Climate Change Bill [HL]

I remember the noble Lord’s contribution on Second Reading. I was constrained from commenting on everyone’s speech at the time, but I thought that his speech was a little more revolutionary than he actually thought. He gave some examples, which I thought were quite practical, of what would happen in the future and he talked about the need for change. He approached the matter from a different direction, but I respected the point. I was going to say that I was stuck for time and I did not want to accuse him of being a revolutionary, but he made some quite revolutionary points on Second Reading. He is absolutely right: if that situation arose, one can imagine the debates that would arise in the country, as well as in both Houses of Parliament, and the pressure on various Secretaries of State to make a policy change; in other words, to make change through legislation. It would be quite substantial if we got to that point. I am not saying that that will not happen; I am saying that we are setting out with the best intentions to give a lead and to be the first nation to put such detail into our legal framework. I think that one other country has partial legal requirements, but not to the extent that we have here. As I said, we believe that that aspect of what the EFRA Committee said in the other place is quite crucial, but we can see no other way in which to achieve that cultural change within our system of government than by putting the duties into law. That is the reality. You cannot get the equivalent effect without using the law. Civil servants, advisers to government and Ministers have to be reminded from time to time, as we all are, that you cannot do something, or that you cannot not do something, because you are going outside the law. We know the consequences of that, and I doubt that there has ever been a Minister in office who has not been reminded that they are expected to follow the law. There are degrees of discretion, but this must be looked at in the constitutional sense rather than in the sense that you have gone over the traffic lights and there is a fine. The objective of putting this into legislation in this way is to make that cultural and behavioural change in the Civil Service and consequently in government. I have no doubt that we will come back to this; as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours says, there is more than one way in which to do this. The choice of words in the amendment to replace two words makes the amendment rather long, although, as I said, I am not saying that everything is perfect. The Committee knows what the Government’s intention is, and was when we drafted the legislation. We may not have interpreted the purpose of the amendment in the way in which many noble Lords who have spoken tonight have done, but we will reflect on it in due course.