Climate Change Bill [HL]

I support the principle behind this amendment. It is particularly useful to see the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, in his place, because I have two points that I wish to make. The first is that the only deficiency in the Joint Committee’s report was the passage on adaptation. That had absolutely everything to do with time pressure. We were up against almost insane time constraints to get the report out, and we did not do that part justice. Indeed, all that has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is accurate. Secondly, the only Member of the Committee who, so far as I am aware, has any real experience of the issue of adaptation is the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. When he was Secretary of State for Health, he moved with great speed and effectiveness on the issue of AIDS. The situation was similar in that it arose as a consequence of actions that had in some cases taken place years before; there was an awareness of the dangers, and the need to move swiftly. Adaptation will be expensive and complicated, and will involve people and expertise quite unlike those of the climate change committee itself. It is going to be a very important part of the Bill and I can only hope that we learn from the experiences of the past. We must take on board many of the actions taken so promptly and brilliantly by the Government of the day; frankly, that put Britain in a better place in the fight against AIDS than any other country in the world. If we can achieve the same with climate change, we could be very proud of ourselves.