Speeches by Miliband.

“I will answer this at two levels. First, people might wonder what impact the Prime Minister announcing an ambitious target has. The impact that it has is that the power of example really matters in these negotiations, giving you the authority to negotiate for ambition. Let me unpack that. When we passed the Climate Cha…”

“It would not be diplomatic for me to talk about individual countries in this context. The point that I was going to make was that the centre ground of these negotiations does want ambition. If you think about small island states that are in danger of disappearing, so many developing countries that are worried about the…”

“I agree with that. These things tend to go in cycles. COP28 represented quite unexpected progress, and the UAE presidency deserves a lot of credit for that, for having driven it forward on the transition away from fossil fuels. However, saying that is one thing, operationalising it is another. It is interesting because…”

“The transition away from fossil fuels is the hardest yards of these negotiations, because you are asking countries to change the way our economies have been run for 200 years.”

“Correct.”

“The specifics of this—which is a debate we will have in the run-up to COP30 in Brazil—is how we take forward the UAE consensus and the global stocktake. In particular there is a lot of interest in paragraph 28, which is about the transition away from fossil fuels and the trebling of renewables by 2030. The feeling of d…”

“The way we put it is that we can only have energy security at home if we become a clean energy superpower. That is in the interests of today’s generations. However, the truth is that we can only have climate security for future generations if we act with others. It is important to say as a starting point that we are 1%…”

“Thank you very much, Chair. It is great to be with you today. The EAC plays an important role in scrutiny and accountability of Government and has done over the years, so I look forward to working with you. We lead the Government’s Clean Energy Superpower Mission in DESNZ. It is a foundation for our work at home and ab…”

“I am the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and it is great to be with you today. On my right I have Lee McDonough, who is the Director General for Net Zero, Nuclear and International in my Department, and Matt Toombs, who is the Director for International Climate.”

“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 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…”

“This is about domestic adaptation?”

“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.”

“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.”

“I absolutely think that this Committee has a central role when it comes to carbon budget 7. As you know, Chair, the recommendations from the Climate Change Committee will be coming out next month. I want to put on record that I am determined and completely aligned on the idea that we need a process, that this Committee…”

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

“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 …”

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”