Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 115: 115: Clause 25, page 13, line 9, leave out ““do not”” The noble Lord said: This matter is of great importance to the outside world and is a key part of the Bill; namely, whether we should include in the Bill from the beginning, or put off to some unknown date, emissions from international shipping and aviation. Under the Kyoto process, emissions from international shipping and aviation are not allocated to individual nation states. Due to the welcome strength of the international economy and globalisation, international shipping has experienced a major increase in activity, and therefore carbon emissions, in recent years. That is also particularly true of the international airline industry for similar reasons of increasing growth and affluence and the propensity of human beings, as no doubt we do, to travel the world. Although those two areas have not in the past been very significant in terms of carbon emission, they are increasingly so, and it is important that there are ways in which they become accountable to individual nation states. The European Council has recently agreed that in principle international airline emissions should be included within European monitoring and should become part of the EU ETS. I think that the European Parliament wanted it to be 2011, and it has now been agreed by the Council of Ministers that it should be 2012, so we are starting to have movement on this principle. The key arguments are that the Bill recognises that these are important areas in that it mentions them and goes through them, but it excludes them in the short term. At the same time, they are of growing importance. The Government are saying that the Bill is a pacesetter in the vanguard of international climate change control and legislation, so we strongly believe that they need to be brave and include these two areas in our targets at the outset. I am not suggesting that that is absolutely straightforward and easy; it is not. But the international community is already looking at ways to assign airline carbon emissions, which has been particularly difficult in shipping. We believe that there is a great deal to be gained from being first movers in this area and laying down the basis for what could in future be the way in which emissions are distributed by other nation states and in United Nations agreements. We are not saying that all emissions from aircraft or ships leaving or coming into UK ports and airports should be in the UK carbon account. That is clearly not the case, and already ways have been devised to allocate those. The Government should find ways of defining them in the short term. We should bite the bullet at this time so that we lead global standards and lead the world by including these emissions in the Bill from the beginning. I stress that both areas are high growth in terms of emissions, and we on these Benches believe that excluding them leaves a major hole in what the international community, the Government and the United Kingdom are trying to achieve. On that basis, it is vital that we take this forward now and include these provisions when the Bill is enacted in the first instance. I beg to move.