Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, regret the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, but I do not think that he is travelling between Moscow and Mexico by pony and trap, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, implied. A few gases were being put into the atmosphere there. I cannot put words into the mouth of the noble Lord, but I think that if he were here he would say, ““Thank you, the Government have listened to what I said in Committee and have come forward with a practical solution””. Our amendment does not go all the way, but I do not think that anybody is ever going to ask for everything to be perfect. The one regret that he would express is that the government amendment is placed elsewhere in the Bill, after Clause 10, not in Clause 1. However, the amendments essentially cover the same area. The noble Earl talked about the difference between the duty to meet targets and the duty to implement plans or policies. They are quite different. The duty to meet a target—a budget in this sense—is fairly clear, because we can see whether it has been met from all the emissions statements. Theoretically, therefore, whether you have met your duty can be ruled on. A number would be there; it would have been achieved. The duty to implement policies is not so clear at all. You can get a policy document written in what looks like precise terms but which turn out to be vaguer in implementation. In legal terms, the duty to implement a policy is much less specific. There is a difference, as I hope is accepted. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, raised another issue. This place is full of ex-heads of the Civil Service, but I am served by its present head and my notes are no different from the notes that I had in Committee. The central plank of Clause 1 is to change behaviour in the Civil Service, not just in government. That is intended to send the signal around Whitehall—I gave examples of ideas and submissions that come from Ministers and from the government machine—that the duty in Clause 1 will be instrumental in changing or guiding behaviour in work across Whitehall. Another point is that this is not a Defra Bill; this is a government Bill covering all departments. I made that point in Committee, too. It is true that the Bill is about changing behaviour in the Civil Service and in government, but that does not mean that judicial review will not be possible. If we had no doubt that a budget would be missed, the court might make a declaration to that effect. Therefore, this approach does not close that off completely. We had a useful discussion in Committee about the importance of ensuring that Secretaries of State are bound by the requirement to meet the 2050 target. I said then that the duty to meet that target was fundamental to the Bill. The target is clear and quantified. It will encourage the action that is necessary for it to be met, and assessing compliance will be straightforward. Therefore, we would not want to accept an amendment that would replace the 2050 duty with what we believe is a weaker alternative. That is why we do not accept Amendment No. 2. Removing the duty to meet the 2050 target would in practice weaken the duty on the Secretary of State. By focusing on the process rather than the outcome, the Government could fail to stay within budget and still comply with their duty so long as they had developed what they thought were the right policies. I made that point in Committee and it is still valid. The proposed duty under Amendment No. 2 could result in a situation whereby the proposals and measures individually had the objective of ensuring that we reduced emissions in general terms but without addressing the need to reduce overall emissions by a specified amount. The Secretary of State could discharge the proposed duty by developing two or three policies and take a few measures with the genuine objective of reducing emissions by at least the current figure of 60 per cent, but if the measures turned out not be enough he would still have complied with his obligation. That cannot be right. Amendment No. 2 would weaken the Bill. The important rationale for the Bill is to provide greater certainty about the UK’s direction of travel. Weakening the duty is not the best way to do this. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said when he raised these issues in Committee—I agreed that we wanted to take account of them and to get this as clear and as accurate as we could—we are keen to provide the strongest possible assurance that every Secretary of State between now and 2050, and beyond, will be under an equally strong duty. However, it would be a mistake to look at Clause 1(1) in isolation. The overall effect of the Bill’s existing framework, as a whole, goes a long way towards relating short-term government actions to the long-term target. In particular, there is already a legal requirement that budgets from this year onwards must be set with a view to meeting the 2050 target and proposals and policies must be published to show how we plan to meet each budget. The Bill’s annual reporting framework will ensure that the Committee on Climate Change and Parliament have a role in scrutinising performance every year. That is an important point, which I probably did not stress sufficiently in our first debate today. However, bearing in mind the debate that we had in Committee, we want to provide further reassurance on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. Government Amendment No. 50, which I shall move at the appropriate time, will therefore place an additional duty on the Secretary of State to bring forward proposals and policies that, in his view, are sufficient to meet the carbon budgets for the periods for which the budgets have been set. These policies and measures should be developed with a view to meeting the target for 2050 and any subsequent targets that may be set. To ensure that a UK-wide approach is taken, our amendment provides that in preparing the proposals and policies the Secretary of State may take into account the proposals and policies that he considers may be prepared by other national authorities. This is a better approach, which complements the duty to meet the 2050 target rather than replaces it. There is strength of feeling on this issue and I understand why the noble Lord has tabled the amendment. We want to put our intentions beyond doubt in legislative terms. It goes without saying that climate change mitigation policies must not ride roughshod over the need to consider other environmental issues, such as biodiversity. In most of these cases, we would expect policies to seek win-win situations. It is true also that the broad existing principle is well established and embedded in government policy making—I am thinking here of the sustainable development strategy, which was quoted back at me earlier. Given the sustainable development action plan published by government departments and the independent advisory advocacy and watchdog role relating to government operations that we have given to the Sustainable Development Commission, there is no need to make additional provisions in the Bill. We raised this argument in Committee, and government Amendment No. 50 meets the points that we made then. Amendment No. 2, however, would weaken the Bill. We can argue about the duty, whether it is supposed to send signals to the Civil Service, or whether that would be the appropriate mechanism, but the words in the amendment would weaken the Bill. That cannot be a sensible way forward.