So how is the environment secretary going to get people to change the way they behave? While cynics and those with vested interests mock the efforts of individuals as small beer, questioning whether recycling the odd baked bean can and composting tea bags is worth the trouble given the dismal bigger picture, Miliband is convinced we must all do our bit.
“Individuals can make a difference,” he says. “If you count energy, transport and food, 44% of total emissions come from households. Individuals will make the difference between cracking and not cracking this global warming phenomenon. But they can’t do it on their own. They need government and business to pull their weight.”
Through the window of the chip shop, I catch a glimpse of Miliband’s wife Louise, a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra, pushing their son Isaac in a buggy. The toddler was controversially adopted from America as a newborn, with Miliband and his wife present at his birth. It’s a subject that’s strictly off limits — though Miliband can’t resist cooing at his golden-haired boy.
“Fatherhood is really fantastic, just the best thing,” he says wistfully, before quickly going back to the environment. Last autumn he wrote to the chancellor suggesting a multi-billion-pound package of taxes on fuel, cars, air travel and consumer goods to combat global warming. His proposals, including “substantial” increases in car tax, a “pay per mile” pollution tax on motorists, and a new mechanism to enable the Treasury rather than the consumer to cash in when oil prices fall, were leaked, creating a furore.
Starting with car tax, I try to pin him down on some of this but Miliband is far too canny to wander into such an obvious trap. After all, the man who has been described by admirers as the “true heir to Blair” is looking to life after the prime minister departs, and his career prospects would hardly benefit from annoying Gordon Brown, Blair’s likely successor, by pronouncing on fiscal policy.
“Car taxation is something the government looks at every year in the budgetary process. I didn’t suggest this interview because I wanted to announce a new Defra tax policy. You’re very welcome to carry on asking me tax questions but I’ll give you a straight bat. You can try them and see if I make a slip, but . . .” he tails off.
Thanks in part perhaps to this sort of caution, Miliband’s political rise has been meteoric. It’s hard to think of a single gaffe he’s made in the five years since he joined the government. His father Ralph, the son of a Red Army soldier, was a socialist intellectual who passed his formidable brains on to both David and his younger brother Ed, also a minister.
The boys grew up in Primrose Hill and went to Haverstock comprehensive school. Miliband got a first at Oxford and joined Labour’s favourite think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, before being hired to head Blair’s policy unit in 1997. He was parachuted into a safe seat in 2001, promoted to minister for school standards the following year and joined the cabinet in 2005.
Such is the impression Miliband has made that last year there was speculation that he might challenge Brown for the premiership. Ultra Blairites in the “anyone but Brown” camp privately argued that it would be best for the Labour party to “skip a generation”, with the youthful urbanite MP better suited than a gloomy Scot approaching his sixties to taking on the fresh-faced David Cameron.
Miliband put paid to such talk, ruling himself out as a contender. “The sort of Michael Heseltine thing where you write on a piece of paper where you’re going to be when you’re 60, that’s not the way I work. If you want to get into that league of politics, you’ve got to go through a real pain barrier, and I haven’t been through that. I think we’ve got a better qualified candidate in Gordon Brown.”
He may be quick to take the opportunity to endorse the man likely to be his boss in a few months’ time. But it would be wrong to suggest that Miliband has such an eye on his future that he’s not prepared to take any risks now. He believes 2007 will be a “pivotal, critical” year for the environment, and is drawing up radical plans to tackle the landfill crisis that could for the first time see householders who produce a lot of non-recyclable waste charged for its disposal.
It follows intense pressure from local authorities, which want powers to offer community tax discounts to residents who recycle. “We’re discussing that in government at the moment,” he says. “We’ve got a waste strategy coming out in March, and I’ve said that I’m personally interested in the idea that there should be discounts if you recycle more, so effectively incentives for recycling.”
He says people are “waking up” to recycling, and that it is “right to look at every way” of boosting rates.
“I don’t think you can have sticks without carrots, would be the way I would put it,” he adds. He brushes aside an alarmist report from the pest control industry last week that blamed recycling for a surge in the rat population.
“If you bag it up properly, and put it in the plastic bins, there’s actually no evidence that it increases vermin.”
Miliband’s other big idea is individual carbon allowances or “credit cards”, a scheme under which everyone would be given an emissions allowance for food, energy and travel. Surpluses could be bought and sold.
He believes bold thinking like this will be crucial to Labour’s survival in what will surely be a tumultuous year as Blair steps down. Is he confident that Brown is the right man? “Yes. I think he is someone who studies the challenges that we face in a way that is really exciting for the country,” he says.
I note that he is not looking me in the eye. “I will look you in the eye! I am trying to think about the questions,” he protests.
Whatever private reservations Miliband might have, he insists the public will soon see the chancellor’s great strengths.
“The truth is that nobody defines themselves as prime minister until they are PM. The moment he becomes PM he will define himself in a way that excites, engages and motivates people,” he says.
Has it been impossible for Brown to do that in his current role?
“It’s a totally different ball game. A totally different ball game,” says Miliband, diplomatically staring at the remains of his chips. We will be hearing much more from him.
