in that coalition of the willing. I think that we got a good deal that means exactly what it says. I very much take on board the key point that we need to ensure that our environmental goals are not seen as an obstacle to development. That is an agenda on which I want very much to work with the Indian Environment Minister to ensure that there are viable and effective pathways to development at every level of income per head. I was particularly proud to participate in the launch of Ethiopia's zero-carbon growth programme with the support of the Mauritian and UK Governments. Prime Minister Meles was at the launch as well. At the middle-income level, there is the example of Costa Rica. At the high-income level, let me respond to the right hon. Lady's point about what we are doing domestically. I was very pleased that an objective assessment of what is being done by European countries, which was produced last week by Germanwatch, concluded that the UK had the second-best framework for dealing with carbon emissions of all 27 member states of the EU, behind only Sweden. However, our ministerial team likes to come first, so we will work on that. On the key issue concerning our allies, such as the US and Canada, the right hon. Lady is absolutely right that we need to build our relationships there and ensure that they can be brought into that agreement as well. She asked for details of the global climate fund and about our support for it. We stand ready to support it and we have already disbursed £1 billion of the £1.5 billion allocated for fast-start finance. We are one of very few countries to have a programme of financial commitments for developing countries beyond the fast-start finance period. We have allocated £2.9 billion in total for the comprehensive spending review period and, as I said in my statement, I very much hope that we will be able to make an announcement in due course when we have concluded the arrangements on the shape of the green climate fund. Finally, the right hon. Lady rightly mentions the importance of working with our European partners. This is a particular example of the success of European diplomacy. As one member state we would not be able to achieve anything like as much as we have been able to achieve working closely with the other 26 member states and contribute to that with the undoubted expertise we have within the UK team. Importantly, when it came to the key negotiations, it was perceived in the plenary that the European Union was acting together, and that we were very much prepared to carry through on our threat. Often in these negotiations a good bit of leverage is needed, and we were prepared to carry out our threat that we would not go ahead with the second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol unless we had those key assurances that the future agreement would be legally binding. In addition to the change that I described in the politics of the conference, it is highly significant that China, India and Brazil, but particularly China and India, have moved substantially in the direction of accepting that we need an overall agreement which will reach a global solution to the problem.