Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and for the support for Amendment No. 22. Again, I thank the Minister for his reply. As he rightly said, there is not a great deal between us, because we are still heading in the direction that is common to everyone. He is right to say that this budgeting compliance mechanism, whether it is his or ours, will focus the mind of the Government. I totally accept the Minister’s point about the devolved Administrations. When I was a Minister, I was told that you must never criticise—or, at least, criticise too much—the wording of an opposition amendment. If the gist of the amendment is acceptable to the House, it is the Government’s duty to put it in the right order. If the right format includes devolved Administrations, I shall happily accept that. On the bone of contention between us—proposed subsection (1) in Amendment No. 22—I listened with great care to what the Minister said. I am not sure that he is totally correct. I want to look at this again in view of the amendments coming along, but we have a real problem in the delay caused through Clause 14. It will be a long time before the final result is known to Parliament. We need a mechanism that is not just the annual report or the stepping stones, although, again, we are grateful for that, as it was recommended by the Joint Committee. However, every Secretary of State should say, ““Whoa, something is happening here. Even on a precautionary principle, we ought to be prepared to act””. The Minister said that there is no role for the committee under subsection (1), but there is a big role for the committee, which is to provide the information to the Secretary of State. The whole point of subsection (1) is that it is for the Secretary of State to act on that information from the committee. However, I am grateful to the Minister. I will read with care what he said and will take account of future amendments to decide whether we should come back to this at a later stage. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 5 [Level of carbon budgets]: