Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

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Can I start by saying what a privilege it is to have been invited to speak at this Scottish Labour Conference here in Dundee.

I am really pleased to be here to support Iain Gray who I talked to this morning before his big speech this afternoon.

Already we see Iain setting out a new agenda and what I know from Iain Gray’s background in development, is that he is someone with a deep commitment to justice and fairness here and around the world, exactly what we need in politics today.

And let all of us commit to working with him to ensure that in 2011 he becomes the Scottish First Minister, Scottish Labour back running Scotland, serving the people of Scotland.

I also want to thank Jim Murphy for the work he does, ensuring Scotland’s interests are properly represented at Westminster.

He is leading the work we are doing with our oil and gas industry and let me say it is particular pleasure for me as Energy Secretary to be here in Scotland and I want to pay tribute to the men and women who work in that industry and what it does for our economy as a whole.

My argument today is that when it comes to energy and climate change, and when it comes to our next General Election manifesto, where I am playing a co-ordinating role, it is our values, our ideology that our country needs, not that of our opponents, the Tories or the nationalists.

We need Labour values of equality, justice and solidarity not the free market dogma of the Conservatives, nor the nationalism of the SNP which erects new barriers in a world where we need greater internationalism.

Let me say what we all know: this is a testing time for our party but more importantly the people of this country.

But we know that at this time, more than any other, we need Labour values.

We need Labour values which say:

Governments should step in and take responsibility and not leave the recession to take its course which is why we have cut VAT worth £2bn directly going to people in Scotland

We need Labour values  which say:

Markets can never be left to their own devices and sometimes that requires dramatic government action.

That is why we have intervened to stabilise the banking system, not for the bankers, but for every person in this room and everyone in the country whose savings and futures depend on a banking system that works.

And we need Labour values which say above all that at this difficult economic time, people cannot be left on their own.

So we will not walk by on the other side as people face repossession and unemployment and I will not stand by as energy customers, particularly those on pre-payment meters, pay over the odds. We are determined to stamp out the unfair prices that they have had to pay.

So let us never forget the difference between Labour values in hard times and Tory values

They said in the 1990s, if isn’t hurting it isn’t working.

They said unemployment was a price worth paying.

Even today, they oppose us at every turn:

They said we shouldn’t nationalise Northern rock. They were wrong.

They said we shouldn’t put money into the economy. They were wrong as almost every political leader in the world knows.

They say even now we should cut public spending. They are wrong.

And it is our job in this room to go out and expose this reality.

And it is our job to do something else as well.

To look beyond these hard times and set out our vision of society, as part of the next manifesto.

Our job is to paint a picture of the environmental future, the economic future and the future society as well.

The single biggest short-term challenge we face is the economic crisis, but we know the biggest long-term threat is the climate crisis.

And we know also that the worst thing we could do is put off tackling this crisis because the longer we wait the worse it will get.

The environment is an equality issue: it is about whether we will load unacceptable burdens on our children and grandchildren or whether we will pass on to them a planet they can live on.

If you want to know the scale of the challenge think of this: if we carry on living as we are scientists tell us the world will heat up by 5 degrees centigrade, making the planet hotter than it has been for 30 to 50 million years and remember humankind has only lived on earth for 100,000 years.

We know it would be a world where many cities we knew disappeared under water, where millions of climate refugees were displaced and as always when catastrophe hits, it would be the poorest in the world who suffer most.

That is why we must act now. I am proud that Britain is the first government in the world to pass a legally binding requirement to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

I am proud that thanks to a Labour Government, last year, Britain overtook Denmark and became the world leader in offshore wind.

But we know this is not enough and our job on the environment is not nearly done

We need to move further and faster on renewables, onshore and offshore wind power and we are determined to make this happen.

We need nuclear power too. I’ll be honest with you. I’m not from the kind of background or family where nuclear power was popular. But climate change has forced people to rethink. Nuclear power is a necessary part of meeting the challenge of climate change because it is low carbon.

And we need to make coal a fuel of the future as well. I represent a former mining constituency, proud of coal’s past, and convinced it can be part of the future.

Let us be clear the development of carbon capture and storage needs to happen and we need to provide support to make it happen. Scotland has a crucial role to play and what we know is that this is not just right for energy security in Britain, given the use of coal in China and India and elsewhere, it is necessary if we are to have any chance of meeting our global responsibilities on climate change.

But for Labour, an environmental vision is not just about how we generate our energy, it is about how we create a fairer society and how we tackle fuel poverty.

Recently I met a woman at an event on fuel poverty, describing how the curse of bad insulation and pre payment meters had made her life miserable.

It is no part of a Labour government’s commitments on the environment for her to be paying over the odds for her energy.

That is why we are committed not just to fairness in pricing but also must commit ourselves to a revolution in household energy efficiency over the next decade.

Low cost energy audits, pay as you save insulation where people can cover the costs of energy efficiency through bigger savings on bills and the use of new technologies to heat our homes.

So our environmental vision combines fairness tomorrow with fairness today.

But it goes beyond that.

Because we know not just that the environmental crisis is the biggest long-term threat we face but it is also central to the vision of our economic future.

Think of this: we need 80% cuts in carbon emissions by 2050, but with economic growth, we want an economy three times its current size.

That means we don’t just need a change in the way our economy works, we need a transformation.

And this environmental transformation can also produce an industrial transformation.

We want to restore the health and integrity of the financial services industry in the UK, because we know that jobs depend on it.

But we also know that we can’t rely on one industry for our future.

That’s why we want to create the jobs of tomorrow in the low carbon industries, making wind turbines, providing the cables for offshore power, upgrading the national grid and providing the ingenuity and infrastructure for carbon capture and storage.

But we know also that markets on their own can’t achieve this. It needs government to set the targets, lead the way and provide the right incentives and support to make it happen.

That is the new industrial policy and that is what we are determined to do so that Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole can be the leading nation for green-collar jobs.

So we will set out a vision of the environmental future, the economic future and the future of our society as well.

Let’s be honest about this. We have all been shocked by what has been revealed in the financial services industry.

The irresponsibility, the abuses of trust, the something for nothing culture.

Let’s also be honest: we can’t preach responsibility to one set of people and then let irresponsibility go unchecked by another.

Our vision is different: it is of the society where we earn our way and look after each other.

That is why we must rebuild our economy and our society on a different footing.

And we must show a new sense of responsibility and obligations to each other.

People complain a lot about young people today in Britain. In my view the vast majority do the right thing and want to do the right thing but there is a lesson we should learn about nurturing a different spirit throughout our society.

Respect is important but it is a two-way street.

We need to do more to hear the voice of young people in society.

That is why we need to transform young people’s role in our democracy and in my view, introduce votes at 16.

But this is part of a wider vision:

Youth services which broaden young people’s horizons.

Greater responsibility by young people through a commitment and greater role in serving the community.

Above all, setting the right example of a society that ensures responsibility all the way to the top.

So we need a vision of our environment, of our economy and of our society.

We also need to explain why our opponents are wrong.

Think of the challenges we face:

A global agreement on climate change.

Working for energy security in Europe and beyond

Rebuilding our economy through international action and co-operation.

All of these challenges are about a world expanding, borders disappearing.

And yet the nationalists want to spend their time seeking to detach Scotland from the United Kingdom.

Let me tell you: on climate change, we are seen as a world leader.

In the European negotiations last December, our Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the way in arguing for the most comprehensive and ambitious agreement.

I’ve been at these negotiations, I can tell you, our voice, your voice, Scotland’s voice, Britain’s voice would be weaker not stronger if the SNP had their way.

So let’s sweep aside nationalism, and mobilise our communities around the Labour value of internationalism.

Internationalism that led the way in dismantling apartheid in South Africa

Internationalism that led the way in getting a deal at Gleneagles for rich countries to redeem their debts to poor countries.

We need that internationalism again in the coming months.

In December, the world is due to come together at Copenhagen to reach an international agreement on climate change, a successor to Kyoto.

Even with the commitment of the UK government and that of many other countries, I don’t believe this on its own will mean we will achieve the global deal we need.

It needs you, it needs the people in this room, it needs us to mobilise in Britain and then to reach our hands across the world to persuade all countries, all people they must come together to reach an agreement.

Scotland led the way in the fight and the mobilisation around Gleneagles; I know it can do the same in the run up to Copenhagen.

Everything we know about our party and our movement says this: change didn’t come easily, change didn’t come without struggle, change didn’t come without popular pressure.

And let our work on Copenhagen be a guide to what we need to do in the coming months not just internationally but nationally to win the next General Election.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

We know that this country needs a Labour government.

It needs a Labour government on climate change

It needs a Labour government to renew our economy.

It needs a Labour government to ensure a society with the right values and a future for our young people.

But we can’t have a fourth term Labour government without you.

Martin Luther King said: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice’

And President Obama, quoting him, added ‘But only if people bend it that way’

You are those people who day in day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, year in year out, make the world a fairer place.

Together we can keep making Britain and the world fairer and more just.

We can do it, we must do it, and we will do it for this and future generations.