Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend accepts that I listened carefully to what he said. There was a dog that did not bark—a matter that I very much hoped that he would raise. He talked about not wanting to damage the confidence of the market. Have the Government considered how they might successfully regulate this entirely new and relatively untried trading concept? One can be sure that for every legitimate trader there are likely to be a dozen illegitimate ones out there waiting to take advantage of this untested situation. If the World Bank, with all its resources and all its experience, is forced to concede that as much as half its aid fails to reach the beneficiaries for whom it was intended, what chance does this fledgling scheme have of not becoming a brand-new black hole down which billions of well intended pounds, dollars, euros and yen are poured? While I am on my feet, perhaps I may respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who suggested that I have been somewhat lyrical. I took my tone entirely from the Prime Minister’s speech on 19 November, which could hardly have been more lyrical. In it, he said that overcoming climate change must be one of the great projects of this generation. I deliberately elided the concept of trust with the amendment. At the end of the Prime Minister’s speech, he said that he wanted the post-2012 agreement to include, "““binding emission caps for all developed countries””." I assure the Minister that 99 per cent of the population of this country listening to that remark believed that he meant domestic carbon savings. That is what I mean by trust. If he did not mean domestic savings, he could easily have said so.