Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I hope it is accepted that many of the principal issues on devolution were broadly covered by the previous debates. I shall not repeat many of the points there but will stick to the narrow issue of the amendments and answer a couple of specific questions that the noble Duke asked me. With regard to Amendment No. 90, Clause 17 requires the Secretary of State, before amending the level of a budget, to obtain the views of the Committee on Climate Change and consider the views that the devolved Administrations may have regarding this advice. If the budget has yet to begin, the devolved Administrations will have a minimum of three months to consider the advice of the Committee on Climate Change and make their representations to the Secretary of State. If the budget in question has already begun, they will have a minimum of one month to feed their views into the Government. The difference here is simply to account for the fact that, if the budget has already begun, the decision on whether to amend it will need to be taken far more quickly. Amendment No. 90 would give the devolved Administrations at least three months to put forward their views, whether the budget had begun or not. That would limit the flexibility provided for in the Bill. We consider it right to require a decision to amend an ongoing budget to be taken more quickly, which is why the devolved Administrations are given less time to submit their views if the budget period has already begun. However, if at the time the circumstances dictated that the devolved Administrations could be given longer, it would be open to the Government to give them more time. This approach has already been agreed with the devolved Administrations, who, I am pleased to report, are perfectly happy with these timetables. Regarding Amendment No. 91, Clause 17 as drafted requires that the Secretary of State must publish a statement setting out whether and how the amendment of the budget takes into account any representations by the devolved Administrations. The important point here is that in legal terms ““whether”” means ““whether or not”” and ““how”” means ““how or how not””—it looks better when it is written down. The Secretary of State is already obliged to say what he disagrees with and the reasons why, so we believe that the Bill already addresses the legitimate concerns behind the amendment. I was asked specifically what the reasons might be for changing a budget. There could be a number. I cannot set them out in detail but they might include the following: changes to the international context—for example, a new multilateral agreement that required the UK to adopt a reduction target that was not envisaged when the budget was set—or that set new requirements for the UK under EU or international law. Another example would be if progress in developing or deploying a particular technology was faster or slower than expected. Another would be changes to the 2020 and 2050 targets, meaning that budgets needed to be revised—perhaps to incorporate other greenhouse gases. A final example would be a significant and possibly unforeseen shift in fuel prices which changed the basis of emissions forecasts on which the budget had initially been set. All those are substantial possible reasons for change but would not be used as a backdoor method of changing a budget just because we could not meet it for some reason. Amendment No. 95 requires the UK to publish the results of the consultation with the devolved Administrations. It would not be right for the UK Government to be given that responsibility. I shall repeat the phrase: we have to let go. The devolved Administrations must decide whether to publish their representations. They are free to do so; there is nothing to stop them. In any case, the Secretary of State is under a duty to say how he has taken the representations into account. That will be difficult to do—one could put it more forcefully than that—without broadly indicating what was in those representations. I hope that that list of possible reasons why a budget might be amended and the other answers meet the concerns of the noble Lord.