Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate around this subject. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, we must thank the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, for bringing things down to the personal level. If the whole policy that we are pursuing is to have success at all, we will have to be able to enlist the whole population as we go along. The question is whether we can enlist them by tying this down in the Bill, or whether we are going to be challenged in a different way to keep their enthusiasm going. I confess to it springing up in my mind—this shows how far back I go—that as a very small boy when the war effort was on, suddenly there was a great flap in the house and we had to gather up all the spare aluminium saucepans and send them to some Minister, because they were going to help build aeroplanes. I do not think that they did build very many aeroplanes, but everyone suddenly felt very involved, as if this was to be our great contribution. In some ways, that is the type of thing that we will have to keep going. How we go about it is still a very big question. I feel from the Minister’s reply that the Government have perhaps not fully evaluated the introduction of the element of competition. Business understands the element of competition, and the population understand football matches and the competition there. We have even seen that our Armed Forces have benefited greatly from being in competition with each other. Whenever there is a juxtaposition of one or two of the services or regiments, they love to compete. If sectors are given targets, they could compare through their five years how each sector is doing on meeting its target and find some incentive in that way. The Minister’s reply did not quite take into account that we are banking on the climate change committee being made up of intelligent beings, and we are merely introducing enabling measures. We are not saying in the Bill what the sector should be. We are not saying that the sectors and their targets should be defined between now and 2050. Presumably, they would be reviewed at least on a five-year basis, allowing for updates, or there may be other ways in which they can be updated. We are just interested in producing enabling measures, leaving it up to climate change scientists to lay down exactly what use they want to make of them. In the light of the Minister’s reply, we will take this amendment away and may come back to it later. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn [Amendment No. 21 not moved.]