Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 65: 65: Clause 12, page 7, line 1, leave out ““aviation or from international shipping”” and insert ““passenger travel and imports or exports of goods”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 65, I shall also speak to Amendment No. 116, which is grouped with it. I hope that noble Lords will understand that the amendments seek to introduce a new idea on this vexed topic. I recognised in the previous debate the earnestness of the views expressed and noble Lords’ desire to seek a solution. I hope that the House can find such a solution in these amendments. Our amendments would provide a framework for the inclusion of emissions from international trade, travel and transport, but in a way that would get around some of the problems to which the Minister referred in the debate on the previous amendments. They are also designed to address the problems arising from the vocabulary of the debate—the serious and possibly detrimental policy implications of just talking about aviation on the one hand and shipping on the other. Our proposal switches the focus to transport more generally. It addresses it in a broad and general fashion and, by doing so, provides a way in which the least carbon-intensive method of moving goods or people to and from the UK will be favoured. First let me explain the necessity of addressing this problem. Although the problem was to some degree covered in the previous debate and although, as the Minister recounted, we had a good and thorough debate on it in Committee, it is too serious for me not to reiterate the issues briefly. Not having a provision for the emissions caused by trade and transport is unjustifiable. If there is to be progress towards addressing climate change, these emissions need to be counted. The analogy constantly and aptly used is that it is like going on a diet but not counting the chocolate. To ignore trade and transport emissions is to ignore climate change. I know that the Bill has provisions to enable the Secretary of State to make regulations on aviation and shipping, but there is no duty for him so to do. Simply waiting around until the EU proposes a way of solving the problem or forces the UK to address it is, frankly, a bad way of governing. We appreciate that a lot of the regulation will require international co-operation and will depend on international agreements; that is the nature of the beast. However, if we truly intend to take a lead on climate change, we need to take a lead on addressing some of its biggest contributors. Therefore, our amendment would place a more positive duty: we specify that the Secretary of State must address these emissions in a five-year timeframe. On the essential difference between our amendment, which refers to goods and passenger travel, and the formulation in the Bill—namely, aviation and shipping—the problem with discussing emissions from trade and transport solely in terms of aviation and shipping is that that runs the risk of placing a disincentive on shipping, which is a relatively carbon-efficient method of transport in terms of tonnage. The emissions caused by air travel are relatively easy to count by using bunker fuels in the country of origin or in the country where the airline company is registered. Indeed, we record much of that information already. Shipping is much trickier to regulate, especially as goods brought into the country by ship might have taken a variety of routes before being loaded on to a ship or small boat and being brought into the UK. When discussing transport emissions, we need to be careful not to exclude other carbon-intensive modes of transport, such as haulage by truck, which have a direct bearing on our imports and the shipping industry. For example, if shipping becomes heavily regulated, there might be an incentive to have ships dock at Rotterdam or, worse, Istanbul, and then to drive across the Continent and into this country via the Channel Tunnel. The Minister has referred to the problems that might arise from such a transposition of trade. Conversely, if the regulations on shipping are not sophisticated enough or concern shipping without any regard to the entire carbon footprint of the transport of goods, it might prove economical to have goods driven across much larger stretches of land and then simply loaded on to ferries to make the Channel crossing, when a large ship could have delivered the goods to England with a fraction of the carbon footprint. These amendments go to the heart of the problem by addressing the purpose of shipping and aviation, as well as of transport more widely—moving goods and people to and from the United Kingdom. By expanding our view of transport, we stand a better chance of having regulation that addresses the problem systematically instead of including certain bits and not others, which may in the end create greater confusion and contribute to global warming more substantially than was originally intended. Let us consider the other more minor but still important emissions that are excluded from the Bill as it stands and which would still be excluded if we spoke only in terms of aviation and shipping. Ferries carrying passengers to France, the Netherlands and Ireland would have to be included under our scheme, as would international rail travel. The purpose is to provide a framework within which regulation can be made that will provide incentives to use the least carbon-intensive method of moving goods and people while ensuring that the entire scope of the problem is taken into account. That might sound daunting or idealistic, but I am assured that there are potential mechanisms for addressing the issues that I have outlined. I do not pretend that it will be easy, but I have been assured by maritime experts that it is possible. At the moment we have the T1(L) form, which is mandatory for every piece of freight coming in from outside the EU and which accounts for the entire journey and method of transport used at each stage, for tax and duty purposes; within the EU, CMR forms are regularly used. The T1(L) form could be amended to take account of carbon emissions or could be used to create a database. Our amendments do not propose specific policies and I mention this only as an example to noble Lords to show that our amendments are not pie in the sky but have a basis in sound policies. The amendments would place a specific duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations within five years—essentially for the next budget period. We have proposed this timeframe for two reasons. First, we want to ensure that it is done. At the moment the words ““may make … regulation”” are too weak and we want assurances that it will happen. We simply cannot accept the argument that any Secretary of State would be foolish not to address these issues. This needs to be a firm duty in the Bill. The second reason for the timeframe is that, while five years may seem a long period to some, it may be a short one for those who have to make regulation. We feel that five years is an adequate period for the development of a robust mechanism for counting trade and transport emissions. It means that these emissions would fit in neatly with the secondary budgetary period. It would also allow adequate time for international negotiations and ensure that our hands were not tied during talks on the new EU ETS and Kyoto. The period is still lengthy, but we would rather have a robust and effective mechanism than a rushed one that needed to be scrapped because it was ill conceived or because international agreements changed. We hope very much that the first budget period will be set in such a way that it takes into account the fact that the biggest contributors to climate change are not being counted. We feel that this approach is the most sophisticated and effective way of ensuring that we count all the important contributors to climate change, including international transport and the movement of people. I beg to move.