Government faces calls to appoint climate change minister

MPs have today called on the government to appoint a dedicated climate change minister, crank up its use of green taxes and increase pressure on airlines to improve their environmental performance.

The recommendations are found in the Treasury Select Committee's new report on the implications on Treasury policy of the Stern Review, which praises the establishment of an office for climate change but insists a minister need to be appointed to ensure cross departmental co-operation on environmental issues and provide a "champion of climate change across government".

"A co-ordinated approach to climate change across government departments is vital to ensure joined-up policy-making," said the committee's chairman, John McFall MP. "The Office of Climate Change goes some way towards this, but not far enough. It needs to be headed up by a minister."

Adam Bruce, chairman of renewables lobby group the BWEA, welcomed the report claiming there was the need for a more co-ordinated climate change policy capable of ironing out departmental conflicts, such as the Ministry of Defence's recent opposition to several wind farm projects. "The Cabinet Office has been asked to take an overarching role in the government's climate change policy, but currently you have Defra, BERR, the Foreign Office and others all responsible for different components," he said. "There is a need for greater clarity on who is co-ordinating the overall strategy."

The report also criticises the Treasury's approach to environmental taxes, accusing it of failing to deliver on the government's 1997 commitment to shift the tax burden onto polluting activities. Instead, the proportion of overall tax raised from green taxes has fallen since 1997 and the government has at times appeared to edge away from the concept, most notably in 2000 when fuel protests prompted it to scrap planned increases in fuel duty.

Committee chairman John McFall said that government's use of green taxes had been timid, and argued that those green taxes that had been introduced, such as the climate change and aggregates levies, are "minuscule in the grand scheme of things".

The report further condemns the Treasury's response to the threat posed by aviation emissions, welcoming its recent proposals to introduce a per plane tax designed to promote the use of more efficient aircraft but questioning why it took so long to develop a replacement to the much criticised Air Passenger Duty.

It urges the government to take greater action against the airlines ahead of plans to pull aviation into the European Emissions Trading Scheme from 2011, and proposes a system of eco-labelling, which would allow consumers to "compare the environmental footprint of each airline when purchasing their tickets".

A Treasury spokesperson defended the government's record, insisting "a combination of measures including both taxation and environmental initiatives like the Environmental Transformation Fund and emissions trading" meant the UK is one of the few countries to be on course to exceed its Kyoto emissions targets.