Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 27 October 2021
I am grateful to the minister for the invitation to say how the UK is leading. Britain has cut emissions by about 44 per cent since 1990, the fastest decline in the G7, while increasing the size of the economy by about 78 per cent. Denmark is the only other OECD country to have achieved a similar level of reductions. The UK is the second-highest performing country in the climate change performance index. The Yale University ranking of the greenest countries in the world across 32 performance indicators places the UK fourth, but second if only climate change and CO2 emissions are measured.
What of the leadership role? The UK was the first major economy to put into law targets to reach net zero by 2050 and it updated them just this year. The UK is the largest producer of offshore wind energy in the world. The UK is doubling its international climate finance to help developing nations to £11.6 billion a year by 2025. Now, the UK Government has produced a net zero strategy in which it sets out how it plans to deliver its net zero targets for 2050, which the cabinet secretary was a little down on. That is surprising, because the UK Climate Change Committee described the strategy as “ambitious and comprehensive” and an “achievable and affordable” vision that sets
“a globally deliverable benchmark to take to COP26.”
The committee also pointed out that the strategy is the most comprehensive in the G20.
I listened earlier this week to Nicola Sturgeon calling on world leaders to take credible action, not issue face-saving slogans, to achieve net zero. However, I listened just now to the cabinet secretary’s relentless self-congratulation, so perhaps he did not get the memo. From data with which we are all too familiar, we know that the Scottish Government missed five of seven climate targets set out in its 2018 plan, missed its own legal emissions target for three years in a row and that its commitment to ban biodegradable landfill waste in Scotland by 2021 has been pushed back to 2025. The Scottish Government has also slashed the budget for agri-environmental measures this year by nearly £10 million and, four days before COP26 begins, the new Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights, Patrick Harvie, is forced to admit to the Scottish Government’s latest failure on its renewable heat target.
The cabinet secretary referred to world-leading targets, a catch-up plan and matching ambition, but some might say that all that is just a face-saving slogan. We have not even talked about transport, the largest source of greenhouse gases, which has been reduced in Scotland only by about 0.5 per cent since 1990 in a context in which car journeys in Scotland have increased by about 8 per cent since 2016. I pointed out in August that to meet the required target of 30,000 electric vehicle chargers, we need roughly 4,000 extra charging points a year. I asked where the plan was to do that, and yesterday got the answer to a parliamentary question: there is no plan. In addition, we have learned that there are apparently too few chargers in Glasgow to charge the EVs ordered for the summit.