Climate Change Bill [HL]

I know that we are legislating for and on behalf of the public, but the idea that a copy of the Bill will go through every letterbox is palpable nonsense. What needs to go through every letterbox— and that is the sort of thing that should happen—is information in language that is easy to understand and that people can connect with their daily activities about the actual effects and consequences of the changes that will come about because of the Bill. The drafting of legislation must be done under our procedures in a specific way. The reasons for that are well known. The courts are out there and through the structures that we are setting up we are requiring business and individuals to change their behaviour in due course, and that must be done in a fair way. The legislative process does that. How the legislation is translated to inform the public is, I say with respect, another matter altogether. We need an overhead projector and a chart so that we can understand what we are doing as we legislate, but we cannot include the way we operate in legislation. I am sorry: I am defending the status quo, which I never thought I would do, because it needs modernising which is why we have the legislative programme. I understand that we must do things in this way, but how it gets translated to the public, business, industry and other organisations is another matter altogether. Better brains than we have on this Bill must be used to translate that information to make it meaningful and understandable to the public. Otherwise, we are wasting our time.