Climate Change Bill [HL]

My noble friend has spoken about Amendment No. 1. I want to speak to Amendments Nos. 142 and 157, which are in my name. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor: we support his amendment as he supports ours. There is not a great deal of political debate among the parties—even within the Government’s party—about what we are trying to achieve in this Bill. However, how we actually achieve that objective will suffer from some variance. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, asked whether there was a precedent for this type of legislation. Of course there is: Kyoto is a classic example of something that we and a vast number of other countries signed up to. This is actually ratifying how we deal with the amount of emissions. Amendment No. 142 deals with the aims of the committee. One of the problems that we have is with the committee itself, which has not yet come into existence—I do not believe that the members of the committee have been interviewed yet and they will have no power until the legislation comes into force. The committee will deal with science that is continually developing. The right reverend Prelate described how science is becoming old and how targets are being revised even as we speak. However, the 2 degrees Celsius target is most important because it is the one that most scientists agree will cause catastrophic change: it is the tipping point. Amendment No. 142 would ensure that the committee had an overarching aim to remind the Government that that was the target that we must meet. Of course, if it was only up to the British Government to meet this target, the situation would be a great deal simpler. We have only a small influence on the total amount of gases emitted. However, if reports in the papers are to be believed, the amount of carbon dioxide that we are emitting has exceeded the levels that we thought had been reached, because of the carbon that we export to other producing countries. Amendment No. 157 would make it clear to the committee that that should be one of its objectives, along with making sure that recommendations of further cuts dealt with the rise of 2 degrees Celsius. That would be a clear aim of the committee’s recommendations.