Amber Rudd: 'I'm a Thatcherite when it comes to climate change'
In her first interview since joining the Department of Energy and Climate Change,
Amber Rudd talks climate scepticism and business investment
By Jessica Shankleman in New York 23 Sep 2014
For a first ministerial trip, the New York Climate Summit is hardly a bad gig. Conservative MP Amber Rudd has flown out three months after being handed the climate change and energy brief as hundreds of world leaders and businesses descend on the UN headquarters to reveal how their countries and companies plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
She may be relatively new to the role, but Rudd has been thrown straight into the complexities of the long-running UN climate negotiations. On Sunday she stood in for foreign secretary Philip Hammond at the first ever climate change conference for foreign ministers, convened by US secretary of state John Kerry, and today she will join David Cameron at the UN secretary general summit, as it strives to build momentum for a deal on climate change in Paris next year.
"It's been a revelation to me – the effort and commitment going into Paris 2015," she tells BusinessGreen in her first interview since joining the Department of Energy and Climate Change. "The main purpose for me [here] is to get up to speed with the relationships and the issues to do with delivering one of the most important things we're ever going to do, which is limiting global warming to under 2°C."
When Rudd got the job, green businesses and NGOs breathed a collective sigh of relief that Cameron hadn't appointed a climate sceptic MP in the role, given her colleague Owen Paterson's controversial record when he was environment minister.
In contrast to some of her colleagues, Rudd appears unequivocally committed to the UK leading on climate action and attempting to encourage other nations to follow suit. Next May's election may be looming, but she already has a long list of tasks she is hoping to complete in the final few months of the parliament, including attending the next round of UN negotiations in Lima later this year, helping to produce a draft text for the Paris Summit, and capitalising the UN's Green Climate Fund.
"I feel very committed to this job and I'm hopeful I will be doing it for longer than seven months, but I appreciate the uncertainty," she says of the upcoming election. "I think you have to just continue to move forward as much as you can."
Rudd is quick to downplay any concerns that the election and a potential change in government would in anyway threaten the UK's position on climate change, highlighting the cross-party consensus on the topic. "I don't think you could get a cigarette paper between me and Labour on our commitment to getting a deal in Paris," she adds. "We are all completely committed to it, so whatever the outcome – and I certainly hope for a Conservative victory – it wouldn't slow down or speed up. Everyone is doing what they can.
"I want to move the whole negotiations forward. Everybody keeps saying – such as in the meeting on Sunday – there's no point waiting until Paris. That was the problem with Copenhagen: they waited too long. We've got these key landmarks along the way, such as capitalising the Green Climate Fund, getting to Lima, getting a draft text, getting commitments for the first quarter of next year."
Critics will warn, however, that the threat to climate action in the UK comes not from international foreign ministers but from within Rudd's own ranks. A poll earlier this month by Populus found that climate scepticism was rife among Tory MPs, with 53 per cent of Conservative MPs agreeing with the statement "it has not yet been conclusively proved that climate change is man-made" and only 30 per cent acknowledging it is established science.
Rudd joins with those who are sceptical about the poll's legitimacy, echoing critics who have suggested it actually asked the wrong question. As man-made climate change has not been proved conclusively, anyone who agrees with the 97 per cent of scientists who think the best evidence suggests it is happening would still struggle to tick "yes".
"I don't know what the questions they asked were and to be frank, most MPs don't answer polls, so I don't know who they got replying," she adds. "[Climate scepticism among Conservative MPs] is not my experience at all. The first world leader to speak about climate change at the UN was Margaret Thatcher and she of course was a scientist and the science is completely compelling. If I'm challenged on it by any of my own party – although I haven't been – I would say 'I'm a Thatcherite – aren't you?'"
Like her predecessor Greg Barker, Rudd had a career in the private sector before entering politics. Working for banks and venture capitalists is a useful background given the increasingly important economic imperative coming out of the climate debate.
Yesterday, the government announced a major deal with Unilever aimed at tackling deforestation and Rudd says she is keen to work more with the private sector to mobilise green capital.
"We want businesses to make those commitments so that it will drive behaviour of certain countries from a commercial point of view," she says. "It's a better way of delivering persuasive aid by having big businesses saying this is what we want to do and this is our terms."
However, unlike Barker, Rudd cannot lay claim to the full title of climate change minister. She may have taken over his old portfolio but she is on a lower paygrade with the title parliamentary undersecretary of state (PUS).
Her appointment led to fears that Cameron had quietly downgraded the climate minister position. But Rudd appears content with her new title, arguing that no MP can expect to move straight into a ministerial role from the backbenches.
"Traditionally, people go from being undersecretary of state as a first job and then minister as a second," she says. "If I go to conferences, people just say 'oh you're a minister', so it doesn't really make a difference.
"I'm the first to speak up for equalities for women, but we mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that every time something happens we don't like, it's an equalities issue. I don't think there's anybody I know of who came into parliament in 2010, who has gone from being a backbencher to a minister of state. You go via being a PUS. I'm perfectly happy with that."
Any doubt that Cameron had weakened his stance on climate change through this summer's reshuffle could also be countered by the appointment of Barker to the new role of climate change envoy for Number 10 last week, meaning there are now two influential Conservative MPs working directly on climate change issues.
Rudd argues that Cameron's decision to come to New York for the summit, ahead of the UN General Assembly, further underlines his commitment to the topic, and dismisses critics who argue the PM has pushed the issue to the back burner since coming to power in an attempt to appease the right of his party.
"There's been a lot going on," she says. "I don't feel that he's been in any way less committed and sincere about it. I think perhaps there have just been other headlines, but I know he is completely committed to making this central to what he's trying to achieve."
