The Rt Hon Malcolm Bruce MP

November column (I)

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Local flooding testimony to climate change…

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The severe flooding across the North East following on flooding only two weeks before is testimony to the fact that we are living through climate change.

Of course, we have had rain and floods before, but, generally, the North East benefits from being in the lea of the Cairngorms and we do not often experience rainfall of this intensity, closing roads and raising the flow of our rivers so much that they reach record or near record highs.

I have every sympathy for the residents of the Meadows who had to be evacuated as the waters rose - a situation that had been put on standby only weeks before.

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But my activities focus on global dimension

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Councils and Government have to make a constant review of the measures we need to adapt to the effects of more severe weather events. The Meadows is close to the Deveron on land that has been known to flood and it may be that more flood relief measures will need to be considered.

It is ironic that I have had a major focus on climate changes issues in the past week, having spoken in a debate in the House, taken part in a legislators' forum hosted in Copenhagen by the Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, and organised by GLOBE, of which I am an office bearer, and seen for myself the retreating glaciers and growing melt lakes in the Himalayas.

The Parliamentary debate focuses on the 10-10 campaign in which people and organisations are encouraged to sign up to reduce their emissions by 10 per cent by the end of 2010. I am undertaking to it myself as are many organisations.

A Liberal Democrat motion called on Government and Parliament to join in, which the Government chose to oppose on weak and spurious grounds. The Minister claimed that the Government had taken steps to achieve greater cuts over a longer time scale which clearly implies a ten per cent reduction could be achieved by the end of next year if it applied itself to it. However, disappointingly the Government seemed unwilling to allow Labour MPs to support the case for Parliament giving a lead. A few honourably defied their whips, but sadly not enough to carry the day.

At the weekend I attended a forum of legislators from 20 countries - ranging from Canada and the USA through Brazil to China, India, South Africa and Europe

There is growing agreement on some of the principles needed to secure international agreement on tackling climate change. However the Prime Minister played down the likelihood of agreeing a treaty and funding mechanism at the Copenhagen summit next month.

Nevertheless, the Environment Minister, Connie Hedegaard, who is leading the negotiations, made the fair point that the money required by 2020 was far less than the rich nations have committed in the past year to tackling the financial crisis.

I made the point (as a member of GLOBE) that the poorest people in the poorest countries were the biggest victims of climate change which they had done nothing to cause yet they had to agree any deal at Copenhagen or thereafter. The Prime Minister agreed that without finance for adaptation and the rich countries taking the lion's share of emission cuts they could not be expected to sign up and the process would founder.

As part of the International Development Select Committee's visit to Nepal and Bangladesh to report on the Department for International Development's substantial programmes in these two countries I had an opportunity to view the retreating glaciers in the Annapurna Range in the company of Nepalese climate change specialists who were able to point out the glacial retreat and the growing size and number of melt lakes.

Climate change is happening now and the effects are being felt down river from the Himalayas in Bangladesh, where cyclones, severe floods and rising sea levels are threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions.

These are the victims - not the perpetrators - and we have an obligation to help them with technical help and resources to adapt to climate change while changing our own behaviour to try and prevent the worst outcomes of incontrollable change if we cannot take action to stop and avert the extreme consequences of rising sea temperatures.

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Shell job losses cause a tremor

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News of further job losses at Shell will send a tremor through the North East economy. It is as a result of the company's poor performance and is world wide rather than reflecting on the particular prospects of the UK Continental Shelf.

Shell is not the only operator and the oil majors who pioneered the early development of the North Sea are reviewing their priorities.

There are other companies who want to apply their enterprise to squeezing more oil and gas out of the UK. However, they rely on securing investment funding from the financial markets, exposing them to the effects of the credit crunch compared with large companies which have financed development form their internal resources.

That makes it more important that it uses its leverage on the banks to lend more and maintains a tax regime that encourages investment.

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Taking on the BNP beats promoting them

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The participation of the BNP in Question Time may have done wonders for the programme's ratings but didn't necessarily reflect to the BBC's credit or serve the interests of balance TV debate.

The programme was inevitably a stitch-up for which Nick Griffin was not well prepared and which, with one or two exceptions he stumbled through.

It is worth recording that the BNP did not increase their vote in the Euro elections. It was just that the fall in the Labour vote enabled them to gain two seats.

The only way to deal with the BNP is to tackle them head on as Liberal Democrats have done in Burnley where Labour has been routed.

The BNP need to be exposed as racists whose approach will only inflame, and, in particular, highlighting the suggestion that immigrants could be sent home is a lie and a deception. Millions of them are British citizens and this is their home.

Yes we need a fair and balanced immigration policy and cannot open our borders unconditionally and we also need to engage the concerns of poor working class whites and help them raise their life chances.

But promoting community resentment and strife with dishonest and offensive policies will only aggravate the problems rather than addressing them.

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Scottish suspension bridges in Nepal - information anyone?

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I came across a very interesting local link in Nepal. The first trail suspension bridges in that country were built in Aberdeen at the turn of the last century. About 20 were shipped out and most of them are still in use and look remarkably like the Cambus O' May bridge.

I haven't yet had the chance to know exactly who designed and built the Nepalese bridges but our local ones were designed by James Abernethy.

I would be very interested to know if anyone has the history of the Nepal bridges - who designed and built them etc as a new programme is going ahead, partly financed by the British Government to build bridges using similar techniques but enabling them to carry vehicles and not just pedestrians.

2 November 2009