DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the European Union agreed a landmark deal, well it has been called that anyway, on climate change last week.  Twenty eight member states agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030.  Well the Energy Secretary and Liberal Democrat MP, Ed Davey, held it as an historic moment but it has been attacked from both the right and the left and Green campaigners, some of them saying it is not ambitious enough.  Well Mr Davey joins me now, a very good morning to you.  I mean some of those campaigners, as I say from all sides, saying it’s a fudge, these are not binding, the methodology is not binding.  

ED DAVEY: Well I think they’re wrong, many Green groups actually really welcomed it.  If you look for Green Alliance who are an umbrella group for all the Green NGOs, they have been very praiseworthy of the deal, its ambition level and also the UK government’s part in it and the targets for greenhouse gas reductions are binding on individual member states, so this is …

DM: But the methodology, how you do it, is not binding when it comes to energy efficiency, when it comes to use of renewables, what the mix is.

ED DAVEY: Well that’s a good part of the deal.  The deal that Tony Blair negotiated in 2008 was too rigid and inflexible and therefore more expensive, the fact that we have got flexibility for each member state means that each member state can work out what’s best for them, which technology, whether it’s supply side, demand side, energy efficiency, renewables, what works for them best and therefore they can do it in the most cost effective way because I really want to go green.  I think climate change is a serious challenge to our economy but we’ve got to do it in the least cost way, we’ve got to remember the impact on consumer’s wallets and purses and on business.  So I think we have got the best of both worlds here.

DM: So why don’t you cut some of those renewable subsidies and go nuclear?

ED DAVEY: Well the thing is, renewable subsidies are coming down fast.  The cost of solar energy is coming down fast, the cost of wind is coming down fast and that is one of the beauties of the things we’ve done in the UK.  You may not be aware but renewable electricity generation in the UK has more than doubled since the coalition came to power, the investment in renewable electricity has more than doubled so we’ve got a very strong record in the UK and what we wanted to do was to make sure that other countries are doing their fair share and we’ve achieved that in this EU deal.

DM: What would you say to me about wind farms given the change in the mix as we are discussing there, it is possible – and this is how some people have interpreted it – that Britain could go more nuclear and less windy so to speak, that we don’t need to have the wind farms anymore, we can achieve these targets through other means.

ED DAVEY: Dermot, we are going to have to do both, we are going to have to do more than both, we’re going to have to use carbon caption storage which is new technology that Britain is leading Europe in as well.   

DM: So we can use coal as well, carbon capture?

ED DAVEY: Only if you have carbon capture storage because we have to make sure we are not polluting the planet any longer but there are a whole set of technologies and that’s why the approach we have negotiated, which is very much a British approach, we’ve led this – I set up something called the Green Growth Group in Europe to get European ministers working together and I think Britain working with our partners have produced a deal which is very much in Britain’s interests.  We don’t actually have to do anything more in Britain because we’ve already got the Climate Change Act, we’ve already got the Energy Act, to create this push on low carbon electricity and energy but other countries are now going to have to do a lot more and that’s exactly right because Britain cannot solve climate change alone.  We’re doing a lot but …

DM: Of course you can’t solve it on your own but let me ask you, and it’s a broad question and it’s not from the climate change deniers so to speak but it is about the nature of scientific expertise and the interpretation with the benefit of hindsight.  Six hundred years ago there were scientists who thought that base metals could be turned into gold, they were called alchemists, they have been proven badly wrong.  Now scientists saying if we cut emissions by this amount, we might stop climate change, it is by no means an exact science is it?  We might, it might be too late.

ED DAVEY: I think science has come on quite a bit in the last six hundred years.  

DM: I’m talking about scientific orthodoxy, there are changes, in a hundred years’ time they may look back and say they didn’t do enough.

ED DAVEY: Okay, I think your six hundred reference is a bit silly to be honest  but if you look at the United Nations report, that has more scientists from more countries with a consensus and it is the most …

DM: I’m not sure where this is … what about leeches in medicine?  That was orthodoxy.

ED DAVEY: Can I just finish my answer, Dermot?  Let me finish my answer.  The piece of science that has come out of the UN, more scientists from more countries, is the most peer reviewed piece of science in human history.  Now peer reviewed science didn’t happen six hundred years ago, didn’t happen about alchemists and leeches.  

DM: I’ve talked to these scientists, you’ve talked to these scientists, they will tell you we don’t know come twenty years’ time or thirty years’ time, if we do manage to cut emissions by this much whether it will work.  They say it might work, you admit that?  

ED DAVEY: There are lots of risks, that’s why we’ve got to act urgently but the risk that they tell you is not that we can afford to do nothing, what they are saying is that we have got to act far more urgently, that’s why the UK has taken such a leadership role on this, why we are doubling our amount of renewable electricity, why we’re making sure our European partners and indeed working with the Chinese, the American, the Indians and the rest of the world to make sure the whole world is doing what needs to be done because this is about the future of our world because the costs …

DM: I am saying it might not be enough, I’m not saying it won’t work at all or that it’s not needed, it might not be enough.  

ED DAVEY: Well I’m glad you accept that it’s needed because …

DM: I don’t accept that it’s needed, I’m not a scientist.  One listens to the body of science and one takes it on but surely you must think that that view can change and it can change when the measurements come in, when the sea, global temperatures, how they have moved, only time will tell.

ED DAVEY: If you look at the way scientists have been changing their views on this, they have been saying it’s getting worse faster than they’d expected.  They are saying we should be taking action more urgently than they had previously have said and do you know what, I listen to the scientists and I wish other people, particularly on the right of British politics who want to deny this, who try to actually… who have lots of battles with Liberal Democrats and …

DM: Including Owen Patterson, your former colleague in the cabinet.  

ED DAVEY: Yes, like Owen Patterson.  I have to say, the idea that we should rip up the Climate Change Act would be one of the most irresponsible things we could do, not just in terms of the environment but in terms of the economy because the way we are approaching this is actually good for jobs.  We can see green jobs, we can see green growth, by refiguring out the economy we can actually make ourselves stronger, more prosperous, go green in an affordable way.  That surely is an attractive vision and it is one the Liberal Democrats are pushing.  

DM: Well we are talking a lot about co-operation within the European Union, what do you think from within government the prospects of Mr Cameron getting his way when it comes to migration from within the European Union, given what we are reading from the German Chancellor Angela Merkel this morning saying that’s a non-starter?

ED DAVEY: Well I think when you talk about the free movement of people in Europe people have to remember it is two ways.  There are over a million British people living in Spain, there are hundreds of  thousands of British people living in France, in fact there are tens of thousands of people living in almost every other EU country and if we were to pull up the drawbridge on the English Channel, the truth is that British people wouldn’t be able to come and go because they’d take action against us so I think it is in the interests of British people who want to live abroad, want to work abroad, want to go on holidays abroad, that free movement of people is a very important freedom.

DM: But I had the Defence Secretary in earlier, about an hour ago, and he was saying that some cities, some towns in the United Kingdom are being swamped by migrants from the European Union, that’s emotive stuff.

ED DAVEY: I work with Michael Fallon and I really respect Michael Fallon but I think those comments are more based on the Conservative’s concerns of the UKIP threat in the Rochester by-election than they are based on the facts and I think when we talk about an issue that is as difficult as immigration, we need to be quite responsible in the words we use.  The real policy that I think is very important for tackling immigration is a Liberal Democrat one.  The last Labour government got rid of exit checks which meant that when people came here on visitor visas we know longer know if they have left or not, whether they are here illegally.  The Liberal Democrats believe that we need to reinstate those exit checks and Theresa May needs to get on, because she has been dragging her heels on this …  

DM: And if they haven’t left, go and hunt them down?

ED DAVEY: Indeed because they have broken the law.  Illegal immigrants have broken the law and they should be deported, of course they should but at the moment because of that Labour change that this government needs to government on and reverse it, we don’t know whether people have left or not and that’s the Liberal Democrats actually taking a tough stand on immigration but a realistic stand going against law breakers.  

DM: Do you support the Prime Minister’s tough stand on this 1.7 billion quid, two billion euro that the European Union want because of the British economy doing so well?

ED DAVEY: Yes, I do support the Prime Minister on this European discussion for this simple reason.  If you look at other countries that are being asked to pay more money, they include Greece and Ireland and Cyprus as well as richer countries like the Netherlands.  Just remember, countries like Greece, Ireland and Cyprus have had the benefit of bail outs so …

DM: So what about the UK, don’t pay it at all, pay it a bit less, what?

ED DAVEY: If you let me finish what I was going to say, what that suggests is that rules that are being used to decide these amounts of money, whether it is for the UK or for Greece or Cyprus or Ireland, they look pretty suspect and sometimes the rules need to be revisited.  We’ve done that in the UK, we’ve done that in the European Union and I think these rules clearly need to be revisited here.  

DM: Secretary of State, thank you very much indeed.  Ed Davey there, very good to see you.