Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is accepted that from one year to the next there can be a great deal of variability either in greenhouse gas emissions or temperature. The particular feature here is that much of that variability within the timescale of a year would be difficult to explain; much more difficult to explain than variations in the government accounts. That makes this rather different. Therefore, I support the Government’s proposal of having a quinquennium, a base year, a target year and a trajectory in between, which is very much the methodology of the delivery unit. Suppose that, after the annual target, there is one year in which we are below trajectory, by which I mean on the wrong side of whatever trajectory we are trying to achieve. The implication is that you are then setting another set of targets on the basis of that one year’s change in evidence, much of which will be noise rather than signal. The right response may not be to act immediately. If one’s antennae begin to detect something going wrong, it may be to start researching or maybe start preparing what your response would be. Very often, it would not be a good idea to act. Suppose in the next year this variability reverses itself. What do you do? Do you then reset the targets back in the other direction? I also find rolling targets confusing. Take the year 2017. This will have been set in the initial target setting of the initial quinquennia. It will then appear as year 5 in the 2013-17 period. It will appear again as year 4 a year later. It will appear again as year 3 in the next year. The public will be thinking, ““What was the target for 2017? It has been reset six times in its lifetime””. Part of this mechanism is to provide clarity so that you can see where you stand. Philosophically, I am unsympathetic to the hyperactivity in pot-watching that the amendment implies. I am sure that many Members of this House have been highly critical of Ministers for initiative-itis; for not spending long enough looking at the evidence. Yet this amendment promotes exactly that kind of impatient policy-making. Let us remember that we are engaged on a 40-to 50-year journey to decarbonise our society. What is required is purpose and persistence and not a flurry of initiatives. The outcome will be decided by the way in which society—business, families and public organisations—responds. They need a clear set of guidelines and a predictable framework, not one that is dodging back from one year to the next. For those reasons, with the addition of the trajectory—which I think is called the indicative guidelines—that has been proposed, this is the basis that we should support in the Bill.