Ed Miliband

First, I thank my hon. Friend, who is the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, for the really outstanding job they do. I think the observations from my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) on the Conservative party are right; I will not add to them because he put them well. The transition away is the hardest part of the negotiations, as I said, and that is not surprising, because some countries are extremely reliant on fossil fuels and are very reluctant—I think, in retrospect, they are quite reluctant about what was agreed at COP28, which is part of the difficulties we have. I agree with my hon. Friend about continuing to push for this to be part of the negotiations, but I think we also have to accept, as I said in my statement, that part of what we did on coal—and, to be fair, what the previous Government did on coal—is work with others. We have to work as much as we can both inside and outside the formal negotiations with others to drive these issues forward. The lesson of COP history is that we keep pushing forward on these issues; it might be slightly three steps forward, two steps back, but we do make progress.