Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, had the immense privilege of serving on the Joint Committee under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. I pay a particular thank you to him as he performed an almost impossible task, and to all the Clerks who helped us. In particular I highlight the work of Charlotte Littleboy, who did the most amazing job. However, although prelegislative scrutiny is a very good idea, the Government always seem to give us far too little time to do a very difficult job. If it is really going to work, the Government need to think about giving committees more time so that we can do a better job. In the committee we discussed whether the Climate Change Bill had an appropriate name, given that climate change has been going on for millions of years. I live in a house in the north of Scotland whose stone is tropical and was laid down 355 million years ago. I walk on peat that was not there when the Neolithics were hunter-gatherers. I walk on a beach with pine trees in the middle of it that is now all sand, so I see the effect of a change in sea level. I work with a community that has to work in harmony with nature and the environment, which 99 per cent of the rest of the UK does not seem to do any more. We have made an awful mess of our planet. In the international context, this Bill presents us with huge costs but, much more importantly, huge opportunities and challenges to which we should rise. I am glad that the UK is taking a lead, since British scientists discovered the hole in the ozone layer. My noble friend Lady Thatcher, then Prime Minister, hosted the ozone conference when I was Minister for the Environment, which led to the Montreal Protocol, which is an international agreement. We all seem to have forgotten that we have tackled these problems before, but the problem facing us today is a much more difficult one. I am also concerned that climate change is a bit of a buzzword, as it is used by the Government to support any legislation that they think is appropriate. For instance, they used the issue of climate change to support the introduction of energy performance certificates in home improvement packs, but when those certificates were first mooted and imposed by Brussels climate change was not even mentioned. It is now said to be the cause of every single natural disaster, although those disasters are in fact caused by man’s stupid greed and his ability to build in the wrong place. If man builds on a flood plain and below sea level, there are going to be problems, but we continue to do it—and now we are blaming it on poor old climate change. There is no doubt, however, that we are in a new era of climate change, in which man has influenced the climate. We have to do something about it—and therefore I welcome the Bill, although it needs to be improved and made stronger for it to work properly. I turn to some of the issues that we face with the Bill. My noble friend Lord Crickhowell is absolutely right in saying that the Bill is not enforceable. The duty on the Secretary of State will never be enforced and should therefore not be there. We discussed this at length in the committee, where we got towards an improved wording, but it is still an area that needs to be thought through and discussed, which we shall do in Committee. Undoubtedly one of the most important parts of the Bill relates to the Committee on Climate Change. I start with a criticism. The news of the shadow committee leaked out as though it was an accident. Why were the Government not up front with the Joint Committee? Why did they not tell us that they were setting up a committee and that this was its remit? It caught us by surprise. We were asking questions about whether setting up a shadow committee would be a good idea, to be told that it was already happening and that the Government were doing it. That does not lead to any confidence in the Government; if they cannot be straightforward and give a body such as the Joint Committee the requisite information, what other things are they holding back?