Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that, but the news of setting up the shadow secretariat came out by accident. It is important that the Government are absolutely up front to us all about this. Exactly where are we with that shadow secretariat? What is the timing for the appointment of a shadow chairman of the future committee? That person will have to work—as will the committee—with all the evidence to be able to produce the requisite information, otherwise it will not be able to be done on time. As regards the future role of the committee, the evidence of Professor Sir David King and Malcolm Wicks MP, then Minister of State for Science and Innovation, was contradictory. My noble friend Lord Waldegrave talked about who should be on the committee. When we discuss this in Committee, it is important that the committee’s role should be made absolutely clear for it, Parliament and everybody else to understand. We suggested that there should be sectoral targets but the Government dismissed the Joint Committee’s report. However, the head of the Bill team, Mr Robin Mortimer, explained in the evidence, in answer to Question 641, that, "““the committee will have to look sector by sector at what it considers possible across the economy””." Unless there are sectoral targets and annual milestones, the committee’s work will be severely hampered. I hope that at future stages of the Bill the Government will realise that the only way forward, besides the five-year budget and the five-year target, is to have an annual stepping stone. I shall discuss appointments in detail later but I hope that the Secretary of State will not get his sticky fingers on appointing the vice-chair of the committee; that is a job for the chairman. It was clear that the funding provision in the draft legislation was totally inadequate for the job that the committee has to do. If the committee is to have credibility and be a leading light across Europe and the world, it has to be properly funded and to be able to use the advice and the modelling of various organisations, but it must also be able to do its own work if it needs to. We cannot have a committee that is short of funds. I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said about carbon credits. There must be a limit to the trading of carbon credits. We will come on to that but there seems to be pretty much unanimity among those who have raised the question. I am grateful to the Government for the improvements they have made to the draft Bill with regard to parliamentary scrutiny. However, I still do not think that it is enough and we shall discuss that in detail. Undoubtedly the Bill will alter all our lives. Every person in the United Kingdom will require huge education in this regard. If the policy behind the Bill is to work, it is critical that it takes the people with it. If the Government try to impose this without taking all the UK population with them, they will fail. A massive effort will be required in every department in Westminster and in the devolved Assemblies, because our way of life as we have been privileged enough to have known it—and, unfortunately, been privileged enough to squander some of the benefits—will be affected. We are going to have to rein back and change our ways. To do that, you have to take everybody with you; you cannot impose it. One of the things that will change is undoubtedly energy. The Energy Bill is rightly talked about in connection with climate change. Building regulations—something close to my heart—will need to be linked with it. I live in the shadow of Dounreay, which has now been decommissioned. What a tragedy. There was a facility in which the UK led the world. If its funding had been maintained, it would have provided a solution to some of our energy problems. I overlook, and walk beside, one of the great energy sources in the United Kingdom, the Pentland Firth. What is man doing about it? Nothing. The tidal race running through the Pentland Firth could provide enough electricity to put the lights on all over Scotland. You could do it in the Solway Firth and in the Severn, which is beginning to happen. But unless we start to act now and get hold of problems like that, we shall have a much more difficult task ahead. I support the Bill and will work with the Government to get it through this House, but I would like it amended because it is only 90 per cent good so far.