Climate Change Bill [HL]

I hope what I have to say will be accepted as positive. This issue was raised at Second Reading, and I fully accept that I am not familiar with all the detail raised in the Joint Committee, but I am not sure whether it has helped us for the next stage. It seems to have been thought that the intention of the amendment was to address the perceived lack of enforceability of this requirement or duty to meet the targets and budgets in the Bill. It was not drafted for that purpose, as I said, probably inadequately, on Second Reading, and as was alluded to by the noble Earl—although I thought as he sat down that he was making the opposite point from the same information. The intention was to attempt to change the infrastructure culture in Government, which is quite important if one is to transcend departments and Governments, as long as there is an acceptance that we are legislating for decades. Governments come and go and each is sovereign. We were trying to find a way to achieve behavioural change in Whitehall, in the Civil Service as much as among Ministers. That is crucial. I cannot say that I agree with them but examples were given of different departments’ attitudes to energy generation and transport, as though the departments were fiefdoms in their own right, quite independent of Government and with their own messages. That may have been case in the past and there may still be elements of that but we are attempting to use the law to change the institutional behaviour in Whitehall through the Civil Service Code and the Ministerial Code. The dilemma would be if two or three departments worked on an issue, each with a substantially different attitude. The requirement of the law is pretty important as far the Civil Service and our system of Government are concerned. If they ignore the law, or worse still, if they go in the opposite direction to the law as set out by this clause, there would be major problems and judicial review could follow. So the intention is to give a constitutional significance and to permeate the attitude in Whitehall that there is a duty to ensure the outcome. We believe—and I stand to be corrected on this by lawyers—that the amendment would in practice weaken the duty on the Secretary of State. If you focus on the process, it would be possible to do your best, stay within the budget and end up complying with the duty because you thought it was the right policy. In the words of the amendment, you tried, "““to develop policies and take measures … with the object of ensuring””." So you could satisfy the requirements of the law and completely fail. It comes down to intention and lack of enforceability. I fully admit, as I said at Second Reading, that the purpose of putting this in the Bill was to change the behaviour of the Civil Service in Whitehall and, through that, to change the behaviour of Ministers. That is the central objective.