[Relevant documents: Third Report of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Net zero and UN climate summits: Scrutiny of Preparations for COP26—interim report, HC 1265; Fourth Special Report of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, COP26: Principles and priorities—a POST survey of expert views, HC 1000; Transcripts of oral evidence on Preparation for COP26 taken before the Environmental Audit Committee on 17 March and 14 May 2020, HC 222.]
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected the amendment in the name of Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2021, for expenditure by the Cabinet Office:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £975,392,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1227,
(2) further resources, not exceeding £76,060,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(3) a further sum, not exceeding £798,643,000, be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(David T. C. Davies.)
May I begin by congratulating you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your increasingly iconic videos on Twitter, which, with a lower budget, provide more charm than the Chancellor’s glitzy versions on Instagram?
Five years ago, the Paris agreement committed the world to limiting global warming to at least 2° C above pre-industrial levels but called on all of us to get as close to 1.5° C as possible. The recent announcements on net zero from the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, China and others mean that we are within striking distance of reaching that Paris target. According to the Climate Action Tracker, the net zero targets that have been pledged so far could limit global warming to 2.1° C above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100. That builds in the announcements from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, South Korea and others. But those welcome announcements need to be translated into updated nationally determined contributions—NDCs—that need to be submitted to the UN before COP26 and, crucially, into deliverable climate action plans.
Unfortunately, the UN’s NDC synthesis report last month raised concerns instead of hopes. As at 31 December, only 75 parties to the Paris agreement had submitted their NDCs, representing 30% of global emissions. Whereas the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends that we cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels in order to limit temperature growth to 1.5° C, the NDCs submitted so far only get us to 1% of that 45% recommendation. Only two of the 18 largest emitters had submitted updated NDCs at the end of 2020, including the United Kingdom and the European Union. Of the NDCs that have been submitted, the UN notes a significant gap between longer-term carbon neutrality target announcements and commitments set out in the NDCs.
The crucial and urgent task for COP26 is therefore to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality and to bring every nation with us on the route to achieving our Paris targets. This highlights the urgent need for a full Government response, especially a diplomatic response. China, for example, has committed to achieving net zero by 2060—an important and welcome commitment—but its recent five-year plan pushed the difficult and expensive decisions into the long grass. We should not get to COP26 and just tell big emitters such as China, India or others that they are not moving away from coal quickly enough, for example, not least when we are planning our own new coalmine here in the UK. Instead, we should have British diplomats in Beijing, Delhi and other capitals asking, “What can the world do to help you move away from coal more quickly?”
I thank the hon. Gentleman for opening the debate and for his extremely unexpected but very kind remarks.
It will come as a great surprise to everyone that I am about to announce a time limit that has not been heard of for some time. The time limit in this debate will not be three minutes. It will initially be eight minutes. I should explain this unusual situation: the reason is that so many colleagues, at the last minute, withdrew not from this debate but from the previous debate, thereby leaving more time for this debate. We will therefore start with eight minutes, which is likely to reduce to about seven minutes, but I do not envisage its reducing to three minutes. I call Tom Tugendhat.
It is a great pleasure to be in the Chamber today talking about COP26, because it really is the absolute key event this year. We are going to get through covid, and we are already well along in the right direction due to the brilliance of various people in Government, in science and in the NHS, and many, many thousands of volunteers around the UK. That will free us and the world to focus on the real existential threat that we face, which is, of course, climate change.
I am delighted to follow my friend the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), under whose chairmanship the BEIS Committee has begun to expose some of the questions that we need to answer in the coming months. I am also delighted that we are working together on that, because one of the things I have discovered since taking the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee is how little of our international reach is exercised by the FCDO. I thought that the largest and most seminal conference absorbing our diplomatic network and shaping our diplomatic output for this year would be run by the FCDO, but it is not: it is run by the Cabinet Office, and run very ably by my right hon. Friend the COP26 President; I am delighted that he is supported so well by the FCDO. It was a bit of a surprise to me, but then again, I suppose I should not be surprised, because our Europe policy is also run by the Cabinet Office, and not even in this House, so perhaps I should expect our Americas policy and our Africa policy to be run by the Cabinet Office. Eventually, perhaps only our Scottish policy will be run by the FCDO, but that would be a great shame. Maybe that can bring us back to talking about the importance of focusing on the joined-up policy that we need to see.
While the Select Committees have come together and have been working together, it is also worth pointing out how well the Government have begun to work together. When the French started their process, it resulted in the Paris COP21 that everybody remembers. That was not only a success at the time, but with the election of President Biden, it has become a renewed success as Paris has just been signed up to again by the United States. It took them two years, hundreds of diplomats and a former Prime Minister to bring all that together. That work was really, really tough. What my right hon. Friend has picked up on is that he started later with fewer staff and in the middle of the covid pandemic, and that makes it really difficult. However, I can report from, if he will excuse me, spies in other camps that the pace at which he is producing results is already very well received. I am delighted to say that in conversations I have had with representatives from other countries—I am not going to name them, but they are people who have spoken to him in recent days and weeks—they have reported that he is certainly well on the way to delivering a result.
I echo the words of the last speaker, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), about how monumental the decisions will be that need to be taken this November, because November’s COP26 in Glasgow is a historic opportunity for Britain to provide leadership to the world on climate change.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and his colleagues on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, who have produced detailed reports that should be influencing the Cabinet Office and shaping the agenda in the run-up to COP26. Scientists and climate experts are urging the Government to lead the way in adopting ambitious deadlines for achieving net zero along with shorter-term interim targets, and it is those targets that are vital. The former Prime Minister committed the UK Government to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The BEIS Committee said last week that
“no details have yet been provided on how success will be measured”
for COP 26. We cannot achieve significant carbon reductions by empty words, good PR or grandiose declarations. It takes action.
I have to say, last week’s Budget does not give us much hope of demonstrating world leadership. In fact, for some of us, it is a cause of despair and shame. The decisions by the Government to freeze fuel duty and to dig a new coalmine, and the pathetic scale of the Government’s environmental policies are a dereliction of duty to the planet and to future generations. It is a failure of Government, who could have acted to create hundreds of thousands of climate jobs in areas from wind turbines to tidal lagoons, from electric car charge points to tree planting, but there was no evidence of the scale of investment and scale of ambition that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West called for. Instead of tying corporate tax breaks and investment write-offs to clear climate criteria, the giveaways announced in the Budget could hinder, rather than help our carbon reduction strategy.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your generosity in this debate.
Although it may have been a little hard to determine from the remarks by my immediate predecessor in this debate, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), he welcomed this debate and I join him in doing so. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on his opening remarks. He is right that there is a consensus across the House. We all want to see COP26 as a hugely successful conference, not just for the UK but for the whole world, to set us on a path to zero emissions by 2050, an ambition that was set out some time ago.
The objectives for the COP26 series of discussions, which of course were due to have taken place last year had it not been for covid, were actually set at Paris five years ago. It is worth reminding ourselves, at the outset of my remarks, of the four particular commitments that were set for the forthcoming conference. The first was to enhance Governments’ nationally determined contributions. This will be the first time since Paris that they will have been ratcheted up. The second was to invite each country to provide a long-term strategy, to give a pathway to decarbonisation by 2050. Where I agree with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is that it is beholden on the Government to set out clarity over the path to 2050, not just the target.
The third commitment was to do with finance. There was $100 billion per annum mobilised for the poorest countries to help them green their economies and adapt to the impact of climate change. We need to see how that is going to be delivered when we get to Glasgow.
Finally, there was the issue of the rulebook for a global carbon market to avoid double counting and to set the standards. Here, I think the UK has a great opportunity to show its famed global leadership. This conference will be the largest ever held in this country in terms of the number of countries participating, and I hope that most of them will be able to be here, in one form or another, in person. It is a real opportunity for the nation to lead the world and for the Prime Minister to put his stamp on the future.
Order. The right hon. Gentleman has exceeded the time limit. I was trying to give him a little leeway, but the system will not allow me to let him finish his sentence. We therefore go to Kilmarnock, and to Alan Brown.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I must say that this is the first time I have ever had the chance to get my red pen out and add to my notes, rather than having to scrub notes out frantically. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee.
COP26 is clearly the most important COP since Paris, and it is critical for our net zero commitments. It is a chance for the UK to be on the world stage, but we have to ask whether matters are in hand. If we look at the Cabinet Office estimates, I would suggest not. We know that the Cabinet Office COP26 budget for this financial year was revised down from £216 million to just £22 million due to the postponement, but what has been achieved to date with that expenditure? What will the future budget look like? We do not really know, which in itself shows the entire farce of the estimates process.
Has the memorandum of understanding between Police Scotland and the UK Government been signed off, underwriting the estimated £180 million policing cost? Where is the budget line for that? We can still recall that the Home Office did not stump up for the Lib Dems’ party conference in Glasgow in 2013, which left Police Scotland £800,000 out of pocket. It is critical that the Police Scotland budget is not affected.
As a member of the BEIS Committee, I was pleased to take part in an inquiry about the COP26 preparations. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) has covered it admirably, but I will reiterate some key recommendations that need to be considered. First, we need to ensure that the correct resource allocation from the civil service is in place. That needs a real focus from the Cabinet Office, not its current obsession with Union units. In the last couple of years, the Cabinet Office has also been a propaganda unit—first for Brexit, now the Union. Let us get a focus on COP26, which is a real priority.
Just for everybody’s information, the wind-ups will start no later than 6.28 pm with Deidre Brock. There will then be shadow Minister Matthew Pennycook at 6.38 pm, the COP26 President at 6.48 pm, and Darren Jones at 6.58 pm.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I sense that you are probably not as familiar with Glasgow as the Chairman of Ways and Means, who preceded you in the Chair, but I, as a former Secretary of State for Scotland and, indeed, a Scottish Member of Parliament, am delighted that the United Kingdom Government have brought COP26 to Scotland—to Glasgow. As we all know, Glasgow is a great city that can handle this event, and notwithstanding the issues that people have rightly raised about what is achieved at the conference, I believe Glasgow has every ability to host an event of such scale and to do it in a memorable way.
I do hope that we will see the new President of the United States attend the event. I had the rather dubious duty of welcoming the previous President of the United States to Scotland on one of his visits to the United Kingdom. At that event, he told me that he loved Scotland, but very unfortunately he did not follow it through during his presidency by removing the punitive tariffs on whisky.
Despite some of the remarks that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), I hope that we will see the full engagement of the Scottish Government in a positive way for this event. When we face a global climate emergency, the cost of the Lib Dem Scottish conference in 2013 is not really the issue of the moment that we need to be addressing or hearing about. I want to see the Scottish Government engage positively. I was encouraged to hear the First Minister of Scotland addressing businesses in relation to COP and the opportunities that it would bring. That is the tone that we want to hear. Also, it is not a competition between policies pursued by the Scottish Government and those pursued by the UK Government: I welcome the progress that has been made on many fronts in Scotland, but that does not mean that everything is right. Likewise, there are many positive aspects within the UK, but within Scotland, we could do better.
It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell). My immediate priority is to ensure that the Government have the wherewithal to deliver this. They have many key priorities at the moment, not least the recovery from covid, economic rebuilding, consolidating Brexit and establishing the UK’s new place in global affairs, but what could be more important to that fourth priority than COP26, which represents such a critical opportunity for the world to address the increasingly severe impacts of the climate crisis? The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, described it as a “crucial milestone”, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) said:
“The eyes of the world will be on us”.
The UK has often taken the lead on climate issues, and this presidency is a chance to push for ambitious commitments from partners across the globe. I personally favour the idea of a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, embodying treaty commitments to limit fossil fuels coming out of the ground or to bind states to offsetting carbon capture and storage. We already have a good record on that in our own country, and it is important that our own policies reinforce the UK’s commitment to this work. Examples include our commitments to international marine reserves, which promote carbon capture; to agricultural reform and rewilding; to our net zero target; and to insulating homes and reducing carbon emissions from transport. Incidentally, we are going to have one of the biggest hydrogen production green energy hubs in Essex, at the new freeport that was announced last week.
The key to success in the past has been the significant effort and resources expended on conferences like these, long before the conference itself. I was reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a little while ago that the French employed a former Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, and he had 12 months and 200 diplomats at his disposal to support the preparation for the Paris COP in 2015. I very much congratulate the COP26 President, my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), on his appointment and on being given a Cabinet-level role for his COP presidency. He is wholly devoted to it, but it is vital that he has a team with both the resources and the clout, not just to bring our international partners together, involving many Foreign Office resources, but to ensure that the Government Departments work together to deliver on our own targets and our own work.
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Here in the United Kingdom, we have legislated for net zero by 2050. The trouble is that, increasingly, we seem to be going off track at home. Yes, we were world leaders in legislating for net zero by 2050, and we have submitted a bold and welcome NDC, but the Public Accounts Committee last week concluded that there is no credible Government plan for how we deliver on those pledges. Yes, we have the energy White Paper, but where is the net zero spending review or the net zero strategy? In the new plan for growth, which replaced the scrapped industrial strategy last week via a footnote in the Budget, the horizon scan of Government announcements on our net zero transition did not even include the net zero spending review. The Government, we understand, are planning to reduce air passenger duty on short flights within the United Kingdom. They have U-turned on the vital green homes grant initiative, withdrawing a billion pounds of funding. The Budget last week made little mention of the so-called green industrial revolution.
On heating, which we are considering on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, we have enormous challenges ahead of us. It is the second largest emitter of carbon in the UK after surface transport, yet we have not made sufficient progress in understanding how we insulate people’s homes and also heat them without burning gas in the future. As the citizens’ assembly on climate change concluded, as led by my Select Committee and five others in the House, the public expect us to be making sufficient progress and taking the difficult decisions to reach our net zero target.
The fact is—I believe we all know this—the longer we leave this, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. I do not know how long I will be in this House, but as a Member who is, dare I say, on the younger side of the bell curve, I will be quite frankly furious if Ministers around the world, let alone in my own country, delegate the difficult work to the next generation, not least because it will be too late. It is therefore vital that we make progress at home and abroad and that we get on with that important work now. That means we need more than just a letter from the Foreign Secretary and the permanent secretary asking diplomatic missions to prioritise this work. It needs dedicated climate diplomats working within each country—diplomats who can listen and report back on the concerns or obstacles faced by leaders in reaching their required contributions to limiting global temperature growth.
Only by doing that work well in advance of COP26 in November can we anticipate and respond adequately to the needs of each nation. If we fail to do so, and countries come to Glasgow in November with real concerns—whether on climate aid, the balance between wealthy and less wealthy nations or the commitments from big emitters—we risk repeating the mistakes of the Copenhagen summit, with unresolved tensions being managed during COP itself and ultimately ending in failure.
In our recent interim report on COP26 and net zero, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee expressed concerns about the lack of focus on the necessity of submitting these updated nationally determined contributionsand climate action plans, and also on the potential lack of support from the machinery of government in delivering on COP26.
The CEO of the COP26 unit, Peter Hill, confirmed that there are around 160 staff within the COP26 unit, which sits in the Cabinet Office. This unit is funded to the tune of £216 million through departmental transfers from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Transport and others, and that is in addition to the £180 million allocated for security, representing the fact that the COP26 conference in Glasgow will be one of the largest police operations in British history. I am sure there must be more dedicated resources, especially in the FCDO, for this important work, and I hope that the COP26 President will set that out for the House today.
Lastly, we need urgent clarity on how COP26 itself will work in practice. I support the COP26 President’s aim of having an in-person summit and agree that that is the best way of illustrating equality between all nations around the decision-making table, but COP26 is not just for Heads of State and Ministers and officials. Some countries bring very large delegations; others bring smaller delegations. Can the COP26 President update the House on what the UK delegation will be and who will be included in it? There is also a great deal of wider engagement at COP, from business leaders and parliamentarians to civil society and non-governmental organisations. That usually means a large conference-style event. Indeed, the Government have said that COP26 will be the largest summit the UK has ever hosted, with 30,000 delegates, but that statement was, I think, made before covid.
I have raised the issue in COP26 questions, but it is now urgent to get clarity for delegations and the wider group of COP26 attendees about how online engagement will work if they are unable to attend in person, and how it will be determined whether delegates or other visitors are able to attend in person. The COP26 President may wish to update the House today on how the Government intend to provide, if necessary, covid vaccinations, testing and quarantine services for those physically participating in Glasgow. Indeed, concerns have been expressed by many, including me, that many nations, especially developing nations, are further behind in the roll-out of their own covid vaccinations. What steps can either the UK or UNFCCC take to ensure that the delegates are vaccinated and able to take part physically during COP in Glasgow in November?
There is cross-party support for Britain’s leadership of COP26, because it is a crucial milestone. The world needs to step up. It needs to set up credible, costed and deliverable climate action plans that get us to the targets we all agreed in Paris five years ago. Those often difficult decisions cannot be pushed into the long grass and left for future generations of leaders to deal with. If that happens, it will be not just a failure of politics, but a failure of humanity, because our planet will be unrecognisable compared with today if we fail in this task.
Climate migration following huge swathes of land around the equator turning into desert will pose a challenge to countries in the northern hemisphere and other parts of the world like never before. Difficult issues, such as the future management of Antarctica, will become live issues as potentially habitable land becomes available, while other habitable land is lost. Shortages of food, water and energy in the face of dramatic geopolitical changes and new national security threats will make covid look like a minor problem. In that context, and with that sense of urgency, while I welcome the commitment to net zero that will get us near the Paris target, we have to see deliverable climate action plans lodged at COP26, with countries’ leaders taking the difficult decisions and bringing forward investment—including climate aid from wealthy nations—to show the world that we take this issue seriously not just in rhetoric but in reality.
We want the COP26 President and his team to be successful in delivering the required outcomes. All of us in this House, I am sure, support him in those endeavours, but we also want to be assured that the Prime Minister and his Government are fully getting behind the COP team so that, come November, we will be celebrating the success of COP26, not mourning its failure in the face of climate disaster.
Of course, this is not just down to my right hon. Friend; it is also down to our partners around the world. Many people have heard me in this House condemning communism, but I have to tell the House that I have actually been working very closely with a communist in order to try to achieve some of the results that we are all trying to share. He is my opposite number and colleague in the Italian Parliament—Piero Fassino, the former communist mayor of Turin, who now chairs its foreign affairs committee, because this conference is of course being organised jointly with our Italian partners. We have all welcomed my right hon. Friend’s co-operation with them.
In the run-up to our going to that wonderful city of Glasgow—my favourite city in the north—later this year, I very much hope that we will get a chance to see some of the progress along the way. My friend, the hon. Member for Bristol North West, has set out many of the targets that we should be looking to, and I hope that he will be as co-operative in reporting back to this House and to Parliament generally to make sure that we can help to guide the process. This will be one of those moments when we can define the future—we can change policies not just in this country but around the world to make these aims possible. We need to be talking actively not just about carbon offshoring and carbon pricing but about how we transform the very nature of the societies in which we are working. The hon. Gentleman spoke about Antarctica and, indeed, other areas being made uninhabitable. We need this to be a policy that is not just led by the Cabinet Office but touches on every single aspect of Britain’s foreign policy.
Whatever happens with the aid budget—I know that many of us hope that 0.7% will be rather more respected than do others—what we decide to do in aid, in diplomacy and in how we structure our trade policy will have a direct consequence on whatever my right hon. Friend agrees with partners around the world. That is why I very much hope that his role, as he sees it, will not just be about a conference—not just about an event, a day and a moment—and not even just about a deal, although it is a hugely important deal. Actually, this will be about a change of structure, a new understanding and a new partnership that engages all of us and—yes—the Biden Administration, who have already demonstrated such interest, as well as our partners in the European Union, our partners in the Commonwealth and, indeed, those countries with whom we have often found it harder to work. If we do not get this right, we will feel the pain —it is true—but we will also see an increased salination of the rice fields of eastern China, an increased desertification of the many parts of the world that are already struggling, and an erosion of the ability of many communities to sustain.
This year, the World Food Programme was rightly awarded the Nobel peace prize— a well-earned prize. I was fortunate enough to speak to its director general, Governor David Beasley, who is an amazing individual and a great friend of our country. He pointed out what I think is well worth remembering: if we think that the migration crisis that we saw in 2015 out of Syria was something serious, just imagine the crisis that would be caused if my right hon. Friend the COP26 President and his friends and partners around the world were to fail in Glasgow. I hope he knows that he will have the support of the whole House, and he will certainly have the support of the Committees, as we try to help him to shape and achieve the results that we all need.
The verdict of Richard Black from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit was that this was
“a Budget that didn’t even try to get the Conservatives on track to their net zero target”.
Today, there are reports that the Government will cut air passenger duty on domestic flights. Frankly, I would struggle to find a more regressive policy, and I speak as somebody who represents a constituency with Heathrow in it. I would struggle to find something that is more regressive than encouraging domestic aviation before we have had that debate and discussion and the development of the environmental aviation strategy.
It is crystal clear to me that this Government have no co-ordinated plan and no cross-departmental agenda to drive the decarbonisation that we seek. This is not just my view, but that of the Public Accounts Committee, which has been quoted. The PAC published a report on achieving net zero with the brutal conclusion, “Government lacks a plan”. Never have four words better summed up an Administration than that.
In terms of the modest 2050 target, the Committee said, damningly:
“there is little sign that it”—
the Government—
“understands how to get there”.
I will raise just one other point from the report, which said:
“Local authorities will also play a major role in the move to net zero, and Government will need to engage more with local authorities about how they can contribute”.
The irony is that today we learned that across the country more than two dozen councils are on the brink of bankruptcy, stripped of the funding to provide the statutory services their communities need, let alone the funding they need to take on the challenge of climate change.
The autumn statement is expected to be delivered on the eve of COP26. I just say to the Government that we hope for something better then. Otherwise, unless a serious plan is brought forward and unless there are significant resources attached to that plan, what leadership can the UK Government hope to offer the rest of the world? What authority can it possibly have in those vital discussions, when we are trying to bring together others, some more recalcitrant than others, who will be brought to the table to have a serious discussion only when they see others leading by example?
I believe that without drastic action COP26 risks exposing the UK Government as a laughing stock on climate change if we are not careful. I urge Ministers to change course and show some leadership. I urge them now to look at the reports our Select Committees have produced. They provide not just an agenda of issues to be addressed, but a direction that the Government could take. Otherwise, it is a betrayal of future generations. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West claimed the future for himself. Well, some of us older ones have an interest in the future as well, with our children and grandchildren. This November will ensure, hopefully, that they will have a planet that they can survive on and flourish on.
From the evidence I have seen so far—it is not just me; I think it is independent experts as well—the leadership the Government are showing is nowhere near the scale or commitment we need to demonstrate to the rest of the world what can be done, what needs to be done and what our country can contribute.
As the UK is acting as host country—with Italy, as has been said—we will act as a neutral arbiter in these negotiations. We need to ensure that every country—every Paris signatory, at least—is supported in bringing forward its updated nationally determined contribution. At the beginning of the Paris conference, 186 of the 196 parties attending had presented their nationally determined contributions. I know that progress has been made, but we have a long way to go to match France’s performance when it hosted the last of this series of conferences.
The UK announced its contribution, a 68% reduction in emissions against the 1990 benchmark, last December. Several other countries have set out high-profile ambitions since, including China, Japan and South Korea looking to get to net zero by the mid-21st century, and some presenting nearer-term targets ahead of COP26. However, we still have to see progress from some major economies, including Russia, Brazil and Australia—and I know that the US will now be joining; we need to see where it gets to, too. Perhaps the COP26 President will update us on his discussions with President Biden’s special envoy, John Kerry, who was in the UK very recently.
I want to touch on two other aspects—first, how does Parliament engage in scrutinising progress? The Environmental Audit Committee—in common with other Committees, as we have heard—has undertaken various sessions in relation to COP26. The first was a year ago, when we engaged with stakeholders who were involved with previous COPs to establish what the Government’s preparations needed to focus on. We then had a session with Nigel Topping and Fiona Reynolds in May last year on the role of finance in leading the way for the upcoming COP, and we also questioned Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the UN convention, last year. We questioned my right hon. Friend the COP26 President, who was then President-designate, in September last year.
Nine Select Committees have locus in relation to this issue, and we have all agreed to work together in scrutinising the UK Government preparations. We, as the Environmental Audit Committee, will lead the first of those scrutiny sessions, on cross-Government arrangements and the machinery of government, tomorrow morning. I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the COP26 President will be attending, with two of his senior officials.
The eyes of the world will be on us to make a credible success of COP. The challenge is across many areas. We need to use the national events that we have to demonstrate UK leadership. The UK has met the first and second carbon budgets and has already reduced emissions below the level expected in the third carbon budget, up to 2022. However, as is widely acknowledged, we are not on track to meet either the fourth or fifth carbon budgets, which were legislated for on the basis of an 80% cut in emissions using the 1990 baseline by 2050, rather than the more ambitious net zero target that we now have in legislation.
A major ramp-up is needed, as is acknowledged by the Committee on Climate Change, to achieve that, and the UK will have to make more progress. Although it has been succeeding in the power sector, emissions are either not falling or not falling fast enough across transport, agriculture, housing and industry. Bringing forward the petrol and diesel car ban is welcome, but it is not the only measure that the Government have to take—[Inaudible.]
We need to put in place measurable outcomes of success. The Committee has also suggested that parliamentary engagement needs to extend to the devolved legislatures, as well as the Westminster process. That brings us to the fact that leaders and relevant Ministers of the devolved Governments should form part of the UK delegation, as well as Opposition MPs. Let us show inclusivity as part of COP26, whatever Governments elsewhere do—but that will take real leadership from the COP26 President, given that we know the Prime Minister’s view on Scottish devolution.
We need the UK Government to set the sixth carbon budget as soon as possible, incorporating the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change in full. Serious consideration needs to be given to resetting the fifth carbon budget, which currently is not aligned to net zero.
Something else that I will throw into the mix is reconsidering the cuts to the foreign aid budget. As the right hon. Member for Ludlow pointed out, a lot of finance needs to be mobilised to help developing countries. We have started to debate the damage and loss going forward. It sends completely the wrong message that the UK, as the host country, is cutting its foreign aid to the poorest countries in the world.
Clearly covid has been an overriding UK Government priority, and they have to deal with an emergency, but it feels as if the extra time gained from the postponement has not been put to full use. We need more information on the preparations. Certainly we need some kind of decision-making timeline made available that ties in with public health assessments, and plans to ensure that no countries are left out going forward. We really need more progress on the agreement over the nationally determined contributions. It is critical that all spend associated with the preparations is transparent. There can be no more lucrative contracts for friends and cronies.
Leading by example also means having proper domestic policies in place, just as the Scottish Government have. It is a terrible state of affairs that we are still awaiting the heat and building strategy and we are still awaiting the hydrogen strategy. It should be noted that the Scottish Government have a 5 GW hydrogen production target, which is the same as the UK’s, so Scotland is showing much more ambition. Again, Scotland has a transport decarbonisation plan in place for a net zero target of 2035, but we are still awaiting the UK Government’s transport decarbonisation plan.
Without these key policies, there is no net zero strategy, and policies without funding commitments are effectively redundant. While there is a 10-point plan with a figure of 600,000 heat pump installations a year, this means nothing without a funded programme to back it up. That programme needs to be aligned with energy-efficient installations and should start targeting off-grid properties. There are 3,000 deaths a year in the UK related to fuel poverty, so the UK Government also need to invest far more directly in energy efficiency and demonstrate a net zero transition that will not push up energy bills and create more fuel poverty.
When it comes to transport, Scotland can demonstrate the world’s first hydrogen double-decker buses. The Scottish Government have facilitated orders for electric and hydrogen buses from Alexander Dennis Ltd. Where is the UK Government’s national bus strategy? This is the type of leadership and joined-up thinking that is lacking at the moment.
I would ask the UK Government to be bold, and to abandon nuclear. This is not going to be the technology saviour they demonstrate to the rest of the world. We still cannot deal with nuclear waste, so we really do need to move away from this. Ahead of COP26, they should give sign-off for pumped-storage hydro. Floating offshore wind, green hydrogen, and wave and tidal technologies are the renewable technologies to focus on, so can we confirm ring-fenced contracts for difference pots for those? We should look at innovation in power purchase agreements for smaller marine projects to allow them to get to market.
Those are technologies that the UK and in particular Scotland, as the host country, can show to the world and be part of a coherent plan for an energy strategy. We need to be able to demonstrate it as part of the overall plan to lead other countries and make COP26 a real success. There is a lot of work to do in domestic policy and a lot of work in the negotiations that lie ahead of COP26 to make it a success.
The principal point that I want to make in my contribution is that I want to see widespread public and civic engagement flowing from this event. I think most of us in the Chamber are familiar with major events taking place where there is little or no public engagement. The circus comes to town; all the important people arrive; they are all cordoned off; they are in their cars; and there are all the events, yet the average member of the public has little engagement or connection with them. Under my analysis, COP26 will not be a complete success unless we have engaged extensively with the wider public. The clear message is that each and every one of us owns climate change. Each and every one of us makes a difference, and if we exclude members of the public—if they do not feel part of this event, and it feels distant and remote from them—we are not going to achieve that.
I am very hopeful that my constituency will benefit economically from the overflow of guests and those attending requiring accommodation. That, of course, will be positive, but I also want there to be engagement with communities and groups that are already interested, and are themselves already very active on this front. For example, on Friday I am hosting an online event with a community group called Tweed Green, in Peebles in my constituency, to which members will come with all sorts of questions and issues: some about the climate emergency and what this Parliament is doing, and some on more local issues. They want to be part of this event, and we need to provide a way of their doing so. There are also lots of great local projects, such as the hydro scheme that has been run by the Keir, Penpont, and Tynron local trust. We have lots of local examples, and I am sure every Scottish Member could stand up in this Chamber and cite those examples. We want to see that level of engagement.
Of course, there are challenges, and we have to confront those challenges. I have more onshore wind turbines either in situ or in planning in my constituency, and just because, for example, people wish to oppose such developments does not make them anti-COP or anti-dealing with climate change. My plea to the COP26 President—I will be very interested in his concluding remarks—is to engage the public of Scotland: engage civic Scotland, engage stakeholders, and engage young people. I believe Scotland wants to play its part in making this a huge success. I do not in any way diminish the challenges that have already been raised by other speakers about what is achieved within the conference arena: if we achieve nothing there, that will of course mean that the event has not succeeded. However, to conclude, I reiterate that in my view, the event will not have succeeded unless we engage with the people of Scotland.
I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and we had to report that the net zero target was not effectively embedded in policy making on a cross-Whitehall basis, so I ask my right hon. Friend: what is the machinery of government that is going to back him up and support his work in the run-up to COP26? We have been expecting a written ministerial statement, and we still expect it. I have been invited to guest on the Environmental Audit Committee tomorrow, and I expect I will press him on this subject then if he does not want to answer that question in the debate this evening. The question is: how much real clout does the machinery of government give the him to deliver this very substantial and defining task for the Government?
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow pointed out, the Select Committee system in this House is already getting well prepared. Three Chairs of Committees have commented already in this debate, and the Committees are linking their inquiries. The Transport Committee is looking at zero-emission vehicles, the Treasury Committee has been working on decarbonisation and green finance, one of the key summit issues, and the Science and Technology Committee is looking at the potential for hydrogen to meet the UK’s net zero target. The Committees are also demonstrating their flexibility and willingness to collaborate, and I am delighted that they are coming together in this way, effectively to form a kind of informal committee on COP26 to scrutinise the work of the Government in the run-up to the COP summit.
I have to say that this is also an effort to limit the demands on my right hon. Friend the COP President’s time so that there is no duplication of evidence taking by different Committees. As I say, he is coming before the Environmental Audit Committee tomorrow. I ask him what commitments he can make to the programme of other meetings that I, as Chairman of the Liaison Committee, am setting out and that other Committees are setting out, in order that we have a coherent programme of scrutiny of the work of the Government up to COP26.
The big challenge here is for the Government to put themselves in the global picture on the most important global summit we are likely to see them undertake in this Parliament; there will be G7s, G8s and NATOs, but nothing is going to cap this. This is the defining COP summit that has to crown the achievement of the Paris summit. I very much hope that this will be seen as a British diplomatic success and not as something that other countries have had to sort out for us. My right hon. Friend has an enormous task. I congratulate him again on his appointment and wish him all the very best. He should come to the Select Committees, perhaps privately, if he needs us to add pressure in order to ensure that he can deliver the task that the Prime Minister has given him.