Climate Change Bill [HL]

It is always very difficult when two noble friends present obverse and reverse sides of the same argument. It is an argument which goes right to the core of this Bill and the way in which this subject is being dealt with. As my noble friend Lord Crickhowell said, it raises the issue of government structure and the way in which the Government do their business. Clearly, as I have said before, one department is dealing with energy policy and another is dealing with the consequences of that policy. The result is not that there is not cohesion but that there is a lack of definition and clarity of perception. However, in the end, it seems to me that the argument about the powers of the Secretary of State is subordinate to an even more powerful argument, which, as my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach said, is the control of Parliament. Ultimately, as I hope the Minister will acknowledge, the Secretary of State has no power except for that derived through Parliament and, in this case, through this Bill. It seems to me that that is the sovereignty that we have to preserve. I accept that essentially the executive authority of the Government comes from the Crown and, in that sense, Parliament has the right of oversight and of regulation. However, when it comes to new legislation, there is no question at all in my mind that the view of Parliament has to be paramount. I listened to my noble friend Lord Taylor with a certain amount of delight because I can envisage the time when we become the Government and I shall be embarrassed to some degree by his present proposals. I can imagine a future Conservative Secretary of State having slight difficulty as a consequence of these amendments. I am not absolutely convinced one way or the other about the argument but I am convinced that parliamentary control is paramount. That, it seems to me, is preserved in the amendment of my noble friend Lord Taylor because the orders will have to be subject to the approval of both Houses. That in itself might lead us into difficulties in this House where, as a matter of custom and tradition, in the past we have not voted against orders even when we felt that we should or only on the rarest of occasions. We need to recognise the territory that we are getting into in this Bill. It goes way beyond the Bill itself, which is essentially procedural and sets out a parliamentary mechanism. It does not deal with the detail of the energy policies that will be required. In a month or two, a planning Bill will come to us from the other place and it will have to deal with aspects of the implementation of things that may make this policy and energy policy work. The whole complex has to come together and fit but I think that on balance, because my noble friend has preserved the oversight of Parliament, his amendments deserve the most serious consideration.