Speeches by Miliband.

“Yes, but let’s get to the truth here, which is that the last Government set the targets and then did not do the work. We have come to office—and I am glad that we have got on to this—with only one-third of the reductions necessary covered by credible plans, according to the CCC. I will be honest with you that we face a…”

“I think that there should definitely be a debate in the House. To give a bit of clarity, my understanding about this last time is that the Government put down an SI proposing carbon budget 6 and we supported it and it went through. The last Government got themselves into a slightly odd position in that they blamed the …”

“Let me come back to the Committee on the precise chronologies, but I definitely commit to coming back before this Committee to discuss our proposals.”

“Sorry, just explain what you mean by before laying it. Before laying what?”

“We will think of another birthday present for you. I think that what you say about this Committee playing an incredibly important role in this process of scrutiny is right and I genuinely welcome it.”

“Probably not in time for your birthday.”

“The Climate Change Act envisages publication after the delivery of the carbon budget delivery plan, after the setting of the budget. We can get hung up on the terms here. I think that Parliament needs enough information from what we say to make an informed judgment about whether what we recommend, following the CCC’s r…”

“My instincts are that we will need a bit longer than that. We have our carbon budget delivery plan that will come out later on this year. I think that we will need a proper process of cross-government scrutiny of these recommendations.”

“Parliament will have a proper chance of scrutiny sufficiently in advance of the June 2026 deadline. I will not put a date on it today but it is fair to say that the Government need to have a thorough examination of the proposals that come out from the Climate Change Committee. I envisage that taking some time because t…”

“The Climate Change Committee will be coming out with its recommendations very shortly. The Government will then undertake a quite complex cross-government process in advance of the deadline of June 2026 to set out their response. However, in the meantime I would welcome your role in scrutinising the recommendations of …”

“We endorse the commitment to proper information for Parliament to debate these issues. We want it to happen and will make sure it happens.”

“A lot of this sits in DEFRA. This is not directly part of the carbon budget process, but I talk to my colleague Steve Reed about it and we are determined to work on it together.”

“Yes, and it is something that we are working on across Government. As you know, it sits in DEFRA but we work closely with it on that. We are very much looking at this and it will be a big focus of what we look at in the spending review.”

“This is about domestic adaptation?”

“It is a very important question and goes to what I said to Barry earlier. Part of the challenge here is that adaptation finance has tended to be underfunded compared to mitigation finance. That has been a big source of understandable anger. There were important commitments made as part of COP29 about making sure that w…”

“From the UK? That is a matter for the spending review. Remember, the way that it works is that we have a development, an ODA budget, and the climate contribution comes out of that ODA budget. The work is obviously with the Treasury but the work is also with the Foreign Office. It is worth saying that Anneliese Dodds an…”

“It is good that we fulfilled the promise of the last Government on the £11.6 billion. we are proud of the work that the ICF does and we are completely committed to ensuring that when we put forward resources for climate, they are indeed for climate purposes. It is also important to say that as part of this agreement, f…”

“It is a number that is derived from the Stern-Songwe report. That was the number that they set out, the independent and high-level expert group. All of the evidence is that the climate crisis is accelerating and that the needs of vulnerable countries are greater, but this is a very, very substantial sum of money and we…”

“It is interesting because I have some history in this, as in a number of things. I was part of the setting of the $100 billion goal, along with Gordon Brown, in 2009. The $100 billion was met late but it has been met, with some of the problems that Barry talked about. It is stretching, the $1.3 trillion. It is broadly …”

“Let me take that away.”