Climate Change Bill [HL]

I accept that. If I have misunderstood the noble Lord, I apologise. I realise that the Committee seeks to take the Bill further forward. The status quo is not acceptable to most Members. We are happy to look at this package comprising Amendments Nos. 158, 175 and 183B. We shall see whether we can find a satisfactory way of dealing with this. However, we baulk at an issue in Amendment No. 175. It is not appropriate for government to require Parliament to do things when Select Committees are their own masters. They are the House committees. Further, they may not always comprise their present form so there is a danger in including such a measure in primary legislation. We ought to be wary of that. As regards Amendment No. 183B, setting up new independent committees on an ad hoc basis could be resource intensive and we are not clear what such committees would do in between time. However, I am not knocking the amendment on these technical grounds. I am conscious that I forecast at Second Reading that the Government would bring forward an amendment with regard to what they intended to do about adaptation, and that we have not done so. However, we hope to do so very shortly. It is an area on which we want to move in Committee if possible so that people can see how the land lies. We shall come back to this matter on Report when we have considered it further.