Climate Change Bill [HL]

I fully accept that. There has not been criticism of this, but the way in which paragraph 5(3) has been drafted could almost, in the context of the Bill, mean what you wanted it to mean: "““The regulations may specify the method of allocation or provide for it to be determined in accordance with the regulations””." The fact that that was my defence, or rather my answer, to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor—that the paragraph allows the relevant national authority to include force majeure provisions where required—indicates that the provision is pretty wide. I am working just with the Bill as it was introduced into the House, by the way; there were other draft Bills around. I now have the answer. The Bill’s wording on auctioning changed in response to the Joint Committee’s report to clarify the situation, but we remain of the view that any auctioning should be done through a money Bill. So there has been a change. However, there is the central point which I made—that there ought to be a different kind of legislation, as was the case for the European Union trading emissions programme.