Climate Change Bill [HL]

I was not going to follow my noble friend immediately because I thought that other Members of the Committee would rise. Before the Minister responds I have one or two observations to make about the amendment. My noble friend has performed a valuable task in raising an important issue, but I hope that he will forgive me if I say that I am not absolutely certain that the balance in the proposed scheme is completely right. We need to give a good deal of thought to this critical issue before we go further in Committee. Interestingly enough, it was not a matter that we really dealt with in the Joint Committee on the draft Bill. My tentative reaction was prompted by the brief that I received from Friends of the Earth, which, like my noble friend, wants to strengthen the Bill to make it more effective, but which also has doubts about the solution that he has suggested. That organisation points out that these are not just scientific questions; it describes them as moral and ethical, involving judgments about what we and the rest of the world should be doing. In that sense they are political issues as well. There is a case for saying that such crucial issues should not entirely depend on the advice of a committee, however well qualified or well respected it may be. These are crucial decisions that will affect all our people and generations to come. I suppose that my noble friend will say that in a sense it is not entirely left to the committee because Parliament will have its say. Parliament will debate the issues and can enter its views before final decisions are taken. My noble friend said that he wanted to strengthen the powers of the Committee on Climate Change, as do I. He said that he wanted to limit the powers of the Secretary of State; this is where I begin to ask my question. Of course the Secretary of State should have to seek the advice of the Committee on Climate Change. A whole series of amendments elsewhere should ensure not only that that should happen but that the advice should be published, and reasons should be given by the Secretary of State if he does not follow the advice. My noble friend talked about some shift in the balance between the two. It is the extent of that shift that concerns me. If my thoughts were triggered by the paper that I received from Friends of the Earth, perhaps they were triggered still more by the remarkable book that I read during the parliamentary recess by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford and Carole Nakhle entitled Out of the Energy Labyrinth. It should be compulsory reading for almost everyone who takes part in these debates and considers these issues. When we come to a later group of amendments, I shall make the primary points that arise from my noble friend’s recommendations. The point that he makes is essentially that you cannot separate the kind of things that we are trying to do in the Bill from the whole issue of energy supply and the immediate and growing risks to energy. He argues that energy policy and the policies dealt with in this Climate Change Bill are interlinked and cannot be separated. Indeed, he goes further. He argues—I shall come back to this during debate on a later group of amendments—that it is all very well setting all these great targets in the Bill. We hope that we have them right and that they can be achieved but, if they are achieved, that will be done a very long time in the future. In the mean time, we have to deal with the consequences of our present carbon levels and the effects they are having, and that leads us to the whole question of adaptation, which we will come to again later in our debates on the Bill. My noble friend argues that, if you are to carry world opinion or our European partners down this road, it is all very well saying that we are going to set a lot of long-term targets which may cause great difficulties and the people will not see the results until many years later; however, they will be acutely concerned—possibly quite soon—with an energy crisis which may have political causes: further warfare and turmoil in the Middle East, Russian policy or whatever. He believes that by bringing the two things together you can persuade people to act and to act decisively. If you link energy policy with climate change policy, you are more likely to achieve the result than if you treat them separately. Some of us have criticised the Government because we feel that their energy White Paper does not go far enough and that perhaps their energy policy is not linked closely enough to the objectives in the Bill. That brings me back to my noble friend’s amendment. It seems that if you to link the two things effectively, the Secretary of State must have a role. The Committee on Climate Change can consider the energy equation; in a later group of amendments, when we talk about the things that it has to consider, I shall argue that it should do so. However, ultimately only the Secretary of State and the Government can effectively bring together the action that is needed on energy security and climate change. Therefore, I do not want to weaken the power of the Secretary of State to act if it is only he who can act. Of course I want him to have the advice of a very strong Committee on Climate Change. I am all for strengthening that role and for ensuring that the advice is published and that the Secretary of State sets out any reasons for disagreeing with it. What worries me slightly about my noble friend’s amendment is that it seems almost to eliminate the ability of the Secretary of State—by the Secretary of State, I mean the Government as a whole—to take action if it is necessary to do so, particularly in the energy field. Therefore, I go with my noble friend quite a long way down the road that he is asking me to follow, but before we reach Report I hope that he and the rest of the Committee will consider very carefully how to get the balance absolutely right so that we have a strong and effective Committee on Climate Change but do not neuter the role of the Secretary of State to such an extent that we cannot bring together these two vital and absolutely interlinked objectives of achieving energy security and our aims regarding climate change.