Climate Change Bill [HL]

I am happy to do so. Drafting these amendments is complex and the whole point of this stage of the Bill is to air ideas and to see to what extent we can strengthen the Bill with new ideas. The purpose of the amendment is to establish a triangular relationship between the Secretary of State—the offices of government, which are the delivery agency for policy—Parliament, as the representative of the people’s will, and the committee, as the provider of expertise. On the recommendation of the committee, and not without the recommendation of the committee, the Secretary of State can present an order to Parliament for approval. That is not to say that the order has to be exactly what the recommendation says, because, of those three agencies, in the end Parliament is sovereign. The process of initiating ideas and recommendations in particularly important fields should be transparent. If the Secretary of State brings forward an order that is not the same as the committee’s recommendation, it should be clear that the Secretary of State is taking that responsibility at variance with the committee. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that it is important to get this right. We believe that this is a reasonable balance. All of us who want this to be effective will want to get the balance right between government responsibility, parliamentary responsibility and the committee’s responsibility. While that might not be explicit in our amendments, we surely should be able to make it so at some future date, or the Government might be able to present their own amendment along those lines.