The Liberal Democrat lead on climate change

Speech by Chris Huhne delivered to Speech to the Liberal Democrat local government conference, Birmingham International Convention Centre on Sat 23rd Jun 2007

Thank you first for inviting me, and thanks too for being the greenest team in local government. There's no better advertisement for Lib Dem action on the environment than Lib Dem councils. Don't believe me, but look at the Guardian survey. The Guardian does not always do us any favours. But the Guardian did find that that Lib Dems practice what we preach on green matters. We deliver. We pioneer green policies. We put our principles into practice.

The survey shows that Lib Dem councils were nearly twice as likely to be selected as among "green leaders" as Labour councils and four times as likely as Tory councils. Some 15 per cent of Lib Dem councils were held up for praise, compared with 8 per cent of Labour councils and just 4 per cent of Conservative councils.

We walk the walk, and don't just talk. We do push up recycling rates, cutting landfill and methane. When we say we want our areas to be safe, clean and green, we mean it. And we do it. Delivery matters. That is exactly the model we have been following at Westminster with our climate change policy review.

In the review, we have already pioneered the most radical plans for upgrading Britain's housing stock. It is not enough to build new green homes, though that is crucial. Three quarters of the homes we will live in by 2050 have already been built. And the average energy bill of a British home is £385 a year more than the average energy bill of a Swedish home. What a scandal! Sweden's average January temperature is 7 degrees colder than ours. Yet we squander far more on heating our homes. We might as well be standing outside our front doors burning £50 notes. With our energy mortgages, we have put forward the first comprehensive plan to ensure that our homes reach the best eco-standards.

We are pressing on with plans to upgrade our rail system to make it fit for the twenty first century. With plans to curb waste in commercial and government buildings. With plans to grow only certified sustainable bio-fuels. With plans for renewable energy through wave, wind, tidal and solar power. Through carbon capture and storage so that we can safely use our coal reserves. And for developing cheap renewable sources of energy that will allow the developing world to grow without endangering the environment. All this will add up to the most far-reaching set of proposals on climate change ever championed by a political party when we debate them at Brighton this September.

And remember our track record. Last year, we put forward the green tax switch because any climate change programme has to tackle transport emissions, which are up 18 per cent since the Kyoto base year of 1990. Indeed, they account for the entire increase in emissions in the UK. So we argued for £2000 vehicle excise duty on gas-guzzlers, and nothing on low carbon cars. And for basing air tax on emissions not passengers, giving an incentive to fly full not half-empty, and to invest in fuel efficient planes. And we will use every penny piece of revenue to cut income tax on work, risk and effort. That green tax guarantee means no stealth taxes. We tax pollution not people. It is greener taxes not higher taxes.

That was a brave move. So brave that the Tories had refused to join with us in backing green taxes when we had a climate change deal. That was why we suspended the agreement. We were not going to provide camouflage for a Tory party that will not put forward plans for change. But when the Tories saw the reaction to our green tax switch, funnily enough George Osborne said "me too". Their problem is that their tax commission sat for a year like ours, but did not offer up a single green tax.

That's one reason why that stuff about voting blue to go green is nonsense. The truth is that the Tories have not changed on environmental policy. David Cameron's greenery is just a spray-on tan covering the reality of toxic toryism. Cameron cannot even persuade his own party in his own constituency in Witney to go green: West Oxfordshire has just cut its recycling budget despite one of the worst records in the country. Tory-controlled Swale is still blocking the sub-station for Britain's biggest wind farm, which will provide 1 per cent of all our electricity needs. And the Scottish Tories scored nought out of ten from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth for their manifesto this year, whereas we scored eight out of ten.

Take the European Parliament. It deals with most of our environmental legislation, and at the time of the last MEP elections in 2004 Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth analysed the voting record of all the European parties. The British Conservatives were not just the least green party in Britain. They were the dirtiest political party in the whole of the European Union.

That's why I distrust Cameron's new greenery. He recently chose a car that emits more carbon than the top ten selling models in Britain. So using it to chauffeur his shoes while he biked ahead was no great surprise. This is the sort of elitist politics that thinks people should do what they say, not what they do.

In many ways, Cameron is a throw back to the old Macmillan Tories before Thatcher. Well brought up. Good at feeling your pain. But never quite there with a solution to a social problem. I am a public school product, so I am the last person to indulge in class war. But I am also a meritocrat. Every child should have a chance whatever their background. And I think it is astonishing in the twenty first century that fifteen of Cameron's shadow ministerial team come from one school, Eton. Only seventeen of the team are women. And by the way, none of the Old Etonians are women.

As for Cameron's greenery, it does not go deep. Cameron showed no interest in green issues before he ran for the leadership. Cameron wrote a regular piece for the Guardian Unlimited website when he was first elected. In all those articles, he did not mention global warming once. Nor climate change. From his election in 2001 to his leadership campaign, he asked 367 parliamentary questions. Not a single one of them mentioned climate change or global warming.

He does, though, mention the word "green" three times in his Guardian diaries. The first time is Damian Green, his MP colleague. The second time is a reference to the green benches. And the third time is when he discusses whether he was to blame, as Norman Lamont's special adviser, for the phrase about the green shoots of recovery.

What happens when Cameron gets a chance to change policies? Well, it was Cameron who shot down Tim Yeo's ideas for environmental change when he was writing the last Tory manifesto. In the recent semi-official biography of Cameron, an insider is quoted as saying: "Crosby and Cameron wouldn't let Tim Yeo do any of his green stuff at all. They said it didn't fit in with the five pledges. Yeo got so cross at one point that he threatened to walk". And of course Cameron voted against the climate change levy, the only significant new measure against global warming introduced by the Government.

Far from having a track record of caring about green issues, Cameron has a track record of opposing green measures.

Everyone is entitled to change. And I will agree on one thing. Anybody loathed by quite so many Tories can't be all bad. But Cameron is not consistent. He is not courageous. And Cameron is not committed to the tough choices needed to tackle climate change.

Britain desperately needs a radical party committed to dealing with the greatest challenge of our times, because the Labour party has so signally failed to do so. Labour has let our carbon emissions rise. Spooked by the fuel duty protests in 2000, Gordon Brown has allowed green taxes to fall year after year after year from 3.6 per cent of gdp to 2.9 per cent in 2005. Time and again, the Government has failed to deliver on the fine rhetoric of the prime minister.

You might expect that Whitehall would be incorporating concern about climate change into every aspect of its policies. Right? Wrong. Last year, the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs cut flood defences despite rising sea levels and more extreme weather events. The Department of Trade and Industry has axed the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Wool in Dorset that kept the longest series of records of natural responses to climate change. The Department of Transport planned an expansion in airports as if the old trends could just continue. The Department of Communities and Local government wants to build 100,000 homes on flood plains. The Ministry of Defence is cutting the world's foremost research centre on climate change at the Meteorological Office.

This is rank madness. It is not a climate change policy, but chaos. This is not joined up government, but a shambles. We need a prime minister who can knock heads together and ensure that everyone in the team is tackling this key issue, and he needs to chair a climate change cabinet committee to make it happen. But that person will not be Gordon Brown, because it is Gordon who has been responsible for the domestic policies that do not add up.

Crossrail would be built by now if as much effort had gone into digging tunnels as spinning policy. Not to mention the Manchester Metrolink.

What's the definition of Labour policy? It has been announced four times before, and they still haven't got around to doing it.

Friends, you are running councils the length and breadth of this country. Spending big budgets. Weighing priorities. Taking tough decisions.

You have shown that practical Liberal Democrat policies deliver green solutions, and that is an inspiration to all of us in the party. Climate change is too urgent for political games. Too serious for playground politics.

We need the green tax switch. We need to tax pollution, not people. We need action on warm homes and low carbon transport, not warm words. As Liberal Democrats, we know the time for rhetoric has passed. The time of reckoning has come.