Climate Change Bill [HL]

I support the amendments. I am glad that they have been put down and also separated out, because this is a useful reminder of what the Bill is all about. As so many speakers made clear at Second Reading, and as the right reverend Prelate has said so effectively, climate change is likely to have the greatest impact on developing countries and is already doing so. Given that the poorest people are less able to withstand the additional pressures and shocks of climate change, they are at the forefront of the impact of climate change. It is therefore extremely important that what we do in Britain is also assessed on its impact on developing countries in terms of whether we are doing enough and what we are doing. To address what the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, has just said, there has been some discussion in previous sittings about climate credits. These could be adopted as a way forward; they might benefit the United Kingdom in tackling climate change and meeting its targets but they might not have a beneficial effect on developing countries. Therefore, we need to look at this in an international context. Climate credits could be positive or negative in developing countries—there are examples of both. We need that expertise in international development on the climate change committee to take this into consideration and to be sure that we are doing that. As I mentioned in the debate on the previous amendment, it looks to me as if this committee is rather weighted towards business, economics and industry. I worry about the depth and nature of its expertise; we addressed a number of those issues just now. To be honest I did not feel that that was totally addressed by the Minister in his concluding remarks. International development is also an area which the committee must address, and we need to see that represented on it. I therefore argue that a more balanced composition should include expertise on the impact of climate change in the developing world. We will later come to the subject of adaptation, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, in the previous group. That is obviously extremely important and must be rapidly developed, particularly for the benefit of developing countries. Again, there are opportunities for us here in the United Kingdom, and the committee’s expertise must include that as well. That should benefit developing countries. Having a committee member knowledgeable about climate impacts in developing countries might also help to provide a strong international perspective, which is clearly critical in what the committee is doing, to ensure that purely domestic economic factors do not dominate what the committee decides. It is of course not sufficient to suggest that climate scientists on the committee will themselves adequately address and safeguard this area; it would obviously depend entirely on the expertise and interest of those particular climate scientists and whether they had in interest in international development. The Bill is about a global problem. The climate change committee should undoubtedly have expertise in this area among its members.