Climate Change Bill [HL]

I have three points to make, but first I declare an interest as the immediate predecessor of my noble friend Lord Rees as president of the Royal Society. My first point is about numbers. In the draft Bill, the committee, if we include the chairman, is six to nine people. The inevitable social pressures will tend to make the number nearer the upper limit. If my arithmetic is correct, the amendment would make this eight to 13. This is not a make-or-break decision, but I am in favour of the smaller committee for a reason that is science-based. Many people think of Northcote Parkinson as a writer of comic prose; I think of him as one of the more substantial contributors to social science. One of the things that he did was to trace from the cabal to the Star Chamber and to Harold Wilson’s ““kitchen cabinet”” and outline the fact that as committees inevitably enlarged beyond about eight people, they began to condense out an inner core so that they could function. I strongly believe that ““fewer is more”” in this context but, as I say, that is a minor point. My second point concerns the idea of embedding in the Bill the requirement for broad consultation on the constitution in putting together the Committee on Climate Change. One might think that this is already covered in the protocols for science advice and policy making that were issued way back in 1996 and that have gone through successive rounds of strengthening in the hands of the regimes of two Chief Scientific Advisers. These enjoin that in any enterprise such as this there should be such consultation with appropriate experts. Writing it down and doing it are two different things. A deliberately vague but none the less specific example is one really important committee that was put together not that long ago to deal with scientific aspects of a particular debate for which there was another committee dealing with the general public consultation. The putting together of this committee was in the hands of a junior official who consulted within the DTI and Defra. He put together a committee of 20 people—they were invited without any further consultation outside—on a subject for which genetics and ecological science were extremely relevant. In its first instance, the committee ended up with no geneticist and no really front-rank ecologist. As this was perceived, six people were added ex post facto, which, going back to my first point, made a committee of 26 people. I thank my stars that I was not part of it. My third point is how you spell out this consultation. While I very much respect what my noble friend—my genuine friend—Lord Rees said, I do not think that it is a very good idea to mention any one institution, partly because that would not be totally appropriate even if we were to think of one institution. In this context, the science does not mean only physical and biological science; it also involves, importantly, and arguably more importantly, social and economic science. I derive a good deal of narcissistic satisfaction from the fact that during my presidency we somewhat enlarged the ambit of the Royal Society to begin to include the harder edges of social and economic science, but we still could not claim to be representative of it. Beyond that, I am reluctant to see the society included like this. Although you could get round it by putting the Royal Academy of Engineering alongside us, whenever you take such action you are drawing a line that has a lot of dissatisfied people on the other side. I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in whom I have faith in these matters, to take this under advisement and think about how most wisely to incorporate in the relevant place in the Bill a firm injunction for outside consultation. In the first instance of putting this together and tentatively beginning to think about it, even as the Bill goes forward, competent head-hunters have been consulting widely with the Royal Society and private individuals. We have made a good start, but let us make sure that it continues by appropriately and non-institutionally specifically spelling it out in the Bill.