Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for missing the first couple of minutes of his speech. I was delayed just outside the door by someone who spoke to me. I am particularly delighted to follow the noble Baroness because, as chairman of the National Rivers Authority, I had the responsibilities that she now has in the successor body, the Environment Agency, for dealing with both the storms that she has referred to and the droughts that almost immediately follow. Our experience is identical. I could not support the amendment more strongly than I do, based both on my experience and her experience. It is particularly important that we have a separate committee with the time and the expertise to deal with what are really a quite separate set of issues than those that will mainly be drawing the attention of the main committee. That is particularly so because I understand that the main committee will be smaller than I think is wise, and certainly smaller than the very effective committee that I chaired in the National Rivers Authority. With all the responsibilities that it has, it is extraordinary that anyone can conceive that it will have the time that is needed to deal with these specific and very different issues—I refer to the organisations that it will have to deal with, local authorities and others in the countryside—and that it will have the time to make sure that what needs to be done is done. I know that if I had the responsibilities of the noble Lord, Lord Turner, I would be thankful if there was a separate committee to take on this separate and highly important task. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said on this, but I do not think that we have to go to Ofcom; all we have to do is go to the relevant bodies that have dealt with those problems and are dealing with them now. The fact that the chief executive of the Environment Agency and the former chairman of the National Rivers Authority are in total agreement on this point ought to be considered by Ministers as having some significance.