Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, as I understand the amendment, in substance it has two elements to it. One is that it reframes aviation and shipping in terms of passengers and goods and services; and the other is that it inserts the word ““must”” instead of ““may””. I hope I have got that right. The first of those is an interesting proposition to put before your Lordships. The question is whether that distinction between the movement of people and the movement of goods and services makes more sense than the distinction between the means by which the movement takes place, whether by air or by sea—or, internally, by rail. I will listen with great interest to what the Minister says about that. With regard to aviation, on many occasions an aircraft will carry both goods and people. International aviation agreements are emerging in Europe, but it would be difficult to have one system of measuring or taking account of the movement of goods by air and another for measuring travel by land to ensure that the emissions are the same, which I understand to be the objective of the noble Lord’s amendment. Either there has to be a system that counts only emissions from air travel—they are calculated on the amount of fuel used and are the same whether goods or people are being carried—or you try to find a way of distinguishing between carrying goods and services and carrying people. I am not making the point very easily. There is an attempt to say that the issue is not of aviation or of shipping, but of moving people or moving goods and services. I am not sure, in practical terms, whether that is a workable process. I will not comment too much on ““must”” or ““may””, other than to make a general comment about this particular clause and the desire in the Bill—which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, most forcefully expressed in his frustration as he wound up on the previous vote—to say, no doubt in the face of pressures, that we as an individual country must take responsibility for every emission, even if some emissions are best dealt with in an international environment, as within Europe. The clause as it stands gives a great deal of credence to that view. I suggest that it is entirely possible that we could well distinguish between those emissions that we are best at dealing with as a country and those emissions that are best dealt with in international agreements. The latter group should be dealt with in that environment, and we should not pretend that we can say that these are British emissions as opposed to French or German emissions—not least because the emitters will be free to trade in any case, and the actual emissions will be quite beyond our control in international agreements. The saving grace for me in the clause is that it says those necessary orders ““may”” be made. I have just a slight concern, although I may have misinterpreted this, that saying ““must”” means that we must say what the UK emissions are. I shall give the kind of examples that have already been given. If I and my family decide to go to India and do not fly direct from London to Delhi but go via Amsterdam, what are the UK emissions? If a Chinese or American visitor decides that they will be put off by passenger duty and will go to or from their country via Dubai, Paris or Frankfurt, what are the UK emissions? There are real problems here, and the clause does not do a great deal to deter the idea that we should perhaps distinguish between emissions. I suspect that the climate change committee will distinguish between those emissions that fall within an international agreement and those that do not. For that reason, I hope that when the Minister responds to this he is able to cope on the may/must issue. I will be interested to see what his answer to that point is.