Climate Change Bill [HL]

Before the Minister responds to that, perhaps I may add my pennyworth. Clause 12(2)(a) states, "““state the amount for the year of UK emissions, UK removals and net UK emissions of that gas””." We are therefore talking about ““net”” after ““UK removals””, which raises the question how one measures UK removals. We had a spirited discussion about how one measures emissions, and recognised that one reduces that eventually back to carbon. ““UK removals”” or any removals will become a much more critical issue as we take into account the brave decisions taken at Bali, which cover deforestation—that is greatly needed. However, if ever there was a need for the science to catch up with the aspiration, here it is. We all recognise that we have very little idea of UK removal rates. We are talking about carbon sequestration, mainly, and the ability of different forest systems and soils to sequestrate, according to different land management systems. Eventually, if we are to bring deforestation into carbon accounting, which in a global sense we would certainly hope would be the case, we will simply have to be able to measure much more precisely than we can at the moment what we mean by removals. I do not expect the Minister to answer or to give us a masterclass on this, but I draw attention to the fact that most of us do not understand how we will measure precisely UK removals.