Business of the House

May we have a debate about the dramatically revised estimates by the Government of the costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act 2008, which were sneaked out this week, even though the changes are greater than the cost of bailing out several failed banks? The Leader of the House will remember that the Government were forced to revise their original figures, when I pointed out that they showed that the potential costs were twice the maximum benefits—the first time that the Government have ever urged us to do something which, on their own figures, would make matters worse. As so often on climate change, where the facts are out of line with the theory, they change the facts, and after five months of revision, the figures have emerged from the massage parlour with the costs doubled to £400 billion, but to ensure that this time the benefits are in excess, the Government have increased their estimate of the benefits by a factor of 10, from £100 billion to £1 trillion. May we have a debate about such a flaky figure, which only promotes scepticism about the whole issue of climate change?