Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 26: 26: Clause 4, page 3, line 8, at end insert— ““( ) In the event of the net UK carbon account for a budgetary period exceeding the carbon budget the Prime Minister must, within three months, prepare a compliance action plan so that the shortfall is made up in the following commitment period, or identify other compensating actions to remedy the failure, after consultation with the Committee on Climate Change.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 26 stands in my name, the name of my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. When I was in Moscow last week and my noble friend moved my amendment to Clause 1, the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, said that taking a series of amendments in isolation from the others can create problems. I am afraid that here we cannot take the clauses and amendments in isolation. I am going to have to refer back to my original amendment which was proposed by my noble friend Lord Caithness. I do not intend to weary the Committee by going into it in too much detail because I am pretty confident that we are going to have to do that again at Report. None the less, some very interesting things were said. On reading the debate, I was puzzled by something that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said but I think I am now clear that it was either a misreporting in the Official Report or one of those slips of the tongue that we are all guilty of when we are speaking off the cuff. He said of the amendment which was then being debated: "““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””.—[Official Report, 11/12/07; col. 163.]" As I drafted the amendment I was not at all sure that the Minister was the man to tell me what its purpose was. It was exactly the purpose but then I realised that the word ““it”” should have either been ““the Bill”” or ““Clause 1””. It is clear from what he said subsequently that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was referring, as he had at Second Reading and as he did several times during his response to the debate, to the fact that Clause 1 was not a provision that was to be treated like going through a red light or over the speed limit and getting a fine. That is not the kind of penalty that is implied; the penalty is parliamentary opinion, the court of public opinion and the opinion of business. He made it clear that one of the prime objects of the drafting of Clause 1 had been to change the whole approach of civil servants, Ministers and the Government because they believed they were dealing with a legally enforceable clause. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, as he so often does because he does not always stick to the brief even when it is not 22 pages long, speaks with a degree of freshness and frankness that we all appreciate. He gave some very good reasons why it was not going to be enforceable in the way of being taken to judicial review and he gave a very clear description of the fact that this was going to be a question of a range of policies across government. It is exactly that kind of situation that the courts are not going to intervene in. They are not there to decide that policy is wrong, let alone that a great interacting set of policies has been wrong. They usually intervene only if they feel that the decision has been taken entirely in the wrong way or that there is a clear breach of a straightforward law. That is why unfortunate Home Secretaries in all Governments seem to fall foul, because they can be pinned down on a single provision concerning, say, immigration legislation or something of that kind. The Government’s intention is to change the whole approach of Government and make them think that this is a serious matter. I am a little sceptical, as was the Joint Committee, with the view that civil servants and Ministers will dramatically change their approach in this way. The Joint Committee was so concerned that we thought there must be some kind of procedure that would mean that the Bill had teeth if it was not going to be policed by the courts. I was extremely careful about the way that I drafted that first amendment to link it to Clause 4 which sets out the arrangement for setting targets and budgets over five-year periods. My reason for wanting to link it clearly to Clause 4 is that we are entering a rather different area. While it is almost inconceivable that a duty to see that something happens in 30 or 40 years hence can be enforced, with five-year budgets you are talking about much more limited periods and you get the results quite quickly. I could even envisage circumstances arising from Clause 4 where the courts might be prepared to intervene. The Front-Bench spokesman for the Liberal Democrats—I cannot remember who it was—earlier referred to aircraft policy and airport policy. I can just conceive of a budget and target having been prepared. The Department for Transport, which does not always seem to be quite as interested in these issues as Defra, might come along with a new policy for building runways that might conceivably be held to be in breach of the statutory duty. But I would rest on that, which is why I have moved this amendment. The Joint Committee, having expressed its doubts, took up the extremely valuable contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, who, coming to the same conclusion that we needed some system of enforcement, came forward with a series of proposals and recommendations. The committee reached a conclusion on page 41 of its report that it had, "““a strong preference … to introduce a compliance mechanism within the Bill that will give both meaning and strength to the duty to ‘ensure’ by compelling the Secretary of State to redress any failure to meet a target or budget, where necessary through court intervention based on the compliance mechanism””." We went on to follow the example provided by the Kyoto Protocol compliance procedure. That principle establishes that if, "““a carbon budget is exceeded … the excess emissions are deducted from the carbon budget for the subsequent period””." In other words, since it is clear that they have failed to achieve their target, the Government have to come forward immediately with a detailed plan which they will put to Parliament as to how they are going to put it right in the immediate period that follows. That is just one of the possibilities but one can think of others. The noble Baroness and her colleague Mr Clive Bates gave evidence to us on this subject on days 50 and 51 and elaborated on other perhaps even tougher possibilities, such as forcing the Government if they fail to meet their targets to purchase emission allowances on the international carbon market, investing in a domestic carbon reduction fund at an agreed price per tonne of carbon, and a number of other possibilities. I have not elaborated on the other possibilities in my amendment. At this stage, I think it is quite enough simply to pick up the recommendation of the Joint Committee. However, if we are to have a Bill that has teeth, surely there must be a compliance mechanism. It is no good for the Government to say again and again that this is a legally enforceable Bill and that the courts will intervene and perhaps impose even tougher penalties than I am talking about. No one believes that. None of the outside interested bodies which strongly support the Bill believes that, and there is a real danger of everyone concerned being embarrassed when the world outside realises that we have no means of making this a legally enforceable Bill. Where will we be then, as we set our moral example to the rest of the world? Therefore, I say that there is a compelling need for a compliance mechanism in the Bill. I do not say that the single solution that I have offered in the amendment is the final answer, although I go on to refer to other possibilities. When the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and her colleague came before the Joint Committee, I asked them to work up some more detailed ideas and to come forward with other specific recommendations on the way in which we might proceed down this road. I hope that in due course, if not today, we shall hear about some of those proposals. However, I urge the Government to accept the Joint Committee’s strong recommendation for a compliance mechanism. I beg to move.