Climate Change Bill [HL]

I support the amendment and use it as a cover for raising an issue that has been worrying me for the past couple of hours. I am very concerned that the sense of urgency is beginning to seep out of our debate. The word has not been used in Committee today but it remains very important. We have been watched from the Gallery by a number of young people; this is their Bill, not ours. Unless we address the issues we are here to discuss with a greater sense of urgency and with the constant sense that there is a clock ticking, we shall not do the Bill justice. I have two observations. At the weekend, I was watching World Service Television in Paris and a professor from the Cato Institute in the United States, which is a right-of-centre think tank, was being interviewed. He said in response to what was happening in Bali that any steps taken by any developed country which worked against the interests of industry and business could only damage the prospects of climate reduction because they would just get in the way of business sorting the whole thing out. That is a rather extreme view and I do not for one moment agree with it. I also read recently a very good book on aircraft production in Britain in the early years of the war and how, for a long time, it was left to industry to get on with it. It was eventually realised that this was not working and that we were likely to lose the war unless a more determinist position was taken, and a very significantly accelerated process of aircraft production was imposed on the aircraft industry. We need to strike a balance between assuming that, somehow or other, industry and business will sort this out for us, and the need to understand that the clock is ticking, and to make absolutely clear that the Government have the machinery to impose solutions where and when they are not forthcoming. That need has been a broad underpinning of almost everything we have discussed today. As anyone who reads our report will know, I bow to no one in enthusiastically supporting the formation of the climate committee and its powers and role in formulating policy. But it would be a dereliction of duty if we leave everything to the climate committee without a very clear mandate and timetable, and a sense of the urgency in getting this right. That is not, I am afraid, coming through in Committee today.