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On Tuesday, Parliament’s first sitting of the new year, the Secretary of State for Climate Change, Ed Miliband reported back to the House on the Copenhagen Summit.

For those of us who thought 2010 would signal a great leap forward in protecting the planet – the outcome was disappointing in many respects but the Accord, that was agreed by fifty counties, does represent the start of a new chapter on climate change, even if it does not provide everything we wanted.

Progress has been made in a number of important areas. For example there is international backing for an overall limit of 2 degrees on global warming; agreement that all countries need to take action on climate change; and the provision of immediate and longer term financial help to those countries most at risk of climate change.

For the first time, the new Copenhagen Accord will list what each and every country is doing to tackle climate change – including economy-wide commitments to cut emissions by developed countries and actions by developing countries.

Other advances include the introduction of real scrutiny and transparency to ensure emission targets are put into effect, with mandatory reporting every two years for developing countries and the provision of $30 billion of immediate short term funding. This will come from the developed countries over the next three years and will help kick-start emission reduction measures while helping the poorest countries to adapt.

And the Accord will also commit developed countries to work to provide long term financing of $100 billion a year by 2020, a figure first put forward by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June of last year.

So what happens next? Well, as was the case following the historic Kyoto settlement, the UK and other countries will now be working to convert the accord into a legally binding agreement but we know we need to go much further and we recognise the need for more certainty and a greater scale of ambition from other countries.

It’s vital that we broaden the commitments across the globe because the agreement of fifty countries is not nearly enough. If we are to tackle this most serious of global problems we need a much wider group of signatories and that’s why the UK and the United Nations are seeking to persuade more countries to sign up.

It’s inevitable that the developed countries of the world must take the lead in these matters and for Europe that means pressing forward with our commitment to 30% reductions by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

Our Government will work intensively up to the end of January deadline and, beyond if necessary, to ensure Europe can move to this high level of ambition and we will continue to press all countries, including the United States for the deepest possible cuts in their emissions.

But if 2010 is to go down in history as the year the world woke up to global warming we must strengthen the Accord and secure a legally binding treaty – anything less simply won’t do.