Climate Change Bill [HL]

In the original draft Bill, the provision was for the Secretary of State to appoint the first chief executive. We discussed this in the Joint Committee. The argument is fairly concisely set out in paragraph 156. We recommended that that role of the Secretary of State should be removed from the Bill. I was therefore very pleased with the Government’s response on page 56 to our committee which says: "““On reflection, we agree with the Joint Committee””." It did not go on to state then that the appointment was to be subject to the approval of the national authorities. One of the key arguments deployed in the Joint Committee was that people on a committee should choose the chief executive. That carried the weight at the end of the day. To curtail that power of members of the committee would, to my mind, be very wrong.