Climate Change Bill [HL]

I take a slightly less pessimistic view on this issue than the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. I hope that the Government may indeed have discovered the virtue of milestones on their road to Damascus. I am going to speak in support of these amendments, which have general support from these Benches. They attempt to make targets more accountable. Although strengthening accountability and removing the politics from the efforts made to meet emissions targets are central components of our approach to this Bill, we maintain that our amendments, which will follow in a later group of amendments, are a better way of ensuring that this is the case. Five-year budgets are robust enough in terms of science, but they are not robust enough in terms of politics. A five-year period allows Governments to blame their predecessors for failing to reach targets themselves, potentially locking us into a situation where each Government blame their predecessor for failing to reach the target and nobody actually takes responsibility for meeting reduction targets. If we want the Bill to have any teeth—I am sure the Committee is agreed that that is what we are seeking—there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that Governments do indeed take responsibility. We need annual markers to pin the project firmly to Governments’ annual agendas. Again, I emphasise that the purpose of the Bill is to drive across government departments a common agenda to achieve the Bill’s objectives. Our amendments on annual targets, which make up the next group, propose rolling annual targets, which offer a more realistic way to achieve the desired results of increased accountability. Having rolling targets means that the targets would be set according to an annual rolling review, looking five years ahead, allowing the committee, the Secretary of State and Parliament to tilt targets according to progress made every year, while avoiding the possibility of any Government simply shunting responsibility on to their successors. The Liberal Democrat proposals do not have a rolling factor, which means that their static milestones simply have commitments within the five-year periods without any mechanism to see how that will affect whether we will meet the target, or to see what impact success or failure has had on what the budget should be for the next five years. Our rolling targets are therefore much more adaptable. We understand that all manner of thing that might not be under a Government’s control can influence one year’s carbon account, which we anticipate to be the Government’s reason for not accepting the amendments. We know that extraneous factors come into play. However, the flexibility allowed for in rolling targets ensures that measures can be drawn up to make up for years when there are colder winters or other such variable phenomena. That also ensures that, should one year be a success, the Government do not rest on their laurels. That places more of a concerted burden on the Government to address climate change every year and across all departments, and I hope that the Government do not shy away from such a responsibility—or the opportunity to make a success of this legislation. Perhaps the Minister should be comforted by the fact that we fully intend to be the Government who present the first five-year report to Parliament. Notwithstanding that, we know that we have support outside this House, from Friends of the Earth, for more flexible, rolling targets’ arrangements. I should like to talk about the publication of targets, because that too forms part of the proposals. One of the primary virtues of annual targets is that they provide a mechanism to assess the success of a Government’s efforts at reducing carbon emissions. Thus we recognise the importance of having procedures for reporting on the success or failure of meeting the targets, and support their inclusion in the Bill. It is important not only whether the targets in question are met, but that some indication is given why they have or have not been and what is to be done about it. I looked around earlier—this was why I did not speak immediately after the moving of the amendment—to see whether the noble Lord, Lord May, was in his place, because I rather hoped that we would have the opportunity to hear directly from him. However, having temperature correction as part of the reports on annual milestones seems to these Benches like a sound idea if their purpose is to provide the most accurate measure of our progress in meeting our commitments to stop climate change. One abiding problem for us on these Benches has been that the Bill provides moments when there is potential wiggle room for Ministers not meeting targets. It is imperative that we know where we stand in relation to the great problem that faces us. Thus any procedure that takes into account the many variables that might otherwise lead us to an incorrect conclusion or assessment is to be welcomed. That is part and parcel of our plan to have a more robust Bill and more robust mechanisms to monitor our progress, such that we have robust ways to solve the problem. To conclude, all three parliamentary committees that have considered this proposal, having scrutinised the draft Bill, recommended annual milestones in one form or another. Why have the Government excluded those milestones, and with which aspect of them do they find it difficult to come to terms? Can an argument be made for not having something in this clause of the Bill to make it as robust as possible?