Party leaders clash over climate change

In a debate mainly focused on foreign policy televised on Sky News, the three party leaders all played up the importance of tackling climate change at home and abroad but tried to draw clear lines between their party’s respective policies on how to deal with the challenge.

The main clash of policy was over how to address the UK’s energy needs and carbon emissions.

Labour leader Gordon Brown called for "a balanced energy plan" that included nuclear power.

"If we are to make a real difference we’ve got to change the energy balance in our country and we’ve got to remove this fixation about using oil […] That is why our energy plan talks about how we can move with nuclear and renewables and oil and gas," he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said his party would halt spend on nuclear and instead invest in wind energy and other renewable energy and, for "a fraction of the money" required to subsidise nuclear, would implement a mass insulation scheme of homes, schools and hospitals.

"You’ve got to remember that 27 per cent of all carbon dioxide in this country goes straight out of your house through your roofs and windows. If we use energy more efficiently and invest money that would be wasted on nuclear projects on other wind energy and other renewable energy that is the way to a sustainable future," he said.

Conservative leader David Cameron chose to promote his party’s 'Green Deal’, which would give every household the right to have up to £6,500 of home energy efficiency improvements, as his green policy priority should he become prime minister.

"I think that would show people that going green can save you money, can get Britain working again, can cut emissions and cut fuel poverty. For all these reasons I want it to be a really big part of the first Queen’s Speech if I am elected your prime minister," he said.

Attempting to undermine his opponent’s policy positions on energy and climate change, Brown asked them: "Why Nick are you so against nuclear power? And, David, why don’t you have renewables targets? Why are you against onshore wind power?"

Clegg replied saying nuclear investment was too costly and would take too long to come on stream.

"It will lead to average energy bills increasing and will take a long, long time [to build the infrastructure]," he said, making it "too late to deal with the problems we have now."

Avoiding answering Brown’s questions, Cameron attacked back claiming the Labour Government’s energy policy could potentially lead to power cuts by 2017. "There is a need to get renewables and extra gas capacity on stream, otherwise we could see the lights going out," he said.

Leaders clash over foreign policy on climate change
The other main clash was over how to tackle climate change on the international stage.

Brown said the British Government was playing a leading role in achieving international cooperation on climate change, but Clegg described Brown as being "on the sidelines" during the Copenhagen summit on climate change last December, where a political accord was thrashed out in the dying hours.

The Liberal Democrat leader suggested that his party would ensure that wouldn’t happen again. "You have to create strength in numbers in Europe because this is a global problem," he said.

Cameron, meanwhile, attacked the Lisbon Treaty for only containing "seven words on climate change" and said European institutions and regulations – which he said both his opponents supported – were a hindrance to international action on climate change.

"You need political will and action, not more institutions and more regulations," he suggested.

The three leaders’ positions on energy and climate change followed a question by a member of the audience in last night’s debate on what they had personally done in the last six months to use more sustainable forms of transport.

Cameron said the biggest thing he’d done to support greener forms of transport in the last six months was to come out against a third runway at Heathrow.

"We are going for high speed rail instead, and a high speed rail hub at Heathrow and trying to make sure all those flights where people could take a plane that you take a train instead. I think that would be a really big step forward," he said.

Clegg said he used the train a lot to travel backwards and forwards to his constituency in Sheffield, but admitted "like many people I wish I could and would do more".

On curbing aviation emissions, though, he said his party had the answer, through its proposed tax duty on planes.

"At the moment you have a tax system that taxes people in planes, which means that planes that have freight in them aren’t taxed to reflect the pollution they cause. You have lots of planes that are half empty or barely have any passengers at all. I think if you change that to a plane tax you make a dramatic difference to cutting down on unnecessary aviation pollution."

While Brown said he thought he’d only used a plane once during the election campaign, the Labour leader was keener to spell out how he was personally addressing climate change through action at home.

Brown says he's invested in a solar panel on his home
He said he’d had solar panels fitted on his home in North Queensferry in Fife and recommended that anyone that could should do the same.

"We thought living on a hill with a huge amount of wind and not very good weather in Scotland, as you know, that a wind turbine would be the answer. In fact, we found that what was far better was a solar panel," he said. "I would recommend people if they can to use this form of energy because it allows us to heat water in a far more environmentally-friendly way."

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