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DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
For years tackling global climate change was top of the agenda for world leaders but as officials prepare to meet in Durban at the Climate Change Conference this week there is a noticeable lack of political will, with the crisis of the eurozone of course and a possible double dip recession back home, it appears to cutting deficits rather than carbon emissions are now the priority. In a moment I’ll speak to the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne, he is heading to Durban later today for those talks but let me tell you about our Twitter commentators commenting today. They are James Kirkup, the Daily Telegraph’s political correspondent, Joe Murphy from the Evening Standard, the political editor there and Oliver Wright, Whitehall editor at the Independent. They provide their reactions via Twitter, you can follow them on the side panels on Sky News HD and you can follow on our website as well, skynews.com/politics and of course join in as well using the hashtag #murnaghan. Well a very good morning to you, Secretary of State, let me put that to you then, a simple point, a lot of people feeling that climate change, bothering about it is a luxury we cannot afford in these tough economic times.

CHRIS HUHNE:
Well I don’t accept that at all. In fact exactly the opposite is happening, if you look right the way across the world, we now have got a very substantial increase in the number of countries that are setting targets for carbon emissions, for carbon intensity, for energy intensity. The recent Chinese five year plan for example committed them to a lot of actions to tackle climate change, a quarter of their population covered by low carbon zones, they are building 28 new nuclear power stations which are low carbon, 10,000 kilometres of high speed rail in the time it will take us to get from London to Birmingham, so right the way across the world, whether it is China, whether it’s Brazil or even frankly in the United States, despite their reluctance to sign up to formal commitments, there is a tremendous amount of activity going on at state level and also amongst private businesses investing themselves.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So a new green industrial revolution, you’ve termed it that, before a green revolution but the Chancellor doesn’t seem to see it that way does he? We have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that he doesn’t want to put British businesses out of business by lumbering them with green taxes.

CHRIS HUHNE:
Look, if we are going to build the next generation of wind turbines, we’re going to need steel, we’re going to need aluminium. There’s no point in putting out of business for example the aluminium industry that relies on its costs, 40% of its costs are actually electricity …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So that’s the right strategy then for …

CHRIS HUHNE:
What we have to do is strike a balance. We have to make sure that we are making real progress in tackling carbon emissions but if we are loading so much on to particular competitive, internationally competitive business, that they simply up sticks from the UK and go somewhere else, that doesn’t help carbon emissions globally and it is a global problem. Nor does it help us locally in terms in the UK of jobs we need in the UK economy.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Isn’t it a bit of a contradiction though there, from the first answer you gave me talking about those great economies that can be based upon green credentials and yet these heavy industries that are already in this country, you’re going to cut them a bit of sack?

CHRIS HUHNE:
Well there is no way you can engineer and enormous industrial revolution, repower the whole economy based on low carbon domestically produced energy resources. Remember we have just come through the first three month period in 30 years when we have actually imported more energy, of oil and gas, than we’ve produced on our own continental shelf, so there’s also a big energy security argument here. It’s not just climate change, if we don’t take action on this issue we are going to become more and more reliant on the sort of volatile parts of the world like the Middle East, where we saw last year for example 38% increase in world gas prices.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So you have no issue, just to be clear about this on you and the Chancellor, you have no issues with George Osborne when he says we are not going to save the planet by shutting down heavy industries, all we will be doing is exporting jobs? You could put your signature to that?

CHRIS HUHNE:
The Chancellor has personally assured me he is absolutely not in the place where he is denying climate change, he wants to see a successful action against climate change and if you judge him by what he’s done, judge the government by what we’ve done, we’ve got a whole series of serious initiatives since we came in which I believe do add up to support for the view that we are the greenest government ever.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But it is going the wrong way, I mean we heard again in the Autumn Statement, a 3p increase in fuel duty, that’s cancelled. Well we know of course that deters people from driving and we’ve also heard previously about the cut in solar energy subsidies. That doesn’t seem like the government that is the greenest ever.

CHRIS HUHNE:
We have had an enormous increase in world fuel prices, oil and gas prices have been up very, very sharply and that was one of the main reasons the Office of Budget Responsibility gave for why the economy has a worse outlook now than it was thought to have a year ago so there are very strong incentives to economise on fuel and any driver who goes to a petrol pump is going to find …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But climate change a burning threat or not?

CHRIS HUHNE:
It is a burning threat, absolutely, and that is precisely why, if you look at everything that we’re doing, if you look at the fact that we have new incentives for clean heat which the Treasury signed off, at a cost of more than £800 million, we’ve got the new Green Deal coming up to save energy in our homes which is going to be launched at the end of next year and where the Treasury just announced £200 million of special incentives to make that work. If you look at electricity market reform, the fact that we brought forward the subsidies for renewables so that we can get the onshore wind, the offshore wind that we need. I mean this is the fourth carbon budget where we’ve set a target for our carbon emissions further ahead than any other major industrial country – this is a substantial track record and you have got to judge people by what they do.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Can I ask you about some of those measures, about what you intend to do about wind farms? I know you are a big fan, if you’ll excuse the pun, you are quoted this morning saying 32,000 more turbines.

CHRIS HUHNE:
No, I’m not quoted as saying 32,000 turbines, this is an …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Well certainly tens of thousands more, where are they all going to go?

CHRIS HUHNE:
This is an extrapolation of a whole series of numbers which frankly you occasionally get in the press. We have got a major programme for renewables because we are signed up along with all the …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
And how many wind turbines will there be?

CHRIS HUHNE:
Well that depends enormously on the technology. As far as I can see, the calculations in the Sunday Times were based on wind turbines generating about two megawatts, in fact the latest generation offshore from Vestas, one of the wind turbine companies, is more than three times that size so you can immediately cut that number enormously ….

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So 10,000 more wind turbines.

CHRIS HUHNE:
… but there is absolutely no doubt that over the period to 2050, if we’re going to get our reliance on imported energy from volatile parts of the world right down and if we don’t we’d be reliant on 88% of our energy needs on volatile parts of the world like the Middle East, we can actually get that way down if we have a low carbon electricity generation strategy which relies upon renewables, yes, but also on nuclear and also on clean coal and gas. It is those three families. We don’t know at this stage which are going to be the most successful and cheapest technologically and that’s why we need a portfolio to make sure that we don’t bet the farm on one particular technology.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
That’s for the future but in the meantime …

CHRIS HUHNE:
This is all about the future.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But the consumer is paying right now extra on their bills, about £100 a year, the consumer is paying and how much more will they have to pay for this expansion?

CHRIS HUHNE:
Actually what is very clear, we have just announced this in the annual energy statement, we put more information in the public domain about bill impacts than any government has ever done before and what that shows is because we are actually adding less to people’s bills in a whole series of ways …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
But you are adding to them.

CHRIS HUHNE:
No, the last government for example was proposing to add to bills to fund carbon capture and storage, to fund clean heat, now we’re doing that out of general taxation. As a result of that, the addition to bills which we inherited from the last Labour government actually goes negative in three years’ time and from three years’ time right the way through to 2020, in every single year we will be saving more on the average energy bill than we are adding to it and we are doing that basically because we are promoting energy saving measures both through the savings of energy in our homes so we are cutting the amount of energy …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So fuel is costing more but you will be using less of it is what you’re saying?

CHRIS HUHNE:
I think what’s really key for consumers is the warmth, the cosiness they feel in their home and the overall cost to the energy bill and it is a scandal that somewhere like Sweden for example, they spend less on energy than we do even though they have cosy homes and they have temperatures in January which are seven degrees below ours. Do we want to just warm up the atmosphere or do we cut that waste? If we cut that waste, we make that real case for energy saving, we can actually have lower, from policy terms we can soften the blow which will be coming sadly on our projections, from these volatile parts of the world.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
How many jobs would you estimate that this green technology has created as of now?

CHRIS HUHNE:
Well the estimate at the moment is that there are nearly a million people employed in the UK that are …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
It has created a million new jobs?

CHRIS HUHNE:
We think about a million people are involved in the low carbon economy and we think it has been growing very substantially all the way through the recession, faster than developed countries, and it will go on growing. This is a new industrial revolution, this is an enormous source of growth. If you look back to past periods of massive austerity like the 1930s, what you had then was new industries bringing jobs. You didn’t have the old industries coming back and bringing jobs, you had whole new industries like for example people making radio sets and cars and light appliances, toasters. Now we have green jobs coming back in the new green industries and they are growing very rapidly. Economies are incredibly adaptable and they will go on being innovative and creating new jobs and the green growth opportunities are enormous.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Let me ask you about this age of austerity which of course the coalition is in. It is going to continue two years at least beyond the next election and as your colleague, Danny Alexander, has been saying, you are going to come up with the Conservatives with a joint plan to take us through and beyond that election of 2015.

CHRIS HUHNE:
Well all Treasury plans include a projection going beyond elections, I can remember when Ken Clarke had a projection going beyond, when he was Chancellor, had a projection going beyond the ’97 election and he was amazed when the Labour government that was elected in 1997 actually applied it and he said I would never have done that. The reality is that these projections are part, in my view, of a modern obsession with being precisely wrong rather than roughly right. I am a former economic forecaster, you can just about get forecasts for the year ahead. Do I think the world is going to look precisely to the last decimal place as the Treasury predicts for two years after the general election? Well all my experience says no.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Okay, that’s the economic side of it but the political side of it is that those projections, right or wrong, those projections take us beyond the next election. Does that mean that you, the Liberal Democrats, go in with the Conservatives into the 2015 general election saying our economic plans are identical? Because of course your President, Tim Farron, has said in the past that at some point there has to become a divorce and you stand as separate parties in that election.

CHRIS HUHNE:
Absolutely not. Clearly what we have said is that the coalition agreement is for this parliament, we will be fighting as Liberal Democrats in the next general election as an independent party with our own manifesto and that point …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
With your own economic manifesto?

CHRIS HUHNE:
Well clearly there are a number of assumptions made in these Treasury numbers which, as I say, I think frankly if the world is anything like these
Treasury numbers I will take you out for a slap-up meal when they happen because frankly these things are not, economists are not very good at projecting them, but the point here is that simply we have a coalition agreement for this parliament, we will then make our judgements as an independent party in the run up to the general election on what we think is appropriate in terms of the balance of tax and spend, in terms of the precise targets at that time, in terms of the budget deficit and debt and so on. We are a long way off and frankly to have a dispute about that seems to be so far away from reality, I find it truly astonishing.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Finally, Secretary of State, can I just ask you about this issue, the personal issue about the points, the speeding points, way back in 2003. We know that the Crown Prosecution Service is now looking at the case, presumably you’d like to see that cleared up as soon as is possible.

CHRIS HUHNE:
I would love to see it cleared up as soon as possible, I want to see the Crown Prosecution Service obviously get to the bottom of this and they need to do whatever they have to do in terms of pursuing. I gather they currently have a dispute with the Sunday Times at the moment, but as long as they get to the bottom of this, that is all I want because I am very confident that that will clear things up.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Okay, but would you resign if they decided to prosecute?

CHRIS HUHNE:
That is a hypothetical issue. The key point that I am expecting and looking forward to is that they get to the bottom of this and the matter is resolved.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Okay, Mr Huhne, thank you very much indeed. Chris Huhne there, the Energy Secretary.