14/11/2013 Question Time

Tonight, we are in Portsmouth, a city that has built warships for 500

years and last week was told ship building would end with the loss of

almost 1000 jobs. Welcome to Question Time.

Welcome to you at home, to our audience here, and to our panel.

From the Cabinet, the Liberal Democrat energy Secretary, Ed Davey.

Labour's shadow competition minister, Stella Creasy. Margaret

Thatcher's former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson. The leader

of the GMB, Paul Kenny. And from Isuzu Truck 's, the first woman to

run a UK truck company, Nikki King. We have, in effect, three

generations of politicians here for you to tax with your questions. A

question from Mark Green. Was Portsmouth dockyard sacrificed to

keep Scotland in the UK? Does anybody else have views on this? I

think it is a terrible decision for Portsmouth and Britain, and really

bad for the Navy. If Scotland is independent, where will they build

their ships? The Royal Navy will have to buy foreign ships. A

terrible decision. Anybody else? Just in response to that, being a

Scot myself and living in Portsmouth and worried about the impact of ship

building stopping, you need to realise there are a lot of Scottish

people who do not want independence, and chances are it

will not happen. Well, what I would like to discuss

is if BAE themselves took over and moved to Portsmouth, what was their

plan for the future? To go up to Scotland, where they have very

little shipbuilding experience in small ships? And you, with the

beard. Ship builders do not have a job for life by divine right. This

is about the government ordering, or not ordering, ships for the royal

navy. We are still in island nation, we import 95% of our food,

fuel, oil, daily, by C. The decision has been made to dramatically reduce

the size of the Royal Navy, which is why you guys have not got any job

is. You cannot expect to have a job for life, all the time you have a

government decimating the size of the Royal Navy. The original

question was, was Portsmouth dockyard sacrificed to keep Scotland

in the UK? As we know, the work is going to Scotland. It is difficult

when there are people who have lost jobs, families who are worried. It

is not just 1000 skilled workers who will be losing their jobs, but the

knock-on jobs connected to that. It is extraordinary difficult, but it

is not to do with the Scottish referendum. There are some difficult

decisions in a ship building and for maybe ship building. Remember, there

are 800 jobs being lost in Scottish shipyards as well. What we have to

do as a government is to do as much as we possibly can to help the

people who have lost their jobs, and to help the economy here in

Portsmouth. That is why we are going to invest ?100 million in the

harbour, so when the aircraft carriers come here, they can be

based here and we will have those jobs, and this can continue to be

the home, the proud home of the Royal Navy. And then we need to do

more. That is why there is a city deal being struck with Portsmouth

and Southampton to unlock land that the Ministry of Defence had, so more

business can be created in future, more homes can be built, because

they are needed, too. We are going to try and do as much as we can. But

I am clear, this is a difficult decision, and it is not going to be

easy for Portsmouth. But as a government, we are going to be there

to help Portsmouth. When your Defence Secretary said he did not

anticipate the UK would wish to place orders for ships outside the

UK, and it is something people in Scotland need to think about very

carefully, was that not a threat about removing this building from

Scotland and returning it to Portsmouth, if Scotland votes for

independence? If not, what did it mean? I understand it is a legal

requirement. If the ships were built in independent Scotland, the tender

would have to be across the whole of the European Union, and the rules

say that you can have a defence tender in your own country because

of security and fence interests, but as soon as those ships are built

outside, you have to offer it to all of the defence industry across the

European Union. He was stating a legal fact. Paul Kenny. I think we

need a dose of reality. In the last few days, the last week we have seen

about 10,000 jobs go out of our economy. The jobs at Portsmouth and

in Scotland are part of that pattern. I want to say this about

it. You cannot turn on and off highly skilled jobs, about building

ships, to protect them island nation. I will pick up the point

made by the gentleman in the audience. We have decimated the

Royal Navy. We have decimated it. We now have an entire surface fleet of

18 ship 's. We could not fight a Cold war, let alone go around the

world and protect interests. We could not fight an exclusion zone

around the Isle of Wight. We have run our nation into the ground. 1000

highly skilled jobs from Portsmouth. Another factory down the road,

absolutely decimating this area. I listened carefully to what Ed Davey

said and I will pick him up on it. 18 months ago, our union pleaded,

almost begged to the government, not to give the contract for ?500

million of ship welding work to Korea. These are ships, four ships,

that service the Royal Navy when they are at the. Four ships, and the

government, and the minister at the time was not you, but Philip

Hammond, gave that contract to Korea. And all they had to do was to

designate those ships as warlike. Put a catapult on the front. That is

something the French might have done to protect their ship holding. Was

it done on a money basis? They said no British company bid for those

jobs. There were not effectively any bids from British companies because

they were told it was going to Korea. That is the reality. If they

had been deemed as warlike, because they service the Royal Navy, the

truth of the matter is that that would have been work which would

have fitted into these yards and kept the jobs here and in Scotland.

This is not a battle between Portsmouth and Scotland because a

lot of people in Scotland will lose jobs. This is about proper support

for the Royal Navy and getting jobs that can be put, keeping skills in

this country here. You could have kept those ships in the UK. In the

same way that Mr Hammond sent rail carriages to do Germany instead of

giving them to Derby, he sent those ships to career, instead of keeping

British skilled workers in British yards and keeping our Royal Navy

afloat. Ed Davey, I will come back to you

later on those points. I run a small ship building yard in Portsmouth,

very small. We are very proud of our export record. We do not borrow any

money and the government has never helped us. Our landlord has now told

When you actually look at the we have to

When you actually look at the evidence, it was cold-blooded

murder, full-stop. I do not think there was any question that he

should be held accountable. She is absolutely right and I think this is

accepted by the Royal Marines themselves. Gillian Thompson, who

served in the Falklands, said that he was not going to stand around

bad-mouthing him, I do not condemn him, he is like a member of the

family who broke the law. What do you think of the Daily Telegraph's

petition to have the judge show leniency? Well, it might well be a

good journalistic stunt, but it does not alter my view, which is exactly

the same as that already expressed. That murder is murder? Yes, and

there were no circumstances to change that verdict. It was

thoroughly done, it was a prosper procedure, and I'm afraid there were

not any mitigating circumstances. One of the major differences between

the Royal Marines and the Taliban are that the Royal Marines work

within the parameters of the law, and the Taliban does not, so what

that Royal Marines in question did with one shot from his pistol was to

blur the lines between what is right, and what the Royal Marines to

nine times out of ten, or even more, and what the Taliban do on a daily

basis. If it was your son that was at the end of that bullet, Howard

you feel about that situation test murder is murder and there is no

justification for it. Does anybody disagree? I would turn that question

around, what if it was your son who had been out in Afghanistan for six

months, and they had seen their comrades' arms and legs hanging from

trees as we do not know the stress they were under. I think to condemn

him is awful. And he was out there in our name. I would agree if you

had not read the dialogue that was recorded at the time. There is that

point about the question about the incredible stress that we put our

Armed Forces under in the most difficult scenarios, but let's be

clear about it, that standard. How do we hold up the moral line

effectively if what we do is to execute injured prisoners? If the

boot was on the other foot, we rightly would be condemning whoever

did that to our personnel, irrespective of what the opposition

is, you do not execute people like that in cold blood, you just do not

do it. We have just had Remembrance Sunday, a hugely important day for

the families of those who serve, because we ask them to make the

ultimate sacrifice. One of the reasons we do that is to uphold

those values and freedoms, so we must consistent about that. My worry

about this case is that it has the potential to sustain the good name

of so many people. I have friends and family who serve and I'm the

president of the Royal British Legion in my local community. I feel

passionately about the importance of defending the good name of those who

serve overseas. Part of the way we do that is that when those people

transgress we say, it is not acceptable, not any different. You

are right, sir, murder is murder. Another question. Ed Davey, I am

sorry. I am going to agree, but I want to make the point following

from what Stella was saying, that the Royal Marines have a proud

history. They have done this country some magnificent achievements. One

of the reasons we have to see this process through, allow the evidence

to be judged and the sentencing to go through is because of that proud

history of the Royal Marines. Because we do not want the

reputation of the Royal Marines besmirched. Getting justice seem to

be done is the best way to uphold the proud tradition of the Royal

Marines. Obviously, with this individual case it is right that

justice is done. But if we are talking about murder is murder, what

about the civilians killed when we bombed Baghdad and Libya?

If this is murder, and I believe it is, what do they think about the

drone operators that kill hundreds of people every day? And the

civilians who are killed? Does anybody want to come in on that. On

the drones, it is a serious question we have to face up to. I think, if

the Americans keep using drones in the way they have been doing, I

think everyone is going to say this is setting a very, very dangerous

precedent. And I think the UN and the international community has to

look very seriously at these weapons, that they are potentially

transgressing sovereignty. In the case we know about, the sovereignty

of Pakistan. And while drones can be, if they are not used in a

military way, they can be used for surveillance very effectively, which

is how the British use them. There are serious issues on the

international law of the use of drones. The American government is

beginning to look at that. The point is, how do you compare this one

Royal Marines killing the injured member of the Taliban and, one must

assume, with what we know are hundreds of killings of women and

children in Afghanistan and Pakistan by drones? And we just say, well, we

ought to look at that. There are lots of strict rules of

international engagement and conflict. My concern with drones is

that international law has not caught up with them, and it must do,

so that people using this technology actually have to abide by the law.

The Royal Marines do. What do you mean by abide by the law? The law is

not being applied to those. The law has not caught up with the

technology, and I'm calling for it to do that. But until then you can

use them with impunity? We should not, and we don't. I do not know

enough about how the Americans use them. The Americans in the Armed

Forces are saying we have got to make sure we do not set a precedent

so other countries start doing what we are doing with drones, because

that would be very dangerous. Killing innocent civilians is wrong,

if it is wrong, it is wrong universally, and we should have the

courage to say that. I do not find that a difficult problem. I think

the difficulty is that the drones are getting away from us because the

Americans are now working on robot drones. They do not even have people

at the end of the TV screens guiding them. They are preplanned when they

take off, and the basic mission is to kill people. They do not even

have the possibility of aborting the thing if they look and see lots of

civilians instead of the supposed target. Simon Frost, please. Is

Typhoon Haiyan further evidence of mankind creating climate change? If

so, what can we do to reduce the risk of further disaster? There is

no connection at all between this typhoon and climate change. If you

look at tropical is, you will find there has been no increase in the

amount, or the strength of tropical storms for the past 100 years.

Indeed, this year, Typhoon Haiyan is terrible, appalling, but I am afraid

these things happen in the tropics. In the Atlantic hurricane season,

this year has been one of the quietest seasons in the Atlantic

within living memory. It is the quietest, although they predicted

there would be more for 30 years or more. If you look at what the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says, recognised as an

authority on this, they say there is absolutely no connection between

so-called climate change and tropicals or is, all tropical of all

kinds. -- tropicals or is. This is a scare which people latch onto but

there is no scientific merit in it, no statistical merit in it. There

has been no increase in extreme weather events at all, and this is

fact. Ed Davey, do you agree? I am glad to see that Lord Lawson is now

praising the IPCC. On this question, I think he is absolutely

right that there is no evidence that climate change is increasing the

frequency of tropical storms. There is evidence that it is increasing

the impact of the intensity of those storms. And this is how it is doing

it. Sea levels are rising. That is a fact and I hope Nigel Lawson will

agree. That is happening because of climate change because the ice caps

and glaciers are melting. With higher sea levels, islands like they

have in the Philippines and low-lying coastal areas are far more

vulnerable to these storms than they ever used to be. At is the real

danger of climate change. It is not always increasing extreme weather

events, although the IPCC says that in some cases they think it is, but

it is making these areas far more vulnerable. That is why these

disasters are on a scale we have never seen before. We have to take

climate change extremely seriously. We have to lead by making sure we

are taking measures, investing in renewables, low carbon and energy

efficiency. Next week I'm going to the global climate change talks in

Warsaw and working to sign a global deal in 2015. The world has to take

action. The evidence says it is more urgent than ever before and I hope

that Nigel, when he looks at the evidence from the IPCC, which he is

now quoting in favour, I hope he will realise the world have to take

action on climate change. -- the world has to. Isn't this so

confusing? One minute I am told I have two save my rubbish and the

next minute I am told it all goes to the same landfill site. One minute I

am told if we do not save the planet it will die in 20 years, and

somebody else says it is just the natural life of the planet. I wish

somebody would tell me exactly what is going on and then I could make a

decision. It is so difficult. I find it very confusing. I am in the truck

business. You will probably agree that the motor industry has done an

awful lot for climate change. Sorry, done an awful lot for climate

change? It has cleaned up its act, enormously. One of my trucks parked

in Calcutta, the air coming out of the exhaust pipe is cleaner than the

air going in. If you look around Calcutta, you will see thousands of

vehicles that are ten or 15 or 20 years old. I am not quite sure what

this little Europe can do when there is so much of the rest of the world

that needs to come up to speed. Stella Creasy. Nigel, I hope you

will take up the offer made by the Filipino delegate to the climate

change conference. I don't know if you saw his impassioned speech that

made a lot of people cry, about his view that there was a connection. I

take the scientific evidence. The evidence shows there is a 95% chance

that climate change is man-made. That means there is a 5% chance that

it is not, and it is right that we have a public policy debate about

that risk ratio. My sense is that 95% is a pretty good standard to

start thinking about what we can do to address that. That gentleman was

talking about trying to take dead relatives out of the rubble of

buildings and dealing with the consequences. We are not immune to

our own responsibilities about things we can do to create a more

sustainable way of living, and I do not want to take the risk that we

might be in that 5%, when the 95% of independent scientific evidence,

when I hear you talk, Nigel, opinion meets fact. The fact is that climate

change is happening. We can have different debates about how we

address it, but the idea that we can ignore it and make it go away, talk

to people in the Philippines and you will hear a very different story. I

think you are very confused, if I may say so. First of all, where

there is no scientific connection, and this is accepted by the IPCC and

the majority of scientists, is between global warming and

hurricanes and typhoons, including this terrible one in the

Philippines, which is particularly bad. That is what the question was

about. As for the 95%, what they are saying is that they are 95% certain

that the amount of global warming that there has been is largely due

to carbon emissions. But in fact, there has been very little global

warming. There has been none at all over the past 15 years. This is a

fact. If you go to The Met office, they admit this. Everybody knows

about this ad mitts on it. The amount of global warming is very

little. Ed Davey, what do you say to that? Every decade, it has been

getting warmer. This year will be the seventh warmest on record. It is

not just global temperatures, but temperatures in the oceans. The ice

caps are melting. It is not just that, but the sea level rising. It

is also the acidity in the seas. There is overwhelming evidence that

climate change is happening. Do not believe me as a politician. Believe

the scientists. The IPCC had 259 scientists from 39 countries, 50,000

comments for peer review. It was the most peer-reviewed piece of science

in human history. I think what Nigel Lawson challenged you with was that

there has been no change over the past 15 years. Is that true, or not?

It is flat. It is not flat. When we are talking about climate change, we

are talking about long periods. The global warming foundation, which

Nigel Lawson shares, which is trying to undermine the scientific

consensus on climate change, they take this 15 years. Because the

increase in global temperature has been slowing down, they say climate

change is not happening. When you ask scientists, they say, over a

short period, we do not expect to bridge is always to go up. If you

take a longer time period, temperatures are definitely going

up. He chooses his periods and he should not do that. Why do you say

he tries to undermine scientific opinion? What do you think his

motive is when you say that? You suggest an ulterior motive. Nigel

will have two answer that. Used the verve undermine, as though there is

some malpractice in disagreeing. He has done it in a very open way. He

writes a good book about it, but I disagree with most of what is in it.

What he does, he puts his argument, but he denies, as far as I can see,

the evidence from the international scientific immunity. It is not just

the international scientific community. The current chief

scientist in Britain believes there is a problem. The previous chief

scientist thought so, and his predecessor as well. The scientists

are telling us we have to take this seriously. Wasn't the second part of

the question, and what are we going to do about it? What can we do to

reduce the risk of further disasters? Getting on to actually

doing something about it will be slightly more difficult. Paul

Kenny. Throw that one to me! I remember in the 1970s scientists

were telling us that the ozone layer was being depleted. I remember it

well. Everybody went around changing from hairspray and getting rid of

fridges and all sorts of things. The idea that this has not been a long,

long, long run into where we are now is not an honest as Isham. The

acidity of the oceans is rising. It is man-made. -- it is not an honest

position. Somebody did not leave the fridge open. The ice caps are

melting. I do not have the scientific knowledge of other

colleagues, but that is what I see. What we need to do about it, this is

where the argument comes about how we have two adapt, what energy we

use and how we use it. Nicky is right. Many car manufacturers to the

decision to move to lower emissions. Really low emissions. This was

because they recognised this was where the markets were going to be.

That is what we have to force other people to do. In some sense, it is

just good business to lower carbon emissions. It is good business to

take the view that there is global warming and adjust our energy use,

our types of energy. We have been talking about carbon capture for

years. What about adding to fuel bills for the development of green

sources and other sources, are you in favour of that? I am, but I more

in favour of using some of the profits which the energy company

makes, instead of taking it out of the pockets of the consumers. Let me

hear from some members of our audience. The person in the blue

shirt up on the left, 1st... I think these are valid points which have

been raised, that I think scientific data is available only for such a

small window, given how long the planet has been in existence. I am

not a scientist, I am a person who works out on the water, and I think

the quickest way we can make an impact is to stop carrier bags.

There are so many things we can do. But that pollution. Stop carrier

bags in supermarkets, how simple can it be? And you in the middle. We are

missing the point. If you went to the Philippines and said, what is

the single most significant thing we can do to help them survive, they

are not going to be saying, carbon tax and Climate Change Act, they are

going to be saying, help me build a house with proper foundations. And

the person over there on the right hand side? In answer to the

question, what can we do about it, things like green levies are just a

drop in the ocean, when you compare it to parts of Asia and China, who

are having a massive impact on CO2 emissions. Nigel Lawson, do you

approve of green levies? I think the whole policy which Ed Davey is

promoting is positively immoral. It is not going to work, but it is

positively immoral. The gentleman towards the back there who said that

what the Philippines people want is to rebuild their country, I want to

get richer, because they are poor country, which has been exacerbated

in a huge increase in population, fastest-growing population in the

world... Ed is going to try to go to Warsaw to try to get a global

agreement, but he is not going to get that. We are not expecting to

get agreement next week. And they did not get one in Copenhagen, and I

will tell you why. But what is the positive immorality? I will tell you

what it is. The reason we use carbon -based energy, fossil fuels, is

because it is far and away the cheapest form of energy, and will be

for the foreseeable future, although not for ever. But for the

foreseeable future. And if you move away from that, you are moving from

cheaper energy to more expensive energy. It is causing enough

problems in this country. The developing world, China, is not

going to do that, and quite right, too. The increase in Chinese

emissions in one year is bigger than the total emissions from the United

Kingdom. So what we do is neither here nor there, unless there is this

global agreement. The immorality is that if you are inhibiting their

economic development by forcing them or persuading them to use expensive

energy instead of cheaper energy, which they are not going to do, then

you are going to condemn hundreds of millions of people in China and

India and in the developing world to premature death, unnecessary

disease, unnecessary poverty and destitution, that is what you are

doing if you get them to do that. It is positively immoral. It is

economic growth which will solve the problems in the Philippines and

elsewhere, and that means using cheapest form of energy. So you are

preventing growth in poorer parts of the world, which is immoral. We are

not doing that. What we are saying is that the developed world makes

the biggest cut in carbon emissions, and we need to help the poorer

countries get a cleaner form of development than we have had. Let's

take China, China is investing more in low carbon technology than any

other country in the world. It has woken up to the problems of

pollution and climate change, and I will tell you why. I have just been

to China. If you go to their big cities, the air pollution in places

like Beijing is dramatic, it is appalling. Nothing whatever to do

with climate change humble that is not what they think. They are going

to tackle this seriously. They are talking about building what they

call an ecological civilisation. They are moving hard and fast on

green growth, in order to try to change their whole model of growth,

so as not to damage the air and the environment and the climate. You are

behind the times, Nigel. If you look at China, other countries, even

America, at what President Obama is now doing with Secretary Ceri, they

are moving fast to try to reduce carbon emissions. That is why I

think we can get a global deal, which we desperately need. We need

to make sure that it enables our economies to grow, as well as

developing countries. In my industry, the Chinese are working on

low emission technology to sell to the rest it is not actually

happening in the remote villages of China. The Chinese plan is that by

2020, only 5% of their energy will be generated by wind power. And for

solar power, it is less than 1%. They have been building

coal-fired... If you look at the facts, they have been building

coal-fired power stations at the rate of pretty well worn a month for

several years, and they are continuing with that. These are not

being billed for decoration, they are for use. You have been taken for

a ride. There is a big change happening. Let me give you an

example of solar. The costs of solar have plummeted in recent years,

because China is manufacturing solar panels on a massive scale. It is

brilliant for villages in sub Saharan Africa which cannot connect

to the grid. They are going to have power much cheaper than some of the

fossil fuels which they currently use. They are going to save money

and go green. I am a materials scientist and I have been involved

in developing materials to move away from CFCs, to reduce greenhouse

warming within the atmosphere, and I would say that what we really need

to look at, whether we have got warming or not, and I do believe it

is happening, is that we reduce our need for fossil fuels, resource

efficiency. Nikki will have been developing her vehicles to have

light weight and parts which are efficient, and that is what we

should do. China are doing it. They know that is the way to go. Do you

agree with Nigel on this? And usually for me, I find myself

agreeing with Ed. We have scarce resources, why would we encourage

profligate use? Whether you think climate change is happening or not,

surely being more efficient with what we have got makes good business

sense? When the evidence is there that it is 95% likely that climate

change is man-made, I want to see Britain leading in this, because of

all the jobs that will come in renewable energy, from that

different way of living. I do not want Nikki Tuohy cycle more, I want

her to have a more sustainable way of living. I am sorry, Nigel, you

are the one who is confused, if you think we can carry on as we are now

without there being any consequences. Of course there will

be, and it is not just the people in the Philippines who will feel it. I

would like to hear from one or two more. We have got to keep doing it,

we cannot pretend that nothing is happening. Your turn. I was going to

say, everybody talks about emissions and industry, but farming accounts

for an enormous amount of greenhouse gases. Sheep in New Zealand, cows in

America, I remember learning it in geography GCSE. It is arrogant of

human beings to think that there is anything that we can do which will

destroy the planet. If it goes too far, the planet is going to have

enough, and it will just say goodbye to us. I am not sure whether you are

for cows and sheep or against them? I do not really have a political

stance on that! Up there, you, with the spectacles on. Greater use of

renewable energy is also about energy security, so we are not

vulnerable. All prices rose massively if you years ago, and then

fell again. Renewable energy is probably more stable in terms of its

cost. We have got a big audience here, to any of you side with what

Nigel Lawson has been saying? I agree totally. If you think that at

the moment, the ice cap in the Antarctic is as big as it has ever

been, and the planet, since the big bang, has been going in and out of

cold, hot, wet, drive. It does what it does. We are not the dinosaurs,

do we want to be extinct? We have got no choice. The planet will do

what it does, and we will have no influence. So you would take no

action on any front? One of those things you are talking about are

great, but we cannot affect the climate. We cannot affect the

change. Cleaning up the air is a great idea, renewables are a great

idea, none of that is wrong, but it is arrogant to think that we can

actually do anything to change the world. But scientists are telling us

that there is a good possibility that we are responsible, so we could

do things to limit the damage, is it not the right thing to do? The

science is telling us that it is 95% likely that man is responsible for

climate change, so therefore, we can do something about it. Why would we

not? And who is a coastal city? We are, in Portsmouth. Why risk this

city? Well, we started with Portsmouth, and we have come back to

Portsmouth. Next week we are going to be in Salford, in greater

Manchester. We have got a rather different kind of audience. We are

looking for people who are either under 30 or over 60, so that we can

see how to Geoffrey to generations you the big issues. So, we have got

on the panel, at the moment, the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and

the broadcaster Joan Bakewell. So, that is next week, in Salford. The

week after that we are in Falkirk, during the week when the Scottish

Government will be publishing its detailed case for independence. If

you want to come to Salford and you are the right side of 30 or 60, or

if you are any age and you want to come to Falkirk, you can apply via

our website or call the telephone number which is on the screen. The

debate continues meanwhile on BBC Radio 5 Live. Thanks to our panel,

and to all of you who came here. Good night.