Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is indeed an interesting set of amendments. Since the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, laid down the challenge to me, I have been trying to think through my rationale on this. This is a more intermediate issue. I was especially concerned that the climate change committee should not itself decide policy, because policy is inevitably political. You can meet individual targets by a number of routes by different policy mixes. In our mind, that was clearly the duty and responsibility of the Secretary of State and the Government, rather than of a committee that is largely unaccountable. When it comes to setting the budgets, I am not sure that the problem goes away. Just to decide what particular budget periods are, the committee has to look at the policy options required. I agree that there might be a number of those. There is a difference between politicisation in the way I am describing it and the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, described it. He said that if a body can only give advice, corporate politics begin to try to get the ear of people in putting across particular arguments so that the other side accepts that solution. I understand that, and I think that it is almost inevitable in any organisation. However, the politicisation that I am talking about is that as soon as a body is able to make decisions, which, effectively, the Government have to work around, the lobbying that goes into it is immense. It is all concentrated on the body rather than on the democratic institutions of the state. I differ from noble Lords on a number of things. We talk about the science being correct. I take the New Scientist every week—that is not a brag, it is just to get out of the groove of politics. The scientific community will always say that there is no one answer to everything, that nearly everything is a hypothesis and that the science will move on. The rigour of science is peer review, different opinions and assessment. A single solution appears very infrequently. We need to ensure that we do not fall into that fallacy in the way that we look at the Bill. On my way in this morning, I was reading an article about the different theories of dark matter. I will not go into any of those, except to say that science has at least a dozen different opinions on the missing matter in the universe that cause constant expansion rather than a big crunch. A perfect solution for the whole area is indeterminate. In this area, there is still that risk of politicisation that the Minister quoted back at me earlier. It is still a step too far for an effectively unaccountable and appointed body. Once the body has executive powers, the way that people are appointed will suddenly become far more political. We want types of decisions and appointments similar to those on the present shadow committee, on which I have congratulated the Government. I agree that is not a big step, with these amendments, to have executive powers, but it is still a step too far. I believe that the Secretary of State and the Government need to be accountable for this level of decision and, in that way, to be responsible to Parliament.