Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister, especially for somehow persuading the powers that be in the Government to introduce the Bill in this House first; I should have realised that he had such powers. In this House we will have a more mature debate, although that is perhaps the wrong adjective. We will certainly have a more rounded, intelligent and effective debate than may be had with other procedures and in other ways, and that is appropriate for this Bill. It is clearly appropriate for the Bill to be introduced at this time, given that the IPCC meeting that has just taken place in Valencia laid out key aspects of how climate change science and the dynamics of that understanding have changed, even over the past 12 months. Environmental and climate change discontinuities are back on the agenda: 11 of the past 12 years have been the hottest on the planet and we have rising sea levels, partly because of the increasing rate of ice melting around the globe. That background says that this Bill is the most important of this Session. I suspect that many of us from all sides of the House welcomed the Prime Minister’s speech last week in which he again committed the Government unequivocally to the renewable energy targets, a large degree of research and development expenditure on renewables, climate change technology and those other areas that we know are required to convert good intentions into action, and a long-term victory in this challenge of climate change. We welcome many of those areas within the context of a dynamic and changing scientific understanding of climate change. However, there are a number of areas where this Bill needs to become more fit for purpose. I want to spend some time going through those areas one by one, albeit briefly; we will go into greater detail in Committee. First, Defra’s explanation for the Bill is that it centres on the Government’s understanding and wish, as with the rest of the developed world and the global community, to reduce climate change and keep it to within 2 degrees of historic levels. The Bill has a target—currently 60 per cent—but does not mention the overall strategic goal that we are trying to achieve on climate change as a developing world. On these Benches, we believe that that 2 degree goal, given all the other action that must take place, should be included in the Bill. Only that would give a proper context, understanding and guide to the Committee on Climate Change and to policy-making by Ministers in the future. As I said, the target is 60 per cent. The Prime Minister said last week that that target is almost certainly out of date and that 80 per cent is almost certainly necessary. Most climate scientists would agree that 60 per cent is no longer enough. I understand why the Government wish to put off a decision about changing the target until the Committee on Climate Change has considered it further, but we should surely not be in the position where the first clauses of the Bill contain a target that we know will not work and is not sufficient. We have either to move back to the objective of a maximum change of 2 degrees or to move the target to 80 per cent, which is what we should do. Liberal Democrats believe that it is possible to move to a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. I suspect that that would be difficult to deliver through an amendment in this House, but we believe that the target needs to be 80 per cent or in excess of that. Another area relates to the greenhouse gases that are included in the Bill. They were not mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, but perhaps we will find out later whether the Conservative Benches agree on this. Much of the Bill refers to international standards and ways of working, but the Kyoto process and the work of the IPCC relate to a basket of greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide. Why does the Bill relate only to CO2? I was thinking about how that sounded. In the policing or Home Office context, it would be like saying that, as 80 per cent of crime is mobile phone snatching, we should target our efforts on that and forget about murders, homicides and other things that do not account for a large proportion of crime. The other greenhouse gases are far more powerful than carbon dioxide. CO2 is the major cause of climate change, but we have to include the whole basket of greenhouse gases in this legislation so that, if nothing else, we do not delude ourselves about what we should monitor and so that we comply with international ways of looking at these things. I was delighted by the policy statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, about international air and shipping. We agree with him on that. It is almost a good thing that, through affluence and the increase in world trade, shipping is an area where there has been a big increase in emissions, as is aviation. The Bill gives us the ability to tackle that in the future but not to tackle it from the beginning. That ignores the most growing problem in climate change and looks at only those areas which we understand completely now and which we have traditionally looked at. The Bill is about the future and we need to take that into consideration. The other area on which we may not agree with other Members is accounting. A Bill such as this, which deals with principle, framework and strategic issues, should not get into the micromanagement of how we look at figures at the end of the day. I am referring to banking, carrying targets over and adjustments at the end of the budget periods. Why bother with an ability to change borrowing between two periods by 1 per cent? You are likely to have an equal problem if you are within 0.1 per cent of the 1 per cent that you have borrowed. In the business world, if a sales department meets its targets early, does the company reduce its sales targets for the future period? Of course it does not; it banks those, moves on and keeps the same targets or increases them in future. We suggest that we completely take out the banking and borrowing provisions. They suggest, wrongly, that the Government are somehow looking for a fudge factor in the Bill; they are overcomplicated and far too micro, when we should be looking at the issue strategically. Let us completely take out those provisions. The Bill is not at ease with itself when it talks about the carbon budget, as it uses that term in an accounting sense. The other targets that the Government have talked about before in their manifestos for reduction of carbon dioxide and for renewable energy have related to the UK in isolation. The Bill does not do that. Theoretically, we could meet the 2050 target but not decarbonise the UK economy at all. We could borrow, whether by the clean development mechanism or as part of the EU ETS; we could buy all those credits and stay as a dirty economy ourselves. I know that that is not the Government’s intention, but there is no limit in the Bill. This is in the Committee on Climate Change’s purview, but there is no limit on what credits the UK economy can buy to meet the targets. Although I come from a party that is fully in favour of international trading and international solutions, we think that there is a real challenge about bringing down the carbon content of our UK economy, so there must be a limit on the amount of trading that can take place under the Bill to meet our targets. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, emphasised strongly the role of the Committee on Climate Change. It has a number of powers under the Bill, but they are relatively limited. One of the key issues does not concern this Bill. It is a framework Bill that enables other legislation, sets targets and sets up a committee, but it does not in its own right bring forward the actions that will help to solve climate change. I want the Committee on Climate Change to be able not just to set carbon budgets but to make assessments and report to Parliament on how effective it feels that government policies at the time are in meeting those targets. In that way, the committee’s powers must be increased to give judgment, so that we in Parliament and the public at large can understand whether the government programme on climate change will meet its aspirations. We believe strongly that those budget periods need to be shorter. Five years always extends beyond the period of a Parliament. We think that three years would be far more appropriate. We know, in our own lives or in organisations that we have worked in, that if we have a five-year planning period, for the first year, we think, ““Well, it is five years off””. The next year we think, ““Well, it is still four years off””. In three years, we think, ““Well, we’d better do something about it””. By year two or year one, we find that we have not got to where we needed to be before. I honestly believe that the budget period needs to be shorter. Even then, we still need indicative targets on the way. As I said, we strongly welcome the Bill and will do everything that we can to help it on its way speedily. We hope that the Government will welcome some of the amendments that we will bring forward. An even greater challenge will be for the Conservative Opposition to match much of their past greener rhetoric with action. I have to say that I am encouraged. I hope that we on all Benches will be working very closely together to strengthen the Bill. We often say that legislation should have a sunset clause. In a way, the Bill has its sunset clause in Clause 15, which describes in remarkable detail what has to happen by 31 May 2052. In fact, we are thinking of tabling an amendment that it should happen by midday, or 10 am, or something like that. It will be a very special day for me, because I will be 102 exactly. I imagine sitting on these Benches and, if the targets have not been met, waiting to see the Secretary of State dragged off in a Black Maria to the Tower of London to serve his or her sentence. Of course, I delude myself about being here then, not because of my age but because by then there will surely be a Liberal Democrat Government and we will no longer have an appointed House of Lords. The most important thing is that the Bill is successful and passes through Parliament in a toughened state but quickly, and that the UK can hold its head high in international fora not only in Bali but beyond, particularly in the post-Kyoto process. The Liberal Democrats want to support that as strongly as we can, but at the moment we do not have the best track record in a number of areas, such as waste disposal, as the Minister has said. That has to change—we believe that it can—and a stronger Bill will ensure that it will.