Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion

Before I call the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) to ask his urgent question, I want, I hope on behalf of all colleagues across the House, to welcome Greta Thunberg, an enthusiastic and dedicated environmental campaigner who is with us today.

I, as Speaker, am very conscious that there are different views on these matters and different views on the matter of tactics in campaigning, but I think, across the House, we all believe in encouraging young people to stand up and speak up, to say what they think and to make their concerns known, so it was a pleasure for me, among other colleagues, to welcome Greta this morning. Greta, it was a pleasure to meet you, and I hope you enjoy listening to these exchanges.

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth if she will make a statement on climate action and Extinction Rebellion.

I hope not to try the patience of the House—I will be making a further statement on this topic later this afternoon—but I want to take this opportunity to join you, Mr Speaker, in welcoming Ms Thunberg and her team to the United Kingdom Parliament. We tried very hard to meet her personally but, despite the best efforts of our diaries, we could not do it. I know she has met many Members of the House of Commons today, including my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Watching the protests over the past few days, both here and globally, has raised slightly mixed emotions in me. First, there is excitement that the conversations that many of us were having about climate change 30 years ago are finally moving from niche to mainstream. The question is not “Why act?” but “How fast can we act?”

Secondly, we completely understand the brilliant scientific evidence base, the motivation and the commitment that are driving people across the world to make their views known, but I worry that many of the messages we are hearing ignore the progress that is being made and, as such, make people fearful for the future, rather than hopeful.

Here in the UK, thanks to excellent cross-party working, we were the first country in the world to pass a climate change Act. We have led the world in reducing the carbon intensity of our economy over the past 40 years. We have made huge progress on plastics-free activity. Last month, renewables contributed over 40% of our electricity supply. In fact, just this last weekend we had our longest ever period of no coal contributing to electricity generation in the UK; and we now have more than 400,000 people working in the low-carbon economy.

Of course we share the desire to raise this country’s ambition, which is why we asked our independent Committee on Climate Change to advise us on how best to reach our net zero target—we were the first industrialised country to ask for that advice. I am also pleased to welcome the cross-party support for our bid to host the crucial United Nations climate change talks next year.

I thank the Minister for her reply.

People can believe that the tactics of Extinction Rebellion are right or wrong—the Minister obviously believes they are wrong—but the demonstrators are certainly not wrong about the failure of politics to do anything like what is necessary to fight climate change: they are right. She said in her reply that we have made progress as a country, and I thank her for what she said about me, but the truth is that the planet is warming far faster than we are acting. Even the path-breaking Paris commitments will take us way beyond the disaster of 2°C of warming, as the Minister knows. The truth is that climate change is not some theoretical future prospect; it is with us here and now, with wildfires, droughts and floods. We have been warned by the scientists: it will get far worse if we do not act with much greater urgency. In these circumstances, it is no wonder people are disrupting the traffic and schoolchildren are striking. The response from Government cannot simply be to restore order and say they are doing a good job. The only credible answer of democratic politics in response to these protests is to admit that we need to raise our game and show we can act.

May I therefore ask the Minister today to commit to the following four actions as a down-payment on what is necessary? First, will she seek to persuade the Prime Minister to declare a climate emergency, as many local authorities have done, in order to focus minds across Government on the centrality of this issue to every Department, not just hers? Goodness knows that is necessary, because we know from the figures that came out just before Easter that the Government are woefully behind in meeting the fourth and fifth carbon budgets covering the next decade.

Secondly, the Minister is to be commended for asking the Committee on Climate Change to recommend a date when the UK will need to hit zero emissions, which it will do next week, but these recommendations cannot be allowed to get buried in Whitehall. So will she now commit to responding formally to them before the summer recess? Only by Britain showing world leadership again, quickly, can we hope to persuade other countries to act.

In the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks we hear the passion that he has bought to this portfolio for many years, and I share that passion. Let me correct him: I do not disagree with the protests. I disagree with some of the methods, but certainly not with the message. As I have said to him before, I think that just a few years previously he and I would have been out there ourselves carrying placards.

Let me pick up on the challenges the right hon. Gentleman talked about. He is right to acknowledge that the Government were bold to ask for advice on a net zero economy—we are the first industrialised economy to do so. I will consider that advice carefully and proportionally and, crucially, I will work out how we are going to pay for it. He will know from his time in his climate change role that the Committee on Climate Change was unable to recommend a net zero target when previously we asked for that advice, because the committee did not believe it could be done cost-effectively or, indeed, that we had the technology. It is right that we give that work the focus that it requires.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that we need to take a whole-of-Government approach. I was really pleased to see the Chancellor stand up and make the first ever green financial statement, in which he brought forward some extremely ambitious programmes to ensure that from 2025 no new homes will be built in this country that rely on fossil-fuel heating.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the declaration of a climate emergency. The thing is, I do not know what that would entail. I could stand here and say, “I believe there is a climate emergency,” and he could say that, too. Many of our local councils, including my own council in Wiltshire, have done that. The question is: what are we going to do about it? That is why we should be proud of the fact that we have the most detailed proposals for how we will hit our carbon budgets.

In this policy area, it is most important that everything is based on the best possible science. I am sure we would all agree about that. What is the Government’s view on the likely changes in water-vapour levels and cloud cover, and on levels of solar radiation? Those are also important matters.

My right hon. Friend is right. As a newly appointed fellow of the Royal Geographical Society—I had to get that in there—he will know that we have some of the best climate modelling in the world. The problem we have is that the planet is an unbelievably complicated ecosystem. We are finding some feedback loops that we did not even realise about: for example, what happens to the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica could have a meaningful impact on our sea levels immediately. We have the best scientific evidence base we have ever had. The 1.5° report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was based on the best peer-reviewed science the world has ever seen. We have the message from our scientists; we must now continue to act.

Who is the newly appointed fellow of the Royal Geographical Society—the right hon. Lady or the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood)?

That would be me, Mr Speaker.

Oh, many congratulations to the right hon. Lady.

She’s blowing her own trumpet!

Well, if she does not blow it, it may well be that nobody else will blow the trumpet. It is perfectly right that we offer her the warmest congratulations on that new acknowledgement.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) for his timely question.

The right to protest is one of the foundations of our freedom. From the Chartists to the suffragettes, and from the civil rights movement to the anti-apartheid campaign, all those victories were won by citizens uniting against injustice and making their voice heard. Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikers are doing just that. I, too, thank the police for the way they have policed the demonstrations: on the whole, they have done so with good humour. I was delighted to meet the demonstrators at Marble Arch yesterday and I thank them for speaking the truth.

Many of us listened to Greta Thunberg earlier today. She spoke about truth—the truth that we are in the midst of an ecological and climate emergency. She also spoke about our refusal—our fear—to acknowledge the truth that stopping this catastrophe requires a complete rethink in the way we run our economy, so that GDP growth is no longer the touchstone. We are on track for catastrophic levels of global warming, yet in the UK we pride ourselves on the 40% reduction in emissions that we say we have achieved on 1990 levels, while achieving a 72% increase in GDP. But the truth is out there. Schoolchildren are teaching it to us. Those figures do not include aviation or shipping emissions. They do not include our imports, our exports and they have largely come from the clean power directive in the European Union, which forced us to announce an end to coal-fired power stations. That is why thousands of our schoolchildren are on climate strike: they know that we are not acting with the speed and seriousness that the climate emergency demands.

Therefore, I ask the Minister: will she listen to the voice of Extinction Rebellion and of our own children? I echo the call from my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North: will she join my party in declaring a national environmental and climate emergency and commit to bringing forward the Government’s response to the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations, which will be published shortly, to achieve net zero urgently? Will she do more to engage with the public in tackling the climate crisis, because it is clear that our citizens need to be in the driving seat for a sustainable future? Will she work with Treasury colleagues and the Bank of England to address what Mark Carney has identified as climate-related financial risks and make the emissions curve and natural capital the key elements of our future economic viability? We know that, however disruptive the climate demonstrations may have been in this past few weeks to businesses, they pale into insignificance against the capacity of climate disasters to wipe out human prosperity and human life itself.

I just want to pick up on a couple of factual points. First, I entirely share the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to the right to protest. It is a wonderful, wonderful freedom that we have and one that we should use judiciously. I know that he and I have both done so.

On the point about coal, it is not the case that other countries across the EU are phasing out coal. In fact, when I was at the climate change talks in Bonn, it was shocking to see the barges of dirty Ruhr coal floating down the Rhine because Germany took an ideological decision to phase out nuclear power. For us to get to zero now—it will be zero completely by 2025—is a huge achievement for an island that is built on coal and surrounded by fish and that had 40% of its energy generation coming from coal in 2010 when I was elected. That has been done not by the climate directive, but by unilateral policy decisions taken by the coalition Government and continued by my Government. That is how we will continue to lead the world—by taking tough decisions, hopefully with cross-party support, to make the differences that we need but that we can then accelerate around the world. Our leadership on coal has enabled me and my counterpart in Canada to set up the global Powering Past Coal Alliance—an alliance of 80-plus countries, cities and companies that have all committed to phase out coal thanks to the UK’s leadership.

I also want to reassure the hon. Gentleman. He made a brilliant point about natural capital accounting, which will be formal Government policy by 2020. I join him in paying tribute to the work of the Bank of England and the Governor, Mark Carney, who have identified the challenge for investors and companies, and indeed for regulators, if there is not proper accounting for climate risk disclosure—again, an area where we have continued to innovate and lead the world.

I am delighted to share many of the points that the hon. Gentleman made, but I do believe fundamentally that a market-based economy that delivers rapidly reducing costs of technology and innovation—the sort of innovation that has seen the price of offshore wind tumble over the last two years—is the way to go. I will look with great interest at the advice that we get from the Committee on Climate Change and act as soon as is proportionate and possible.

It is not just the protesters on the streets or the children coming to our offices who are raising this matter; this issue is being talked of around kitchen tables, among families whom we represent. The worst way to reflect those concerns—whoever they are from—would be for our Opposition parties to say, “The Government are not doing enough” and for us to say, “Look at all the things we’re doing.” I therefore absolutely concur with the Minister’s cross-party consensus on this matter. Does she agree that we should applaud the fact that this country is not like the United States, where this is a polarised political issue? This is an issue on which we, as a Parliament working together, can actually move the dial. The Minister has made some really good points, as have the Opposition. Does she agree that, on this issue, we really can reflect the needs and wishes of the people out there through the consensual nature of our debate?

I very much thank my right hon. Friend for his work as a Minister, particularly on waterways and rivers. This issue is not simply about the air or the biosphere. It is about the whole planet—all the ecosystems working together. He made an incredible amount of progress with that portfolio. Of course he is right. People look at us and see us filling this place with hot air over the three-year forward look regarding our relationship with the European Union, and then they see this place when we are debating these portfolios. In my time as a Minister, this is the fullest I have ever seen the Chamber when we have debated these matters. [Interruption.] Well, there have been very few Members on the Opposition Benches previously as well. People are right to look at us and say, “What are you going to do, working together across parties?” and to ask what role organisations such as the Youth Parliament can play—that is, whether there are organisations and assemblies which already include young people that can help us to make progress with the issue.

We welcome the fact that the Extinction Rebellion protests have largely been peaceful and non-violent in nature, and that so many of those protesting have been young, concerned activists, including Greta Thunberg from Sweden and Holly Gillibrand, whom I met today and who has led climate action protests in her home town of Fort William in Scotland; I welcome both of them here today. Along with other young activists, they have travelled here to meet the leaders of the Opposition parties to discuss how to respond to climate change. Given that the Prime Minister has yet to meet these young adults, will she take the time this week to discuss this vital issue with them? After all, it is our collective responsibility and the UK Government must show leadership.

Scotland continues to outperform the UK and is world-leading in its low-carbon transition, with figures showing that emissions in Scotland are down 49% since 1990, as opposed to 38% for the UK as a whole. Will the Minister join me in welcoming these figures from Scotland, and will she commit to increased, faster and deeper efforts by her Government to help the UK’s figures to come into line with Scotland’s?