Climate Change Bill [HL]

If you want to concentrate the committee’s mind on the need to act responsibly, you have to give it real power. The danger of a committee that does not feel that it has power is that it will act irresponsibly. It may well come up with conclusions that are simply impractical. I disagree profoundly with the position taken by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. If I might say, there is an element of inconsistency in his case, when I compare it with his earlier contributions during the passage of this Bill. At this party, I see three people or organisations taking decisions—the committee, Parliament and the Government. There are going to be conflicts between those three. The problem is that when Governments take decisions, they are subject to all the pressures that they could be subject to. Members of this House, many of whom have been Ministers, know exactly the pressures to which I am referring—such as lobbyists and outside organisations—all of whom are exerting pressure and often producing decisions and making recommendations to Parliament that Members of Parliament, in their wildest understanding and dreams, cannot even begin to understand. You often look at legislation and think, ““Where on earth did they get this idea from?””. For example, the Gambling Bill went through and many Members of the other place could not understand who had asked for it. In all the years that I was a Member of Parliament in the other House, I never had one letter asking for gambling legislation to be introduced and yet, somehow, it appeared out of the woodwork. It arose as a result of pressure being exerted by lobbyists. It is those pressures that worry me. As they exert their way through the system—and they will be exerted on the Government when they are faced with crisis decisions in this very area where important decisions are going to be taken on policy—the Whips drive them through, very often in opposition to the views of Members of Parliament. That does not happen uniquely on the Labour Benches; it happens on all sides of the House. We all know that Members of Parliament often find themselves voting in Lobbies voting in a way that they do not altogether agree with, but in this area the danger is that decisions will make their way through the system. They will find their way into Parliament and will have been promoted by Government. They will be opposed in the Committee on Climate Change because they are not its recommendations, and they will simply be driven through the House of Commons. I am very worried about that. I like this kind of amendment. I do not think that we should turn our noses up and say that we have to secure the position of Secretaries of State who must free to take decisions regardless of the view of the scientific community, which has repeatedly been called in aid during the course of the many amendments that have been moved on the Bill. I hope that Ministers will look sympathetically on this amendment. Before I close, I shall refer to the Prime Minister’s comments when he gave evidence to the Liaison Committee, because it might help to guide our judgments on these matters. During the Recess I watched the whole of the Prime Minister’s contribution to that committee. He talked about top-down government, which is quite interesting in the context of this debate. In reply to a question from Tony Wright, he said: "““If you look at every problem that a modern economy and society like ours faces, whether it is the environment, whether it is terrorism, whether it is community cohesion or whether it is skills or facing the global economy, one of the lessons that I have learnt is that you cannot have top-down government anymore, ""you cannot make decisions and assume that people will simply follow them. Most of the decisions you are having to make can only be successful if people themselves are part of the process. If you take climate change, you cannot solve the problem of climate change without the personal and social responsibility of individuals, so you cannot have a sort of top-down government dictating climate change targets without at the same time having a debate about the personal and social responsibility of people and people have, therefore, got to be involved in that debate””." I agree with that sentiment. All I am saying to Ministers is that if that is the Prime Minister’s sentiment, why in this particularly precious area, where the very future of the planet is concerned, can we not delegate this area of responsibility to those outside who, if given the power, will act responsibly and come up with the right recommendations?