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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, could solar power save the world?  That’s the question raised by a UN report into climate change this morning.  The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, says the world should urgently switch to clean sources of energy to avoid catastrophe.  Now green energy has been a bit of a sore point in this country for the coalition government, the Lib Dems seem of course an awful lot keener than the Conservatives.  Well the Liberal Democrat Cabinet Minister, the Energy Secretary Ed Davey, joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Davey.  I’m right though aren’t I, there are tensions within the coalition about this, we all know that some within the Conservative Party regard all the green subsidies as ‘green crap’. 

ED DAVEY: Well it is true that the coalition government has doubled renewable electricity so we have got a very good record of what we have actually done but I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t some tensions.  There is a current discussion about onshore wind, the Liberal Democrats believe that it is very successful, it’s the cheapest form of large scale renewable energy.  There are some on the Conservative side that want to cap that but the danger of that is, you wouldn’t be tackling climate change as effectively as you could and actually you’d end up putting up people’s bills because onshore wind is the cheapest. 

DM: That’s the point isn’t it, we saw, it was in your statement wasn’t it that came out that there was a little bit of fiddling at the margins with some of the so-called environmental taxes and subsidies to get some money off people’s bills.  Given what we’re reading from the IPCC about catastrophe, about billions of people being affected, about flooding, about drought, about disease, about hunger – shouldn’t we be doing everything we can?  We shouldn’t be cutting green levies, we should be increasing them.

ED DAVEY: I agree we should be doing absolutely everything, this is a stark warning that the world is looking down a precipice if we don’t take action now but it also says, some good news, that the cost of renewables, things like solar and wind, are coming down so we can go green in an affordable way.  The coalition government has actually done more on the green economy, more on low carbon, than any predecessor.  We’ve doubled renewable energy …

DM: But wasn’t that a backward step in the autumn statement?  We know about the £50 that came off people’s bills under a variety of measures taken there and some of the funding coming from direct taxation but nevertheless, look at this IPCC report, I know you’ve absorbed it but shouldn’t we be on a war footing here, the world is burning. 

ED DAVEY: The truth is that Britain is leading the way, not only have we implemented actually the Energy Act 2013 to create the world’s first ever, the world’s first ever low carbon electricity market, we’ve got the Green Investment Bank, the first bank that’s not just being judged by financial performance but by how it’s cutting carbon and in Europe, in Europe the coalition has been leading the way to make sure that Europe has the most ambitious, the toughest greenhouse gas reduction targets.  I know that’s not what is often reported but Britain is leading the way.  We’ve got to do a lot more and the world’s got to do a lot more but we are showing that it can be done. 

DM: But David Cameron said, the Prime Minister said that he wants to erode the levies on gas and electricity bills for political reasons because Labour came up with this wheeze that seems to have gone down very well about freezing utility prices, about freezing gas and electricity prices and you, the coalition, had to do something to respond and you’ve done this, you’ve cut the levies.

ED DAVEY: Well my point to you is that we can do both, we can invest in energy efficiency, we can invest in renewables, we’re doing that.  There has been £31 billion of renewable investment announced since 2010, we have a huge … Later this month I’ll be announcing billions of pounds of new renewable investment projects.  You may be interested to know that we are the world’s leader in offshore wind power, not just the best in the world but we have got more offshore wind than the rest of the world put together, we are the top place to invest and if you take another really important low carbon technology, carbon capture storage, where we capture the carbon emissions from power stations and industrial plants and storing it safely underground, we’re leading the world again in that.

DM: I wanted to ask you again, this is about the IPCC thing, about the solar side of things, we can’t really go that far can we with our climate?

ED DAVEY: Well actually you are seeing solar make a big contribution in the UK because even when there are clouds you have still got solar power.  You are right to say that some of the biggest wins in solar power are going to come in the hottest places, that makes sense but there is a type of solar power that people don’t appreciate.  They are used to the panels on the roofs, there is another type of solar power called concentrated solar power where the opportunities are in the deserts of the world and that electricity can be cabled to cities and to other countries so when we are looking at the new technology around solar, not only are we seeing the costs down but we are seeing the potential to increase.  That’s one of the reasons why, despite the warnings, because we have to take them seriously, I am actually optimistic that we can tackle this, if we have the political will, if we have the political leadership to invest in low carbon, particularly renewables. 

DM: Can I ask you a little bit about this whole issue of MPs and parliamentary behaviour which is obviously all across the newspapers this morning and has been during the course of the last week?  Of course your own party not immune from some of these charges, is there anything that could be done to enforce MPs to behave appropriately in their personal lives, behave appropriately when it comes to their staff or is it a matter of personal responsibility, of morality more or less?

ED DAVEY: Well individuals have to take personal responsibility but I think parties have to make sure there are proper complaints systems, so that when people are being badly treated they know they can raise it with someone else, they’re not scared by ….

DM: But with the parties, there is a discussion having some sort of overall … Parliament doesn’t have a human resources department, setting something like that up so that could be the conduit for complaints and concerns?

ED DAVEY: It may well be that parliament needs to do something itself but you’re right, we’ve had problems in our party, as have all the parties and we’ve acted now to make sure there is a proper code of conduct, that there are independent people that members of staff can go to because we should be judged by the highest standards and we should meet them and we should do everything otherwise people’s trust in politics, which is not exactly high at the moment, will not recover.  It’s important that it does recover so we have to set the highest standards. 

DM: This issue, it comes from your party as well, about where the bar should be set about the personal side of behaviour, so we have Nigel Evans who admitted to of course nothing criminal whatsoever but admitted during the course of his testimony that he was guilty of some inappropriate behaviour during his duties and during his social life and on your side we’ve got Lord Rennard who was found guilty of inappropriate behaviour and he’s become a social pariah and Nigel Evans, they are saying let’s have him back into parliament.   Do you think Lord Rennard has been treated rather harshly then?

ED DAVEY: Well there was no court case against Lord Rennard, let’s be clear so…

DM: But it was a degree of behaviour. 

ED DAVEY: Indeed, whether what’s happened with Nigel Evans, Chris Rennard or others, I think we do need to make sure that all politicians, whether in the House of Lord, the House of Commons or local government, they are abiding by the highest standards and I think the level of scrutiny that modern politicians get is obviously a lot greater than it was in the past but let’s be clear, these sorts of things happened in the past, possibly even worse but that’s no excuse.  We need to raise standards in public life and whether it is about people’s expenses, whether it’s about people’s behaviour, there has to be a  …

DM: But the question about what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, so we have inappropriate behaviour on both sides and no criminal activity on both sides, Lord Rennard and Nigel Evans.  Nigel Evans of course will be welcomed back into parliament, Lord Rennard doesn’t sound like he’ll have anything to do with your party ever again.

ED DAVEY: Well I’m not sure whether that will be the case actually but I’m not close enough to the discussions that are going on with Chris Rennard but …

DM: What discussions, there are though discussions taking place are there?

ED DAVEY: Well I think there are mediation discussions but let’s remember that there are no criminal charges, the police found there was nothing wrong from their point of view but we did an internal inquiry, a detailed internal inquiry in order to show that we wanted to take it seriously and to take it seriously but more than that …  

DM: But you are saying there is a way back then for Chris Rennard? 

ED DAVEY: Well that’s for others to decide when they have those discussions but my point is, we’ve learnt from that, we asked for an independent report done not just on what happened to Lord Rennard but actually how the party handle such matters because there is room for improvement in our own party, I think there is room for improvement in all political parties and we have to take this seriously.   

DM: There’s room for improvement in your poll rating isn’t there, 7% in the latest poll, 7%.  Do you think it was entirely wise that Mr Clegg engaged in those debates with Nigel Farage, it seems to have only benefitted UKIP. 

ED DAVEY: Well if you look at the polls today I think all the main political parties are being hit and I think it’s more to do with the Maria Miller expenses scandal, with what we’ve seen with Nigel Evans and I think it’s part of this lack of trust in the political establishment and one can sort of understand that and that’s why I say, because getting the trust back into politics – because I think we actually have a good political system – getting the trust back ought to be a top priority for all political parties and we need to make sure the expenses system is as robust as possible as well as our behaviour.   

DM: So that is why UKIP are benefitting, you don’t think that Nigel Farage actually won those debates, that it wasn’t a wise idea of Nick Clegg to give UKIP that platform? 

ED DAVEY: Well I actually think it was wise because the pro-European argument which the Liberal Democrats believe in, they haven’t been aired very much in recent years.  All we’ve heard is the negative side from the anti-Europeans who don’t tell you that actually in Europe it improves our economy, means more jobs, in Europe we are able to tackle crime more effectively by working together so criminals jump over and hop over national boundaries and to get them and bring them to justice we need to work with others.  Interpol doesn’t work terribly well, Europol is far more effective and if you look at climate change, which is one of my responsibilities, it is much easier, you can actually only tackle climate change if you work with other countries, particularly the European Union so those are positive arguments for Europe, whether it’s the economy, on tackling crime, on tackling climate change, those positive arguments haven’t been heard as much and I think Nick was right to make them. 

DM: But as a party, yes the European issue does define the Lib Dems but in other areas have you lost your identity?  Your colleague Jeremy Browne is writing about it in his book that’s out at the moment, saying there is no point for the Liberal Democrats to define themselves as not the Conservatives or not the Labour party, that doesn’t give you a core Liberalism, you have to refine that identity and project it back to the public to have any chance in the elections that are coming up.

ED DAVEY: We haven’t lost our identity, I think liberalism is the strongest political set of values in the world today but we do have to project it better, I agree we’ve got to communicate what we’ve achieved in government better.  We have been striving for a fairer society and sometimes the Conservatives haven’t liked that but we’ve managed to win the tax argument, to take millions of the low paid out of tax, to get the £10,000 tax free allowance so that people are getting a £700 tax cut this year …

DM: But that’s not just a Liberal argument is it, the Conservatives have bought enthusiastically into it and so much so that they are now claiming it as their own.

ED DAVEY: It’s interesting but in their manifesto their major tax policy was to cut inheritance tax for millionaires and our policy was to take the lowest paid out of income tax, that is a fairer approach and we won that argument in government but we’ve also won the argument on the green agenda.  As I’ve been saying, we’ve really made progress, doubling renewable energy, that’s a Liberal Democrat priority so whether you are building a fairer society or a greener society, we are winning that argument and we have got to get that message over to people though, as well as our message on for example helping the most disadvantaged children in our schools through a Liberal Democrat policy. So I think we have achieved a lot and I’m proud of what we’ve achieved but we’ve got to get that message over. 

DM: I’m sure one thing you would agree with, that would be core Liberal policy, is getting more women, more females representation in parliament.  I’ve been discussing that with Harriet Harman and Ken Livingstone, we’ve been hearing that from all the parties of course yet of course we know that the Lib Dems are the absolute worst when it comes to female representation and indeed you have no female cabinet ministers.  You have very able women in the party as MPs, why aren’t they in the cabinet instead of you?

ED DAVEY: Well we do have some able women, we unfortunately lost one or two at the last election.  What’s interesting, if you look at our parliamentary candidates in our target seats, seats where current male MPs will be standing down or retiring, most of those seats are choosing female candidates so we really are grappling with this issue, I think it is about time too.  We are certainly not proud of our record in the past but what we have to do is focus on the future and we are making changes to do that.

DM: Okay but let’s deal with the present because as I say, we’ve got all the Lib Dems in the cabinet are male, you’ve got Ministers like Lynne Featherstone, Jo Swinson, Jenny Willett, the only implication we can draw is that they are not quite cabinet grade, they are not good enough that’s why they are not in the cabinet otherwise they would be.

ED DAVEY: Well they are ministers and they are very effective …

DM: But they are not good enough to be cabinet ministers?

ED DAVEY: I think they are good enough to be cabinet ministers.  We only have a few places of course, it’s for Nick to make those decisions but I think if you see the way that the Liberal Democrat female ministers have performed – you mentioned Lynne Featherstone, you are quite right, she led the way on things like same-sex marriage, she led the way on female genital mutilation, exposing that, I am really proud of what Lynne has achieved.  Look at Jo Swinson, she is now doing the job that I used to do at the Department of Business in making sure we have got flexible working patterns for parents so they can choose how to look after their children that first year between the father and the mother.  This is radical stuff, Liberal Democrat stuff, delivered by really able female women.  

DM: But you have got the Coalition Agreement, you have got these cabinet posts, none of them are taken by women in spite what we have heard now and what we have heard from Liberal Democrats in the past, the only implication you can draw is that current Liberal Democrat MPs and Ministers are not quite cabinet grade.

ED DAVEY: Well I’m not sure that is the implication you can draw, we have a very small …

DM: Well why aren’t they in the cabinet then when you want more women in the cabinet?

ED DAVEY: I’ll tell you what, if we have a majority Liberal Democrat government, and maybe our poll ratings don’t say that today, but if we did I’m sure there would be a huge number of female MPs in that cabinet.

DM: Okay, well there we have a pledge there.  Mr Davey thank you very much indeed, Energy Secretary Ed Davey there.