Climate Change Bill [HL]

I do not seek in any egocentric way to interpolate a personal note, but it follows on the speech by my noble friend Lord Onslow. The building of the British Library took only 20 years and not the 43 years for which we are legislating. But there were a number of Secretaries of State during the building of the British Library and I was one of them. In 1994, when it had been 16 years in the building, I was summoned before Mr Kaufman’s Select Committee. About two-thirds of the way through the committee, after a great deal of evidence had been considered, Mr Kaufman said, ““Now, Secretary of State, we really must come to a conclusion. This is a very bad business. Who is responsible?””. I knew perfectly well that if I said anything other than, ““Mr Kaufman, you know perfectly well where the responsibility lies: the Secretary of State is responsible and, therefore, I am””, the hearing would go on for at least another three-quarters of an hour beyond the time that was set for us to finish it. It was therefore much simpler to say, ““Mr Kaufman, you know perfectly well who is responsible, and that is myself””. Three or four years later I came across a paragraph in a history of the Labour Government of 1974 to 1979 written by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, in which he described the efforts of the Treasury to so hold down the detail of the building of the British Library that, as he said in his concluding sentence, given what had been achieved in terms of controlling expenditure on this item, if there had been the slightest economic quiver in the next 20 years, it would be a miracle if the British Library were concluded before the end of the century. I say to my noble friend Lord Onslow that the consequence of that particular remark was that, when Her Majesty the Queen opened the British Library in 1998, we had achieved it before the end of the century and I was in the happy but wholly accidental position of taking the credit for achieving what was in fact a miracle. The fact remains that although I said what I did in 1994, it is difficult to see how the Secretary of State at a particular moment is responsible for the whole 20-year span of the business. The Minister would be doing your Lordships’ House a service if he gave full consideration to this amendment which would to make the situation slightly less redolent of Alice in Wonderland than its present wording.