Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for going through this again. We have had an excellent debate, but I should respond to one or two comments. I was particularly surprised at the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Strangely enough, we tabled these amendments because we believe in them. As my noble friend Lady Miller said—I do not want to spend too much time on targets—it was the Government who put a target in the Bill, not us. All the evidence is that they have the wrong target in the Bill, so we thought that it might be a good idea if we put what is likely to be the best target in the Bill. That seems remarkably straightforward to me. Strangely enough, we believe that aviation is an important industry. It is also growing and has significant carbon emissions. We therefore have a number of choices. Do we—as I got the impression that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, suggested—ignore it and get on with the rest that we can absolutely define? That is not the right thing to do, because this is an important sector. Do we, as the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, said, say that including aviation will not do anything about the future and we should therefore not do so? Well, if that is true for aviation, it is true for every other sector covered by the Bill. Aviation is no different. Perhaps the only two reasons requiring more explanation are, first, whether we can measure it and, secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, said, whether it affects the EU ETS and international trading. On the first, the EU ETS will not help us in our national definitions. It will not allocate UK aviation emissions. When we get to 2012, this problem will not be solved. It will not be any easier. Therefore, on the basis that it is better to act now than in the future when the problem of climate change becomes worse, the answer is surely to act now rather than five years later. Why procrastinate?