Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Sep 2008 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency   Conservative Party Latest News from Conservatives.com Conservative Party Website
		Emissions Trading System Plenary Speech - Monday, 12th November 2007 Mr. President We propose to bring a new industry, aviation, into the European Emissions Trading System. Yet that system is spectacularly failing. It has not reduced carbon emissions at all, yet it has created a whole new stratum of bureaucracy and administration and expense for industry. It has transferred large sums of money from countries which have been responsible with initial allocations to those which have been profligate -- notably from Britain to France and Germany. Within Britain, it has had the perverse effect of transferring funds from hospitals to big oil companies. The ETS has created a complex web of politically influential vested interests and rent-seekers, which have lobbied to manipulate the system for their own ends. The Commission's plans to "get tough" over allocations will simply move the problem on. With lax limits on allocations bought-in from outside Europe, EU funds will flow to countries like China, where regulation is minimal and records may not be accurate. So big foreign polluters will bag vast profits for little effort; great damage will be done to European economies; and CO2 emissions will continue unchecked. It is quite simply scandalous that we propose to bring a new industry into this failing system. I say to you: put your house in order, before you think of extending it.