Climate Change Bill [HL]

I want to intervene briefly. As I said before, I was not fortunate enough to be a member of the Joint Committee which produced this extraordinarily good report, but I have followed the debates fairly closely. I, too, believe that there is a need for a compliance mechanism. What interests me is that the amendment talks about the budgetary period, and that period is not one year but five years. That being the case, if action were not taken at the end of the budgetary period, that would almost be negligent. One would have thought that there was an absolute responsibility to ensure that at least at the end of every budgetary period, irrespective of what had happened during the years comprising the budgetary period, we were on line to meet our long-term targets by 2005. Therefore, in principle, I accept the proposal in the amendment and I hope that, similarly, my noble friend can go down that route. He may argue with the wording to some extent because it implies a certain element of discipline in relation to the process by which the penalties, if I may call them that, might be introduced, but I am sure that he will find a way round that.