It is a great privilege to rise and talk in this debate. I welcome the topic and I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can involve the devolved Administrations in this. The first half of the speech by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) was a spectacular opening, and I pay tribute to him for that. It went downhill a bit, with a couple of political points and some charged polling. I would be interested to see who commissioned the poll and what the target audience was, but I am sure that we can take that offline to discuss it further.
Representing Montgomeryshire, I represent the Centre for Alternative Technology. The people there have been talking about this subject and devising plans since way before it was fashionable, and way before devolution. They have been at this for decades. I would have liked to hear much more in this debate about getting communities involved, more broadly than politicians and more broadly than the typical argument about the devolved Administrations being left out. Clearly, much of what needs to happen at this very important COP involves UK reserved powers.
I very much welcome the fact that the UK Government chose Glasgow and that we will be able to showcase what the devolved Administrations and many cities have led on. I welcome both the working groups that were set up early in this process to bring the DAs together with the COP President and to bring together the cities and Mayors of the United Kingdom, including Edinburgh, Manchester, Cardiff and Birmingham. They brought our huge urban conurbations together to talk about what we can do in the urban and rural space.
I thought it was remiss of the hon. Gentleman to comment about who should lead the welcomes and who should be front and centre. We need to put politics aside over the last couple of weeks before COP. We need to get behind the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the negotiations that are happening right now to get international leaders together. As the Centre for Alternative Technology has set out time and again, this needs to be tackled on a global basis.
I have no doubt that we will hear in this debate how the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government are world leading and the best. Maybe even the Northern Ireland Executive will feature, but let us be frank about
the significant changes that have happened under this Government. Let us be frank about the fact that we have settled the climate change argument and are moving at a pace on energy distribution and on fundamental policies that have been difficult to grasp. This debate is happening in nuclear week, and there is no doubt in my mind that the nuclear industry has a huge role to play in achieving that, be that through the small modular reactors of Dwyfor Meirionnydd or through Wylfa in north Wales, a larger, more strategic site. Clearly, these are UK competences that we need to be lobbying and levering the UK Government on.