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Full text: Ed Miliband’s speech to TUC congress

This is the full text of the 2009 speech to the TUC congress by Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change:

It is a privilege to be speaking to the TUC as Labour’s first Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

I want to start by paying tribute to your work.

Your green reps around the country are doing a fantastic job engaging members in the fight against climate change. We should all thank them for the work they do.

And I want to congratulate the trade unions on the work you have done this year, forging an alliance over jobs, justice and climate at the G20 summit in London and coming together with the trades unions of the north and south for a just transition for workers across the globe. This will be integral to our transition to a low carbon economy here in the UK, our discussions with the EU and our arguments at the global climate change talks in Copenhagen.

Yesterday the Prime Minister explained how we are tackling the economic crisis.

Today, I want to talk about the climate crisis.

The truth is that the two crises – the economic crisis and the climate crisis – have a lot in common:

The most important thing they have in common is that they can only be tackled with our values.

They have a common cause: markets without proper regulation.

A common victim: not the people who caused the crisis, but the people you represent up and down this country.

And a common solution: strong and active government that does not leave people to their fates.

But to be equal to the crisis, we have to learn the lessons.

We can’t build an economic base on one industry alone. We’ve learnt that.

Huge inequality is bad not just bad for our society – we always knew that – it is also bad for our economy as we have found with unjustified City bonuses. We’ve learnt that.

And tackling climate change cannot just be an add on, it has to be at the heart of our economic policy, our energy policy and our transport policy. We’ve learnt that.

But our task is not just to learn the lessons and be equal to the crisis.

So the politics of the coming years will be shaped by these crises but we must not be imprisoned by them.

Indeed, at moments of crisis, it is just the time to think about what kind of society we are and what kind of country we want to become.

That’s just what the 1945 government did.

So what does it mean in the area of climate change and energy?

We know that climate change is not just an abstract problem but a problem now.

Recently I visited some of the 2 million people that live on sandbanks or chars in Bangladesh whose homes were swept away by floods in 2007.

In one village all but four of the houses had been destroyed by floods.

And it’s not just in Bangladesh. In 2007 also, I saw my local high street in Toll Bar with people canoeing up and down it rescuing their neighbours from first floor windows as the waters rose.

But I’ve learnt something over the past year.

It came home to me when I was talking about the threat of climate change to a Labour party member in Manchester.

He said ‘ Ed, Martin Luther King said ‘I have a dream’.

If he had said ‘I have a nightmare’ nobody would have followed him.

That’s not just an argument about how you persuade people.

Of course we need to explain the threat of climate change.

But he was saying that in making the low carbon transition, let’s not simply make our country safe from climate change but let’s make it part of a vision of a prosperous, secure and fair Britain.

Take jobs and employment.

We know the world is going to move to low carbon. We know there will be jobs.

I recently met workers at the Sharp factory in Wrexham. They had switched from making VCRs to manufacturing solar panels. Over 500 jobs secured in our industrial heartland before the market for solar power in the UK even takes off. In the face of a recession, they are on course to have their busiest month ever this month.

The task is not simply to replace one kind of manufacturing job with another. It is to create better jobs, higher skilled jobs: new industries, new opportunities.

Take coal. As Conference recognised in its motion today, there is no solution to climate change without a solution for coal.

It’s plentiful, flexible and cheap but the most polluting fuel.

There is a potential solution: carbon capture and storage, which could trap 90% of CO2 emissions.

It could be a multi-billion pound industry of the future.

But the idea has been around for ages.

The market won’t deliver the transformation this country needs.

So government needs to act. And this Labour government is acting.

That’s why in the coming session of parliament, we are proposing to legislate to raise billions of pounds to invest in up to four full commercial-scale carbon capture and storage projects in Britain. Billions of pounds invested in clean coal technology.

And because we know its not just about public investment, its also about having the right regulation to ensure companies have an incentive not to burn dirty coal, but to clean up coal. So we are proposing the toughest environmental conditions for new coal in the world.

This is what Peter Mandelson calls an active industrial policy.

Between 30 000 and 60 000 jobs here in the UK in the next two decades.

This will support jobs. Skilled jobs. Jobs in construction as we build new facilities, jobs in engineering as we manufacture new components, jobs fitting the pipes that will allow us to pump the CO2 underground rather than into the atmosphere.

Jobs in coal, jobs in nuclear too.

I didn’t grow up in a pro-nuclear family but the challenge of climate change is too big to reject nuclear.

Nuclear power no thanks today means climate change no doubt tomorrow.

That’s why this government ended the moratorium on nuclear and why we will press ahead with plans for new nuclear power.

The trinity of clean power is clean coal, nuclear and renewables.

At the core of renewable energy is wind power.

Our coastline means the offshore wind industry has the potential to employ tens of thousands of workers by 2020, manufacturing, transporting, installing and operating the new turbines.

So, today I am announcing new funds including for Clipper who are themselves announcing a new factory in the North East to start to make that happen. It will develop the largest offshore wind blades in the world, the length of a jumbo jet.

This is just one part of the major investment we are making this year and next in the wind industry, including up to £120m announced in July.

But we know it’s tough, as we saw with Vestas.

I am sorry for the workers involved because it was a tragedy for them. We spent months working with the company. They told us money wasn’t the problem.

They said their problem was that they didn’t have enough orders for onshore wind turbines.

Quite simply: because some local councils wont let wind turbines be put up.

The majority of the public are in favour of wind turbines but many councils, including councils on the Isle of Wight turn down applications for wind turbines.

You can only be a centre for onshore wind manufacturing if you are installing enough onshore wind

For me this highlights a broader truth.

In coal, in nuclear, in wind, there will be people who say no to the low carbon transition.

It’s our job to say that for the environment and for prosperity we need these energy projects.

On wind in particular, it’s time for the silent majority to speak up.

And the voice of the trade unions is essential.

And if I can say this, your voice needs to be there, not just at times of crisis, but all the time. Making the case for low carbon investment and jobs.

You can help make the difference because you know more than anyone else, that the stakes are too high for nimbyism to win through.

For the climate, for jobs and for energy security too.

Because what we know also is that when around two thirds of the world’s gas reserves are in Russia and the Middle East, home-grown energy is the way we stop ourselves being ever more dependent on imports.

Low carbon energy is also home-grown energy.

Our UK transition plan will mean 40% low carbon energy by 2020, saving us a supertanker of imported gas every four days.

Jobs and energy security are the benefits of the low carbon transition.

But we know also, and this is the point of your just transition campaign, that there are costs too.

Costs for high carbon industries, costs on energy bills for individuals and businesses.

Fairness means helping higher carbon industries to adapt—from coal to steel.

It also means ensuring British people, and in particular the poor and the elderly, are protected from the costs that we all know will come as we deal with climate change.

That’s why last year government programmes helped insulate 1.5m households. And if you want to know the difference between a Labour government and Conservative government go to Newcastle on Friday where the 2 millionth home will be insulated under the Warmfront programme.

But my view is simple: as we face higher energy bills, we need tougher regulation to protect vulnerable consumers.

That’s why we are legislating to be absolutely clear: the regulator cannot rely on markets alone either to protect consumers or to protect the environment.

Conference, it was just wrong that people off the gas grid paid more for their electricity than others. It was wrong, it has to end and it will.

It is wrong when people on pre-payment meters are ripped off. So from 1st September, the license conditions for energy companies have changed to stop it happening

And it’s just wrong that the energy companies bamboozle the most vulnerable customers and don’t provide clear explanations of what the best tariff is. It’s wrong. It has to end. And under this Labour government it will.

So people want a greener, more prosperous, more secure, fairer Britain.

That’s what people want, not a return to business as usual.

But who has the values to deliver?

David Cameron is good at green stunts. The huskies, the bike, with the car driving behind it, and the wind turbine on the roof.

But I tell you this.

It’s not green to put a wind turbine on your roof when time after time, wind farm applications are turned down by Tory councils. Sixty per cent of wind farm applications are turned down by Tory councils.

It’s not green to visit the Arctic circle, but when you’re in Europe, pal around on the fringes of politics with climate change deniers.

It’s not green to ride your bike to the House of Commons to vote against investment in green industries this year and next which will create the jobs of the future

You can’t be green if your only vision of the good society is the small state.

And that’s the truth about the Tories: they want to use the crisis as an excuse to do what they have always wanted to do. Cuts in public services, and tax breaks for the rich.

The Tories’ choices would make Britain more unfair, not less.

Inheritance tax cuts of £200,000 each for the richest 3,000 estates.

Tax credits cutback;

And as for those public service guarantees that the workers you represent have done so much to create: gone. The 18 week waiting time guarantee gone, the 2 week cancer referral guarantee gone, the 4 hour maximum A&E waiting time guarantee gone.

And why is this what they are planning? Because they believe in a different a model of public services to us.

One Tory council is even boasting about the Ryanair model of public services.

What is the Ryanair model?

Lots of queuing and waiting.

A bill every time you want something to eat or drink.

The many making do with the bare minimum, the few paying extra to get better service.

It works for an airline, but its no way to run a care home or a hospital.

So don’t let anyone tell you there aren’t big choices at this election.

Tough times don’t make our values less important, they make them more important.

On occasion, this government and the trade unions have our differences.

But all of us know the nightmare that is waiting for the people I represent and the people you represent if the Tories win the election.
And our job, together over the coming months is to fight.

Fight for our values.

Fight against the Tory alternative.

Fight for a more prosperous, fairer, greener Britain.

Together let’s unite and fight for the Britain we believe in.

Join Ed Miliband’s campaign for a strong climate change deal in Copenhagen at edspledge.com

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