Climate Change Bill [HL]

Obviously, as the noble Earl says, the amendments in the group concern the scope of the regulations on the carbon accounting part of the Bill. I note his initial term. I am sure that parliamentary counsel would have a far more elegant response than I have to his description of unparliamentary language, but there is a practical reason for it. On Amendment No. 108, Clause 21(2) allows the Secretary of State to make regulations for carbon accounting and, as set out in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill, the intention is to establish an accounting system broadly similar to that which is used to keep track of the United Kingdom’s assigned amount units and other units issues under the Kyoto Protocol. Under that system, carbon units can be moved between accounts. They are tracked through a registry which is similar to an online banking system. Each account holder has an account where their allowances are stored, transferred to or received from other accounts. The registry also tracks which allowances have been used for compliance purposes and we intend to adopt a similar approach under the Bill. However, Amendment No. 108 would essentially prevent this by removing the Secretary of State’s ability to keep track of carbon units and there would be no way of knowing whether or not the Secretary of State held the carbon units he claimed to hold. The amendment would therefore undermine the transparency of the Bill. As I said, we have a well established system for tracking carbon units under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. It has an excellent record and has so far been licensed to 16 countries in addition to the United Kingdom. It is a well tried and tested system and therefore the use of the language ““to register or keep track of”” probably conforms to legally accepted practice. Turning to Amendment No. 109, it is possible that the accounting regulations under Clause 21 may involve duties being placed on the Secretary of State and, as a matter of legal drafting, it is not usual to talk about these duties being ““conferred”” on the Secretary of State. The duties could be related to the need to register and keep track of carbon units—for instance, the carbon accounting regulations will need to reflect any decisions to bank or borrow under Clause 13—or to the establishment of a body to administer the carbon accounting scheme, which we will discuss when we come to Schedule 1. The establishment of such a body could involve a number of functions being imposed on the Secretary of State such as the appointment of members and other related matters. On Amendment No. 112, the carbon accounting regulations are likely to be very technical and detailed and to require frequent updating. Clause 23, to which the amendment refers, takes a proportionate approach to the requirements for parliamentary scrutiny which is in line with the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee as to what constitutes an adequate level of parliamentary control. The body appointed as the scheme administrator is only one aspect of the way in which we will manage our carbon accounts and there is no obvious reason why this aspect should be given a greater priority. However, I understand the importance of the issue. In addition, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee will scrutinise any orders made to transfer administrative responsibilities and would be able to report on any order which it considered to be of interest to the House—or, indeed, an order that it thought was inappropriate. That kind of scrutiny removes the possibility that any order made using this power could go unnoticed. It is a complicated Bill and many orders will flow from it, both from the Government and from the recommendations of the committee. It is important, if I can use the word, that we keep track of them all and that none of them slips through. But we have got sufficient procedures in place to make sure that nothing goes by unnoticed and, as I say, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee accepted what was in the Bill.