Climate Change Bill [HL]

There is a slight issue here. The fundamental point was not to raise the issue of the Prime Minister being a figurehead for the Government. The nature of the amendments that we tabled—there are obviously certain differences with the other amendments—is that this is not just a presentational issue, but comes to the heart of what the Bill is about. We cannot pretend that the Prime Minister will not be seen by the country as being responsible for meeting the targets. We cannot then pass it off to a Secretary of State. The Minister has said that of course the Prime Minister will not do the work himself. I quite agree. However, we have the major problem of different departments with different objectives. A classic example was the decision for the third runway at Heathrow: DBERR—or DEBRIS—made one decision, about the economic impact, while Defra would make another, about whether we should build a third runway at Heathrow. There are going to be major issues throughout government, between departments. On the transport issue, I was talking to a transport expert, who said, ““The definition of a necessary journey is one that I take; the definition of an unnecessary journey is one you take””. The big problem is that each of the departments is going to have major difficulties. We already see this in the ETS—the aviation industry is interested in signing up, because it can buy credits from other industries. The problem, taking that to its logical conclusion, is that the aviation industry would take up all the carbon units for every industry, if it carried on buying up those credits. Therefore, there would be none left for power generation or for other industries. The issue is not just presentational. If individuals write their manifestos about how they are going to run the Government in the future, they will have to make sure that every single one of the policies that they sign their parties up to meet those objectives. Otherwise, we are greenwashing in this Bill. That point has been made about the Bill. I would have been absolutely amazed if the Minister had said that he would wholeheartedly accept the amendment, but he has said that there are some areas that he would like to discuss. I would like to talk to him and to his department and officials, perhaps with the Conservative Opposition, because if they put their name to the Bill, we might look forward to an amendment that will meet some of the provisions we have set out. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.