Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee submits witness statement in support of legal action accusing government of breaching Climate Change Act
Lord Deben has today made a dramatic intervention in the on-going High Court hearing on a series of legal challenges alleging the government's decarbonisation plans are inadequate and in breach of the UK's Climate Change Act.
The Conservative peer, former Environment Secretary, and former chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) submitted a witness statement in support of the legal challenge from campaign group Friends of the Earth, which is one of three separate but related challenges being considered by the High Court this week in a 'rolled up' hearing.
The challenges from Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth, and The Good Law Project all allege the government's Carbon Budget Delivery Plan (CBDP), which was released last March, is insufficiently detailed and risks the UK missing its legally binding emissions targets.
The CBDP was released following a previous High Court order requiring the government to strengthen its decarbonisation plans to bring them into line with the emissions goals set through upcoming Carbon Budgets. But campaign groups quickly alleged the updated plan was still inadequate and last autumn Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth, and The Good Law Project launched fresh legal actions arguing the government needed to provide further details on how emissions targets will be met.
Friends of the Earth's challenge centres on allegations the government has adopted an "everything will go right" strategy, which fails to sufficiently account for the risks of under-delivery faced by numerous decarbonisation policies.
The opening day of the hearing was dominated by the release of a document produced by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) officials, but not shared with the Secretary of State, which revealed nearly half the climate policies analysed were listed as having a 'very low' or 'low' degree of confidence they could deliver as expected.
Deben's witness statement accuses the government of failing to adequately consider the risks faced by decarbonisation policies and failing to provide the CCC with information on its plans ahead of their publication.
"In my experience, the government has previously given the CCC advance information about reports published under the Climate Change Act 2008," he said, adding it was "difficult to avoid the view" the government did not want the CCC to examine the CBDP before it was published.
He also expressed surprise the Secretary of State had not been provided with the risk assessment carried out by Defra officials, which gave policies a red, amber, or green (RAG) rating based on the level of delivery risk they were facing.
The witness statement argued that had the Secretary of State seen how "many of the policies and proposals were rated red or amber in terms of delivery risk", they could not have concluded the policies would enable statutory emissions targets to be met.
Lord Deben also noted in the statement that once the CCC was able to assess the full detail of the CBDP and supporting documents it had been left "even more unconvinced that the government's programme would achieve net zero by 2050".
"The government is relying on everything going to plan with no delays or unforeseen circumstances, and on technologies which have either not been tested or indeed on which testing has not even started," he said. "From what I have seen of the evidence provided to the court, the Secretary of State was not given enough detail on the level of risk associated with the policies in the plan. This meant that he could not see how many of them were likely to fail to achieve their end.
"When you see that evidence, to me it's clear that the present programme does not provide the necessary assurance that we can meet our statutory duty to reach net zero by 2050. I know of no other government policy which is premised on everything going exactly right."
Friends of the Earth lawyer, Katie de Kauwe, described Lord Deben's written statement as "a damning indictment of the government's latest climate strategy and its failure to properly consider the risk of its policies not achieving the emissions cuts needed to meet its climate targets".
"It's a sorry state of affairs that the government departed from established ways of working to deny its own expert statutory advisors, the Climate Change Committee, the opportunity to view and offer comments on its draft climate plan before it was finalised and published," she added. "From an accountability perspective, it's interesting that this has happened in the context of a plan which is so manifestly weak."
The government was similarly accused last autumn of failing to consult the CCC ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's decision to axe or dilute a series of decarbonisation policies. Sunak claimed the changes would not impact the UK's ability to meet its legally binding emissions targets for the 2030s onwards. But campaigners insisted the changes would make it harder to reach both the 2030 target submitted under the Paris Agreement and the Sixth Carbon Budget, which runs through to the mid 2030s.
In response to this week's legal action, the government highlighted how the UK has halved its greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 while growing the economy by almost 80 per cent, delivering steeper emissions reductions than other G20 nation.
"The government has overdelivered on every Carbon Budget to date and we're on track to meet our future targets, which are among the most ambitious in the world," the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said in a statement. "While we cannot comment further on matters that are subject to live litigation, our long-term plans to deliver net zero in a pragmatic way will continue to lower energy bills, create jobs across the UK and reduce emissions."
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