Climate Change Bill [HL]

I apologise for my earlier interruption. I am working from my notes, and I have this amendment down under the wrong name. I should make it clear that my remarks will be a little longer than usual, as I want to take us back to an earlier debate on the duty to implement and meet. There are some issues here that it would be well worth rehearsing—and obviously I am trying to work it out so that we do not have to do all this again on Report. That is one of the objectives. We shall have a more informed debate on Report, to put it that way. With the amendment, we return to the issue of whether the Government should be placed under an obligation to implement a report setting out their proposals and policies. I assure this Committee that adaptation is an integral part of this Bill and we fully intend to deliver on our commitments to ensure that the impacts of climate change in the UK are effectively addressed. No reasonable Secretary of State is going to develop a set of policies and then just ignore them. The whole idea of putting a programme in place is, for the first time, to ensure that coherent adaptation planning actually takes place. Clause 49 represents a significant step forward in the UK's response to the impacts of climate change, and we should not lose sight of this fact. Those plans will inevitably lead to action; for one thing, Clause 49(3) requires subsequent adaptation programmes to contain a report on progress of earlier programmes, which will be the trigger for assessing how effective the programme has been. We must be realistic. Best practice changes, and the Government ought to follow it. A statutory obligation to implement a programme may remove flexibility to amend the delivery programme if more appropriate and effective policies and measures are developed, so it might also result in significant costs if circumstances change after the programme is announced. We of course expect to be held to account under the usual parliamentary scrutiny process and will be reporting to Parliament on both the risk report and the adaptation programme. In addition, as I set out in our previous debate, a duty to implement a programme could be seen as a very broad enabling power for a Government to carry out any actions it proposed through the plan. I am sure that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee would have something to say about that. On the more general question of duties to implement, which I believe is at the nub of this, I shall respond in some detail to some questions raised in a previous debate on Amendment No. 60. In that case, I noted the inappropriateness of giving the Government a wide and unfettered enabling power, and the need for clarity and certainty when imposing duties on people. These points are equally applicable to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, suggested previously that the duty in Clause 1 was not clear or certain. It is not fair to draw a comparison between a duty to implement a qualitative policy programme that has not yet been written, and the clear and quantified duty in Clause 1(1). I hope that this helps to clarify why we believe the duty to meet the 2050 target is of a different nature from those proposals for a broader and less well defined duty to implement a policy document. It will be clear from the statement published by the Secretary of State under Clause 15—the final statement for 2050—whether the net UK carbon account has been reduced by at least 60 per cent. If the figures show that the 60 per cent reduction has not been made, then it will follow that the Secretary of State has breached his duty. That is what we mean when we talk about clarity and certainty in the context of a legal duty. To the extent that the noble Lord was really saying that the shorter-term implications—between now and 2050—of the duty in Clause 1 might be less clear, which is why we have carbon budgets to set the trajectory to our 2050 target, I repeat that we are considering how the concerns of the Committee can be met, as previously discussed. In other words, this is not the end of the issue. We are giving further consideration to the matter. I apologise for the length of my reply.