Speeches by Miliband.

“Absolutely, and—”

“I am generous. Well, I think your Chair is generous on my behalf, actually.”

“I know from reading the testimony of Emma Pinchbeck to your Committee that this is something you have taken an interest in. I think we should just be frank about the fact that this has for too long been somewhat of an orphan in Government. It is led, as you will know—I think you expressed some concern about this—not by…”

“Thank you so much, Chair. It is a great pleasure to be before the Committee today, making my first appearance under your chairmanship, and I look forward to working closely with all the Committee members. I want to start by setting out the thinking behind what we are trying to do as a Department, for your benefit. As y…”

“It is probably slightly heroic to think I can recreate it on my own. It takes two to consensus—or lots of people. But there is a serious point here, which is that we passed the Climate Change Act in 2008 with a vast majority in this House, and I think that has served us well and continues to serve us well. There are pe…”

“Definitely.”

“I think the work of your Committee is important and we want to keep you as well informed as we possibly can. You have an important role in scrutinising our work, hopefully as a collective, and supporting our work where you think we are getting it right and, of course, challenging us where you think we are getting it wr…”

“I think you are going to be frustrated with my answer, Sir Christopher. We have to do both. We could give up on measures on tackling greenhouse gas emissions, but I think that would be grossly irresponsible. The way I think about this is that obviously Britain on its own cannot tackle the climate crisis. You are absolu…”

“I was not around in 1953. I am not suggesting you were.”

“Absolutely not, Sir Christopher, and you and I—if my answer was not clear to you—absolutely share a commitment that we need to act, and this Government have a commitment to act on flood defences and all the issues that you mention. There we agree. But if you want to then suggest to me that we should throw under the bus…”

“Absolutely, it should have priority.”

“I do not think that would be a responsible course of action, and I think you are posing a false choice. I think if we say to the British people—just to step outside this Committee for a minute—”Should we tackle the threat that climate change is going to pose to people’s way of life?”, they would say, “Absolutely.” But …”

“That is a bit harsh, if I may say, to defend a member of your Committee.”

“Absolutely. Thank you for what you said. Planning reform—I am pleased you have asked about it—is absolutely crucial. We are determined to rewire the planning system from end to end, including through the planning and infrastructure Bill that will be coming in the next few months, on which we have been working closely w…”

“Let me deal with the two parts to the question. First, the land use framework is an incredibly important piece of work that my colleague Steve Reed has embarked upon, setting out clearly for the first time the role of farming and agriculture, the role of nature restoration, and the role of, for example, renewable energ…”

“Of course; that is absolutely fine.”

“I will come to that specific question in a second. It is important to say that what we are doing in this document is quite path-breaking, because we are setting out for the first time the energy mix we need to meet clean power. I do not want to be over-party political in this, but that was not done before. That is so i…”

“Exactly.”

“It is worth also saying that even the floor will involve almost trebling the amount of solar power from today. We are talking about a big increase. In answer to how we make this a reality, this is one of the issues. It is something I get asked about a lot. This is something we are working on with MHCLG, which is making…”

“We are absolutely hand in glove with industry because they are in our solar taskforce. This is something that the previous Government were working on, but I wanted to make sure that we were at the maximal end of ambition when it came to solar. That is the work we embarked upon and, in the coming months, we will publish…”