Webb on Climate Change

1.49.00pm GMT Thu 6th Mar 2008

[Mar 05]: . . Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat): I must admit that I came along this afternoon anticipating a routine-if I may use that word-Westminster Hall debate on the relative merits of adaptation and mitigation, . .

. . and no one can say that the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) has given us a routine afternoon, so I thank him for that. He is a thoughtful man. I first met him when he was a special adviser to the Treasury in the mid-1980s. I was a wet-behind-the-ears economist, and he was busy totting up the cost of Labour's spending plans. I was trying to validate the Treasury's numbers, so some things never change.

Let me try to find some common ground with the hon. Gentleman because I did not find very much. He has probably never seen a Liberal Democrat membership card. On the back, it says: "Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a society in which none shall be enslaved by ignorance or conformity." When he began, I agreed with him that we should be nervous of consensus, and of received wisdom. I also agree that those who have divergent views and who criticise the orthodoxy should be heard and their comments should be evaluated and treated with respect. [Interruption.] They should not be heckled, for example. The serious points that they make should be listened to.

Having said that, I have some reservations about the hon. Member for Chichester's speech and my intervention on him earlier got to the nub of my concern. I have come to this issue relatively fresh, having been the party's environmental spokesperson only since Christmas, so I do not regard myself as an authority on these matters. When I examined the climate change evidence, I wondered what I would conclude.

The first thing that struck me is that, although there is divergence of scientific opinion, as the hon. Gentleman says-I do not think that it is on the scale that he suggests, but there is some divergence of scientific opinion-I wondered why it tends to be those on the political right who are most sceptical. Why was it the Americans who were most sceptical and why was it that the social democrats of Europe were most ready to be convinced? There was a clear correlation. I think that the answer is the one that I suggested to him in my intervention. It is the sense that, if the diagnosis-I know there are a lot of steps from saying that there is a problem to reaching a particular diagnosis-is that, essentially, the rich west is the biggest part of the problem and we, the market economies of the rich west, may need to make sacrifices to tackle the problem, that is a very unpalatable message, especially if some sort of collective, co-ordinated action is involved. That diagnosis is anathema to the political right, as broadly defined.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) intervened earlier and said that the opposite would also be true and the left would think that such a diagnosis is great. But, of course, that is not true. That is because none of this is terribly palatable. Nobody really wants to believe in climate change; we would all love it not to be true. There are not votes in standing up to the rich west and saying, "Actually, we may have to have a lower standard of living and we may have to change the way we do things". That is a tough sell.

Philip Davies (Shipley, Conservative): rose-

Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat): I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, if he will forgive me, because I think that I have the shortest time slot in the entire debate and I want to try to develop my argument.

That division of political opinion makes me suspicious. My point is this: if even President Bush, who presumably has no real incentive to believe all this stuff on climate change-he certainly had no real incentive to believe it when he became President-has started to believe it, and is now one of the people talking about India and China and international co-operation on tackling climate change, surely that is prima facie evidence that the scientific and economic evidence is quite striking. Otherwise, why would someone coming from that political perspective have moved so far? Clearly, one could say that, once someone is not fighting for re-election again, they can just indulge in rhetoric. However, I am struck by the fact that, although this is an uncomfortable political message, many politicians are accepting the need to make it and many of us would not do so if we were not convinced of the need for it.

Philip Davies (Shipley, Conservative): rose-

Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat): I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not giving way.

I disagree with the hon. Member for Chichester on a number of points. First, he said that it is the poor who will suffer from decarbonisation. Certainly, in the personal sector, the carbon outputs are coming from driving, and the people who do not have cars are poor people. We are also talking about flights, and the people who do not fly are poor people. On a global scale-this was what I expected to hear at some point in the hon. Gentleman's speech, but we did not hear it-if the climate is changing and if sea levels are rising, it is the poor "that's gonna get it" around the world. He argued that decarbonisation is somehow bad news for the poor; carbonisation is bad news for the poor, in the big picture. For that reason, the message that he gave was rather unbalanced.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the need for a sober cost-benefit analysis. However, as the right hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) said, my judgment is that the downside risk is potentially cataclysmic, and I do not use that word lightly; some of the things that could happen are pretty dramatic and would have to be seriously weighed in any such cost-benefit analysis. Some of the costs that the hon. Member for Chichester mentioned are not, in my judgment, as great as he suggested.

The hon. Member for Chichester also suggested that international leadership is a bit of a con and is irrelevant, and we are a small part of a big problem. I do not think that that is true. Funnily enough, I would cite the example of Germany, which has really gone hell for leather on renewables and made huge strides on them. No doubt the hon. Gentleman may think that Germany perhaps got the cost-benefit analysis on renewables wrong. Nevertheless, if renewables is part of the response to climate change, the fact that Germany has a comparable economy to ours and has seriously gone for renewables and delivered a huge amount in that area enables us to shame the British Government for their pathetic record on renewables. Because the British Government are hearing this all the time-"Germany has done it, Germany has done it, another country has done it and our country has not done it"-they are starting to move on renewables. Therefore, it is not an entirely empty argument that, when one country provides a lead, other countries can be shamed, cajoled or encouraged to follow. One country demonstrating that change can be achieved does provide a lead. There is an issue about unilateral action, and there is some evidence that there is a role for leadership.

I would like to return to the central point made by the hon. Member for Chichester. I fully accept the argument for a cost-benefit analysis, but I also agree with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) that adaptation has been very much the Cinderella at the feast; I am not quite sure if that image works, but hon. Members will know what I mean. We have heard little about adaptation and I was thinking about why that should be. I think that the answer is straightforward. From a Treasury point of view, adaptation has a price tag attached to it. Mitigation can be achieved through carbon pricing, emissions trading and all the rest of it, and it is not a Budget line; it is there, it comes through, but it is not a Budget line. Adaptation, by contrast, is a Budget line. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Chichester needs better flood defences, but that is a public spending line and I think that that is the nub of the problem. That is why we do not hear much about adaptation. As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West says, adaptation is not only about public spending; planning, reform and other measures could help.

I think that that explains why we hear so little about adaptation. The draft Climate Change Bill had virtually nothing-only a tiny little bit-about adaptation. I think that it is being beefed up a little, thanks no doubt to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. When the Bill comes to this end of the building, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will help to beef it up some more.

Where do we go from here? I am puzzled by the suggestion from the hon. Member for Chichester that there is a considerable diversity of opinion on the science. I am not convinced that the scientific viewpoints on climate change and its causes are as diverse as he suggests they are, but we can differ on that. My sense is that the leading- edge science is well ahead of the international consensus of opinion. The IPCC assessment is a consensus document and tends to be what the hon. Gentleman would no doubt call a lagging indicator. It is not a leading indicator at all; it tends to follow behind scientific opinion, because it has to get all the Governments to agree, and some of the scientists who are most worried about climate change cannot get their latest evidence included. Consequently, there is a time lag. The scientific consensus is a lagging indicator in the IPCC and that makes me think that the case for urgent action is growing.

Climate change is not a philosophical issue. My sense is that the scientific opinion is much more alarming than the hon. Member for Chichester thinks it is, and so my sense about the cost-benefit analysis is different from his. I accept the need to evaluate mitigation against adaptation and I also accept the need to look after the most vulnerable people, although I conclude that the best strategy to help them is to treat this issue more seriously, because my judgment is that, in the long term, serious global climate change will ultimately hit the poor most of all and that is what I am most concerned about.