Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, it depends. If the climate change committee gives advice and the Secretary of State agrees with it, it must still come to Parliament. Parliament could decide to throw both out. It is true that the orders are unamendable—almost like the nuclear option—so I understand the difficulty, but the group of amendments tabled by my noble friend do not add to Parliament’s role in scrutinising the setting of the carbon budgets. They may appear to increase the role of Parliament, but they do not. Finally, there is another reason why the model of the National Audit Office’s relationship with departments is inappropriate for the committee. I understand my noble friend, and see that his amendments are seductive, as the system is tried and tested and works extremely well. However, the NAO’s reports tend in the main to be backward-looking—a study in some detail about what has happened to taxpayers’ pounds. This is why so much emphasis is placed on agreeing that the facts of the case are accurate and not in dispute, so that no permanent Secretary of State or accounting officer can ever say when the reports are published that the facts and figures are wrong. That gets that completely out of the way at the beginning. The Public Accounts Committee’s inquiries can then get straight to the nub of the issue, and the facts are agreed. In contrast, the climate change committee’s advice on budgets is definitely forward-looking and based on projections of what might happen. There is therefore more uncertainty, and there could be a range of interpretations about what might happen. It is therefore not possible in the main to agree the facts in the same way as the National Audit Office agrees with departments. I will illustrate this with an example. In December 2010—this is a futuristic example—the climate change committee will publish its advice on the budget for the years 2023 to 2027. In other words, it will look up to 17 years ahead, so it is simply not possible to say what the facts are so far in advance. However, requiring the committee to agree the facts of the matter with the Government so that they were not in dispute would in essence require the committee to agree all its analysis with the Government. This could undermine its independence. Given that we will be looking up to 17 years ahead, the committee might take a different approach from the Government to its projections for the future. That is a practical view of the difference between the committee and the NAO. I am not saying that the model that my noble friend has used is incorrect, but it does not fit the purposes of the climate change committee. We agreed in Committee that the climate change committee, with Parliament, will help to hold the Government, and for that matter the country as a whole, accountable for the progress that we are making towards our 2050 target. That is why it is important that the committee can provide independent, expert, transparent and credible analysis, unfettered by any need for prior agreement with the Government or Ministers. It is vital that that is maintained, and that we get the balance of power between the different institutions exactly right, or certainly right from a practical, workable point of view. My noble friend’s amendments do not do this. They risk concealing discussions between government and the committee, which could undermine the credibility of the committee’s advice. In contrast, the system proposed in the Bill will be stronger and more robust and with a stronger role for Parliament in holding the Government to account. I am grateful to my noble friend for raising the issue and for the detail and the care with which he did so, but I hope that he does not proceed with the amendments.