Climate Change Bill [HL]

For the purposes of Hansard I should say that I think the noble Baroness—unless I misheard her—meant ““methodology””, not ““mythology””. I am listening. I fully accept that I am on the rack on this. I shall try to give a further defence of why we cannot produce a yearly risk assessment, for example. It is not possible to obtain the updated scenarios on which to base an annual risk assessment. I mentioned the modelling for the United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme which started as far back as 2001. The bulk of the work has been carried out since 2004; so for three years. The report is due later this year and is based on brand new methodology that the Met Office Hadley Centre has had to develop from scratch; so there is new work. I accept that once it has been developed, it is developed, but I am giving an example of looking at these issues. New methodology has to be agreed and developed from scratch. We are working in new territory and it has taken considerable time. The downscaling step—turning global model output into a regional model output—takes a year. The UK Climate Impacts Programme has a new terrestrial carbon cycle component that makes the model run 20 per cent slower. For the next set of scenarios, the Met Office Hadley Centre would like to include an ocean carbon cycle component which would make the model run even slower. The Met Office wants to use the most up-to-date models, HadGEM2 and HadGEM3, for the United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme. It is using one model called HadCM3 that would make it run even slower. Creating a new methodology annually is beyond the resources and academic capabilities of the Met Office Hadley Centre staff. That is not to rubbish them; this is leading-edge technology. New scenarios also need to incorporate advances, new observations, models and methods. None of these is updated annually. It would not be practical. That is not to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, mentioned, that new information, and a capability of annual scrutiny, will not be available. I gave Defra as an example, but this is not only about Defra’s annual reports. If the way in which the departmental reports are put together could be rethought to overcome the difficulties that I have explained and to meet the need for some aspect of an annual assessment, I would be more than happy to think again about how they could be re-presented, which is what that would mean, simply because the Committee is asking. I suspect that I need to explain the difficulties in meeting the needs of the amendments. We would probably need a large-scale, multidimensional screen at the end of the Chamber to show how the different scenarios are working, and to show the impact and the timescale, from the design of the methodology to the output, to get an assessment that is scientifically robust. I am not seeking to make any excuses. Nor am I resting on the case for linking in with international programmes, although that is not unimportant; indeed, we will provide input into those programmes ourselves. I grab the lifebelt that the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, threw me with both hands so that we can see whether we can make a difference to how the information is put into the annual reports, although that would not meet the needs of the amendments’ requirements, which are on a much bigger scale. I see nods of agreement. On that basis, I am more than happy to consider that aspect of the amendments.