11.49 am

Mr. Cynog Dafis (Ceredigion and Pembroke, North): I am glad to make a brief contribution in this important debate on sustainable development, and I congratulate the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) on initiating it. He has highlighted the subject at an extremely important time, and I am glad that he intends to raise the matter again in the new year. I would like to co-operate in the process to ensure that the issue is given the prominence that it deserves.

This is an important time because 1997 is the year of Rio II. At the same time important meetings will be held of the conferences of the parties to the climate change and biodiversity conventions. The purpose of Rio II is to consider the progress that has or has not been made on Agenda 21 since 1992. The House of Commons briefing document--we get a lot of excellent stuff from the House of Commons Library on sustainable development and associated matters--states:

"Putting Agenda 21 into action will be vastly difficult."

Rio II needs to be taken seriously as an international occasion. One such indication would be an advance announcement that heads of state would attend. I would very much welcome a statement from the Prime Minister that he or the successor incumbent of his office will attend Rio II at New York in June. The Prime Minister was the first world leader to announce that he intended to attend the original Rio summit and that influenced the decisions of other world leaders. It is essential that the United Kingdom should take a lead this time, too.

The United Kingdom Government have taken a lead on climate change and greenhouse emissions. The achievement of stabilisation by the year 2000 has been fortuitous in part, nevertheless it is something to be pleased about. Earlier this year, the United Kingdom Government gave an important lead at the Berlin summit in establishing the targets that should be set. I hope that the Government will continue to do that and will confront the powerful vested interests that are trying to prevent such targets from being set.

The targets must be ambitious, because the current ones are hopelessly inadequate, except of course for the targets advocated by the Association of Small Island States. It has called for serious reductions because its people stand most to lose as a result of climate change.

Any discussion of greenhouse gas reductions must be considered in the context of global equity. There is a disgraceful and profound inequity in energy use. Currently 20 per cent. of energy is used by 80 per cent. of the population and vice versa. That must change. Those reductions must judged in the context of global equity and the idea of the global commons. That implies looking seriously at the question of sustainable consumption in the developed world.

The transport issue simply cannot be bucked, whether it is road or air transport, because we are witnessing a significant increase in the use of hydrocarbons, and therefore the production of carbon dioxide. Attempts to come to terms with changes in transport use imply far-reaching changes, for example, ultimately, a more decentralised pattern of production, distribution and consumption. In that context, I specifically urge the Government and the main Opposition party to support, at least in principle, the Road Traffic (Reduction) Bill, which is currently before the House. We are not kidding ourselves that it will get on to the statute book. It does, however, offer an opportunity to debate traffic reduction.

On greenhouse gas emissions, we must take far more seriously the potential of renewable energy. The current target for the year 2000 is 1,500 MW, which is almost trivial. It is useful, however, and I am glad to note that the Government recognise the importance of renewable energy. One should compare, however, the 1,500 MW with the 2,000 MW capacity of one power station at Pembroke were it to start to burn orimulsion.

It is good that we are beginning to move away from the notion of an inherent conflict between environmental protection and economic success. It is essential that we do that, because there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is no such conflict in reality. We certainly need a new definition of what we mean by economic success. We need to adopt different indicators, such as the index of

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When we talk about environmental protection, we should also talk about environmental enhancement. That means increasing and strengthening the opportunities for biodiversity, not just protecting the reduced level of biodiversity which we have currently achieved.

I commend to the House a useful booklet entitled, "The Politics of the Real World", which has been produced by the Real World Coalition. The purpose of that publication is to influence debate during the general election campaign. The hon. Member for South Suffolk was pessimistic about that and he does not believe that it will feature in the campaign, but it certainly should given the crucial issue that it addresses.

It is not the intention of the Real World Coalition to influence the result of the election, but the agenda for debate during the campaign. Sustainable development should be at the heart of that debate. Not everyone will agree with everything that the booklet advocates, although the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) will find that it contains at least some ideas that he would commend. I was extremely interested to note his call for the need for intervention in certain areas that are regarded as sacrosanct for the free market.

Not everyone will agree with everything in that booklet, but it is the best attempt that I have seen to spell out what the British Government could do in certain specific areas towards achieving real sustainable development. At the heart of that, and the key instruments to enable that development to be achieved, is a combination of public investment and tax reductions. I suggest that Labour Front Benchers should study that document carefully and integrate, if not all, at least large parts of it into their programme for government.

I hope that this is the first of many debates on sustainable development both before and after the election--although, in a sense, all debates about economic policy and other areas of policy should also be debates on sustainable development. It should not be regarded as a separate issue, but treating it as such is at least a way of getting the debate going.

The initiative should come, not only from individual Members of Parliament, but from right hon. and hon. Members on the Government and Opposition Front Benches. It would be welcome if the main Opposition party--whichever party that might be in a few months' time--used one of its main Supply day debates as an occasion for discussing this subject in greater depth than we have managed today. The hon. Member for South Suffolk has started something extremely important and I wish both him and the rest of us well in advancing this important agenda.

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12 pm

Ms Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford): I join in congratulating the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) on obtaining this important debate. I, too, believe that sustainable development is fundamental, both to our national and our global futures. The hon. Gentleman said that it is the supreme issue for politicians--I could not agree more. All the ideas that he has outlined this morning deserve consideration and we shall look closely at this debate as we continue to formulate our policies for Government; but I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will get a dusty answer from the Minister, because sustainable development is not something that the present Government have been practising.

Let me remind the House of the definition of sustainable development. We accept the definition coined by the Brundtland commission in 1987 and believe that it is a useful working definition. According to the commission, sustainable development is

"development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

Clearly, the Rio Earth summit in 1992 was a landmark for sustainable development. Within a few months of the next general election, we shall celebrate the five-year anniversary of Rio, which other hon. Members have mentioned this morning and which will be an extremely important date for the new Government. We expect to be that new Government and to play our full part in attending Earth summit II and meeting our international obligations.

Fine words and conventions are not enough. The sorry fact is that the Government's record on sustainable development is totally inadequate. They like to trumpet their green credentials, but the truth is very different. For a start, the Government are failing systematically to conduct environmental appraisals of their own policies. It is extraordinary that no Government Department has yet been able to provide any evidence that it is conducting such appraisals, despite the fact that the Department of the Environment has been advising Departments to do so since 1991 and that it was a White Paper commitment.

The annual report of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, published in April this year, recommended that

"all Government departments should ensure that environmental considerations are fully taken into account when policies and programmes are determined, and should have procedures for ensuring that compliance with those requirements can be assessed and published."

I turn now to Green Ministers and the Departments' annual reports, both of which are supposed to contribute to sustainable development. The Green Ministers have had only seven meetings in five years, which hardly conveys any sense of urgency, and the Government have refused to publish the minutes of those meetings. Most departmental annual reports barely mention the environment, and information about the activities of Green Ministers and about departmental action to meet the commitments in the environment White Paper is notably absent.

The Government's evident lack of commitment to sustainable development is reflected not only in those complete failures to meet the promises of the White Paper, but in their many policies and actions in key areas, such as those to which the hon. Member for South Suffolk and other hon. Members referred and to which I now turn: land use, energy, transport, biodiversity and waste.

I shall not reiterate the points made by other hon. Members about land use, but say simply that the hon. Members for Truro (Mr. Taylor) and for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) were both absolutely right to refer to empty homes. We have to make the best possible use of those properties that are already built, and a Labour Government will do that. We have clearly stated that we shall release the housing receipts, not only to enable new social housing to be built--primarily, of course, on brown-field sites--but to ensure that refurbishment takes place so that the waste of available and existing buildings is ended, once and for all.