Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree that there should be international agreement if possible, but, as I said, ICAO is not moving on the subject. We have to get ahead of the game and set a world lead. The steep rise in passenger numbers assumed by the Department for Transport in its demand and CO2 forecast is quite unacceptable, and aviation must share the burden of reducing global warming along with every other section of industry and society. To add new runways at Heathrow and Stansted just now would show that we are not serious about climate change. My other concern is that the functions of the committee to be appointed under Clause 26 are too narrow, as many noble Lords have said. It should be empowered to offer advice of its own volition on the way particular national authority policies might help or hinder mitigation and adaptation. On trading schemes, it ought to have responsibility for advising not only on the regulations themselves but on whether the scheme has achieved its objectives over a given period. The committee should be obliged to produce a statement for Parliament about the trading schemes and that should include their indirect effects on the economies of the world outside and putting an upper limit—as the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Puttnam, said—on the extent to which we can palm off our obligations on developing countries. To paraphrase the noble Lords and my noble friend Lady Miller, that is not on. I wonder if it is a good idea to give the national authorities the power to appoint all the members of the committee as well as the chairman. I also agree with those who said that they would like to see more scientists on the committee. I suggest that we leave the appointments in the hands of scientific bodies such as the Royal Society and the Natural Environment Research Council—so much of whose research is directly relevant to climate change—the Met Office’s Hadley Centre or the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Come to that, the Bill says nothing about mobilising our considerable expertise on climate change for the benefit of other countries. Should there not be a methodical approach to disseminating the findings of our scientists to overseas audiences who might benefit from them? We have only one chance to get this right, domestically and globally. Britain is not the worst carbon criminal on the planet, but we have a unique contribution to make. I hope that we will set a precedent which, if followed by others, will avert the worst threat facing mankind. If we put our backs into carbon reduction here in the UK, it will not only give us the authority to persuade other industrial nations to follow our example, but help Britain to earn a living in the carbon-light world of the next generation.