Climate Change Bill [HL]

The way in which Bills are drafted changed some time ago. Clause titles always used to be set at the side in about a three-point font so that you could hardly read them. I was always told, ““You can ignore them. They’re of no consequence whatever in terms of the legalities””. That probably goes some way towards meeting the noble Lord’s point. In my short note in response to the amendment, I have an absolute gem of a sentence, which I am determined to put on the record, but first I have one point to make to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. The Clause 11 report is drafted by the Government, not the committee. There should be no misunderstanding about that. The legal duty to meet each budget, which we discussed at an earlier sitting, provides a strong motivation to deliver the proposals and policies. I think that that was one of our very first debates, on line 1 or 2 of Clause 1 of the Bill. In addition, there will be regular progress reports by the Committee on Climate Change to Parliament under Clause 28. I am sorry to refer to these later clauses, but they set out in some detail the operation of the Committee on Climate Change. Here is the gem. A legal duty to implement the proposals and policies would be highly unusual in legal terms. Ministers can say all they like about implementation, but a legal duty—this is what my note says—would be highly unusual in legal terms. On another point, the amendment would be very restrictive. If the Government were unable to implement one element of the plan—through, say, unforeseen events—they would be in breach of the law. The same problem would apply if evidence came forward supporting a change in policy approach. It is not intended—this is not to demean the Bill at all—that the programme should be drafted as a legal document. It is therefore likely that any duty to implement would raise questions about precisely what the duty is and what needs to be done in order to fulfil it, and it would be very difficult to determine whether the duty had actually been fulfilled. Legal duties need to be set out in a way that shows precision and inflexibility. We do not want the proposals and policies to be drafted in this way. We want them to be understood and informative to the public. This goes back to the point my noble friend made about presentation.