Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment. One of the hallmarks of any successful organisation—the Government are no different—is to build on experience and success, and in this respect I think I have something to offer. Despite some people’s early reservations, in my judgment the success of Ofcom is in no small part due to the work of its excellent content sub-committee. Adequately resourced and ably chaired by Ofcom’s deputy chair, originally Richard Hooper and now Philip Graf, the content sub-committee of Ofcom has managed to allay all those early fears that an essentially economically-focused organisation would somehow allow matters relating to programmes to become marginalised or even reduced to a kind of second-order business. With its own board structure, the availability of independent expertise and a designated section in the Ofcom annual report, an enormous amount has been achieved in establishing an atmosphere of trust among content creators across the whole of the sectors that Ofcom regulates. Were he able to be present in the House this afternoon, the noble Lord, Lord Currie, assures me that he would have been happy to have confirmed his enthusiasm for the type of committee structure that is suggested by the amendment. In fact, the similarities between the issues of content and adaptation are really quite remarkable. Both require a type of specialist knowledge that would need to be accommodated in a single significantly larger climate change committee, which is something that none of us wishes to see happen. To seriously address measures of adaptation in the UK, any statutory sub-committee would have to be very much actions-based, working within the broad policy parameters and addressing the consequences—that is the key word—whatever has been thrashed out and agreed between the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Turner, and the Government of the day. I personally have no doubt whatever that this is the right way to go forward. Frankly, the Government would be wilfully myopic not to talk to Ofcom, study its annual report and take advantage of what has become a real success story for this Government.