This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, during which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor updated the Cabinet on how the Government’s plan for jobs is working, with higher wages, higher skills and rising productivity. He will make a statement to the House shortly setting out how we will build a new age of optimism. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
I very much welcome the A66 northern trans-Pennine project from Penrith to Scotch Corner. That £1 billion investment will improve safety and congestion and help to level up our region, supporting jobs, essential services and tourism, but we have to get the project right. Will my right hon. Friend ask his Department for Transport, Ministry of Defence and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to work together pragmatically and reasonably with suggested route amendments to ensure that local communities such as Warcop, Musgrave and Sandford are not left blighted by the current plans?
My hon. Friend is right that the development that he refers to is part of an infrastructure revolution that I think will transform the country, but he is also right that we should consider local feedback from stakeholders and the community when finalising the design, and so we will.
I want to reassure both sides of the House: it is one time only that I am back. [Laughter.]
We all need the vital COP26 summit in Glasgow to deliver next week, because failing to limit global warming to 1.5° will have devastating consequences for our planet. That goal is shared across the House. Does the Prime Minister agree that, to keep the goal of 1.5° alive, we need to roughly halve global emissions in this decisive decade?
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. I think the whole House extends its sympathies to the Leader of the Opposition. I hope he returns soon.
It is, of course, correct that COP26 is both unbelievably important for our planet but also very difficult. It is in the balance. The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) is right in what he says about the need to keep 1.5° alive. It depends on what happens this decade and it depends on the commitments that are made. All I will say is that, under the UK presidency-designate of COP26, very substantial commitments have already been achieved. We have moved from only 30% of the global economy committed to net zero by the middle of the century to now 80%. Every day, as I talk to international leaders, we hear further commitments to make those solid commitments that the world will need. Whether it is enough, I am afraid it is too early to say.
I applaud the efforts of the UK presidency under the COP26 President-designate, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). However, I want to direct the Prime Minister’s attention to the issue of this decade. I will come to net zero targets for the middle of the century in a moment, but yesterday he will know that a very important report came out from the United Nations, the United Nations Environment Programme “Emissions Gap” report. On the eve of COP, it warned that far from halving global emissions this decade, we are on course to reduce them by only about 7.5%. Does the Prime Minister acknowledge, because this is crucial for what happens at Glasgow and after Glasgow, how far away we are from the action required in this 10-year period?
Indeed I do, but what I think the House should also recognise is how far we have moved in the space of a few years since the Paris COP summit of 2015, where, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will remember, the world agreed to net zero by 2100, by the end of the century, and agreed to try to restrain global warming by 4°. We are now trying to keep alive the prospect of restricting that growth to 1.5°. Every day, countries are coming through with solid commitments on stopping the output of coal-fired power stations, reducing their use of internal combustion engines, planting millions of trees and investing hundreds of billions of pounds in the developing world. Those are solid commitments. Whether they will be enough, I am afraid it is still too early to say.
I will just correct the Prime Minister on one point: it was the second half of the century that was set out in Paris, not 2100 for net zero. Here is the problem on the question of net zero targets for the middle of the century: it is easy to make promises for 30 years’ time; it is much more difficult to act now. Australia recently announced a 2050 net zero target, but its 2030 target would head the world towards approximately 4° of global warming. Can I urge him not to shift the goalposts when it comes to Glasgow? It is about the emergency we face this decade. It is about the nationally determined contributions this decade. Please keep the focus on 2030, not 2050 and beyond.
The focus is certainly on 2030. We have 122 nationally determined contributions already, and 17 out of 20 G20 countries have made NDCs. The commitments are coming through. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to keep the pressure up. What you cannot do is go in advance of what is truly practicable for the world economy and for what people can do. The Government will go as fast as we possibly can. Labour’s plans, which I think he endorsed, were condemned by the GMB union—its paymasters—for meaning that it would be confiscating people’s cars by 2030 and that families would be allowed only one aeroplane flight every five years.
Let me tell the Prime Minister that what this summit needs is statesmanship, not partisanship, which is what we have just heard from him. He should not be trying to score party political points on such an important issue facing our country and our world. That is never the way I did PMQs. [Laughter.] Let me ask him about the crucial issue of climate finance for developing countries. The reason the Paris summit succeeded was that there was a coalition of vulnerable countries and developed countries that put pressure on all the big emitters, including China and India. The problem is that the world has not delivered on the $100 billion of finance promised more than a decade ago in Copenhagen. The plan is to deliver it maybe in 2023. But I want to ask him about his actions. Has it not made it much harder to deliver on that promise that we are the only G7 country to cut the aid budget in the run-up to this crucial summit?
I thought we were not going to have any partisan points. That did not last long. Actually, one of the first things I did as Prime Minister was go out to my first United Nations General Assembly as Prime Minister and announce a huge £11.6 billion commitment from the UK to help the developed world to tackle climate change. I say to the right hon. Gentleman, yes, of course it is true— [Interruption.] We have not cut that; we have not cut that, Mr Speaker. We are keeping that investment.
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that this country is working flat out to ensure that we do reach the £100 billion commitment from the whole of the world. We are seeing the money come in from the United States, from the Italians, from the French and from the European Union, and it is quite right that it should. We have a way to go. Whether we will get there or not, I cannot say—it is in the balance—but the challenge is there for the leaders of the developed world. I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman that they need to rise to it.
It is one thing for the Prime Minister not to know what is in the Paris agreement, but another for him not to know what is in his own Budget. He has cut the aid budget; of course he has cut the aid budget. He has abandoned the bipartisan belief in the aid budget across both these Houses, but it is not just on aid where the Government face both ways. They have a trade deal with Australia where they have allowed the Australians to drop their temperature commitments. They are telling others to power past coal while flirting with a new coal mine, and they are saying that we have to move beyond fossil fuels but open the new Cambo oilfield. Is not the truth that the Prime Minister has undermined his own COP presidency by saying one thing and doing another?
No, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong, and I think he should withdraw what he has just said about the £11.6 billion, because we remain absolutely committed to the £11.6 billion that we are investing to tackle climate change around the world. That is absolutely rock solid.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about Australia. I talked to the Prime Minister of Australia only recently, and Australia has just, with great difficulty, made the commitment to get to net zero by 2050. It is a great thing. I talked yesterday to our Indonesian friends. For instance, Joko Widodo, a good friend of this country, has agreed on coal to bring forward the abolition of coal use in Indonesia to 2040—a fantastic effort by the Indonesians. I talked to President Putin—I think it was yesterday—and he confirmed his determination to get to net zero by the middle of the century. That is what the UK is doing: working with countries around the world to get the outcome we want. It is still too early to say whether that will succeed. It is in the balance.