Climate Change Bill [HL]

It might be possible; it might mess up the nice ring of CCC. I am sure that all advice and suggestions are welcomed by the House and by the Government. I have made it clear that it is an advisory committee. I digress, but I remember that when ACAS was set up it was not called ACAS—I was on the Standing Committee in the other place—and the ““A”” was added during the course of the legislation. The suggestion made by my noble friend is welcome, but I cannot comment on it today. The climate change committee’s role is to provide the best possible advice on the level of budgets and to hold the Government and the country accountable for progress towards them. The Government’s view is that the committee should not have a role in choosing the policy mechanisms most appropriate for meeting the budgets. I admit to agreeing with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, when he said in last Tuesday’s debate that if the committee starts making major policy recommendations to government, it would not depoliticise the decisions but would utterly politicise the committee. I will comment briefly on the contribution of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. With him, I had the privilege of serving on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place—the only Select Committee I ever served on, and I did so for two years—and our period on it overlapped. I much enjoyed it and learned far more about the machinery of government in two years on that committee than I learned in 16 years on the Opposition Front Bench. I freely admit. I am also a strong supporter of the NAO. One of the reasons why the Public Accounts Committee never has a Minister as a witness is that it does not do policy. There is that distinction about the role of the NAO and the PAC, which does not do policy, although I know it comes across in the media as doing policy. In fact, a Minister is nominally a member of the committee. I fully take on board the point of my noble friend about the agreement on the publication of the reports. It is an important point and one that is usually ignored and underrated by those who comment on the work of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, there are already a number of bodies with expertise in specific areas to which the Government can look for recommendations on suitable policy instruments. What we need from the Committee on Climate Change—this is why we are creating it—is an entirely new body that provides independent, expert and credible advice on the science and economics involved and on how quickly, from a practical point of view, we can move towards our 2050 target. For the advice to be credible, it must be formulated outside the political arena and therefore above decisions on the particular choice of policy mechanisms. We should also bear in mind that any attempt to depoliticise decisions about policies by delegating them to the committee, for example, would also—here again I am fully in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—de-democratise them. We could take, for example, the question of nuclear power. The Government have set out their position. We know that there are a range of views within the country on the issue but it is important that the Government are held accountable by Parliament and the people for their decisions on matters such as this. We would not want the Committee on Climate Change to be responsible for these sorts of decisions. We strongly believe that our vision of the role and the functions of the committee is right. We need a body that is independent, transparent and influential with a strong focus on analysis and evidence. I very much expect that is what we will be able to create. As I have said, we have raised the budget for support by 50 per cent. It will be almost if not directly equivalent to the backup provided for the Stern committee; the House of Lords and the country received its valuable report just over a year ago. I turn to the amendments, which this debate hangs on. They involve simply changing the committee’s name. So far as the name is concerned—this is the advice I have received—there is absolutely no legal significance within the machinery of government in which it will operate or in the context of the Bill itself. I am almost saying that it does not matter; the argument might therefore be, ““If it does not matter, do it””. However, noble Lords have hung on the proposed change of name things other than a change of name. There has been an attempt to hang changes of functions, of authority and of power—those involve going beyond the advisory role on the change of name. On that basis, of course, it is not an argument that the Government can accept. We believe that referring to the organisation—it is a non-departmental public body—as a committee is perfectly fine and we do not consider the amendment would add anything of value. I say that in the context of what we want the committee to do. If those who want to change the name are happy to accept the parameters of the vision of what we want it to do, that is one message. But that is not the message of the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor: they are hung with changing the functions and the nature of the committee. We want to keep it as it currently is, and therefore do not believe that changing the name would add anything of value to our vision for the committee.