Climate Change Bill [HL]

I, too, support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Young. Towards the end of the second day in Committee I rather grumpily complained about what I felt was a lack of urgency. I was talking not about the pace at which the Committee was operating but that in my experience—although my experience may be singular—Governments are not good at moving quickly to address problems that have not already been confronted by the public. Last week I mentioned that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, was a marvellous exception to that in the way in which he grappled with and dealt with the impending crisis of AIDS. However, by and large that is the exception and far from being the rule. I am prepared to be convinced by the Minister’s amendments, if I could be absolutely certain that the Treasury understood the financial implications of what the amendments set out. We constantly have to listen to the fact that Defra is an underfunded department, or agency, which is actually taking on board cuts, not having its capacity increased to deal with many of the issues touched on here. It has a very small outward-looking communications department and a very small adaptation department. Yet implicitly what the Minister is saying is that Defra has the strength, capacity and confidence of the Government to take on this enormous task. Could he reassure me from the Dispatch Box that the Treasury is seized of this and that Defra will be turned into an agency that has the resources, capacity and staff to deal with what we generally in this Chamber believe will be an enormous series of problems and will not continue to be sparingly funded and constantly somehow one of the Cinderella departments of government?