Climate Change Bill [HL]

My immediate response is to say that the concordat is agreed on behalf of the Administrations, of whatever political composition they might be. The agreement will be with the Administration concerned rather than with political parties. The important point to note is that the formal agreement of the Administrations will be sought, and equally it is important that the concordat is practical and realistic. We have said at earlier stages in Committee that we have experienced positive working relationships. I appreciate the concerns of the noble Duke about the future because this is a very long-term Bill, and I will come on to what might happen if there is a disagreement. The Bill describes the UK Government and the devolved Ministers together as the ““national authorities”” for the purposes of some clauses. Clause 67, as the noble Lord pointed out, defines the term ““national authority”” to mean the Secretary of State, the Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Ministers and the relevant Northern Irish Ministers. Further, to make it clear, we would expect the Scottish Ministers to decide among themselves who should be the relevant Minister. The clause provides that: "““Functions conferred … on ‘the national authorities’ are to be exercised by all of them jointly””." This means that they must agree on the way the functions should be exercised and then act together. ““Acting jointly”” is a well used and well understood legal term which means bodies acting together to do the same thing. In order to act jointly, all must agree on what it is they are doing, so ““acting in agreement””, as proposed in Amendment No. 187A, would not add any further safeguards to the clause because the devolved Administrations will need to be in agreement in order to act jointly. I want to stress what would happen if there were a disagreement between the different legislatures. As I have said, the concordat is being developed by the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. It will set out the procedure for resolving any differences. However, it is worth reiterating that UK government departments and officials already have a constructive relationship with their counterparts in each of the devolved Administrations in drawing up the Bill, which is truly UK-wide in scope. We expect this good working relationship to continue as proposals for trading schemes emerge and that this kind of disagreement is most unlikely. There are probably several options available to us if the situation did arise, but it would be wrong to speculate on the detail at this stage when there are no obvious risks of that happening. However, I know that the noble Lord will push me further, so I shall make it clear. In the unlikely event that a procedure laid out in the concordat does not succeed in resolving an issue, a number of things could happen. First, the proposal would simply not be able to be introduced. If we could not agree, we could not proceed with it. Secondly, if we could not agree on a proposal, its scope might be revised so that it could be introduced by one or more national authorities acting alone. This is provided for in Part 1 of Schedule 3. Finally, if the proposal was very important, as I am sure noble Lords can imagine something might be, it would be possible to consider bringing forward primary legislation to introduce whatever the scheme was. As my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham stressed when we had a debate along similar lines, this is a UK Bill. With that further information on the record, I hope that the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.