Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 142: 142: Clause 27, page 14, line 19, at end insert— ““( ) whether Government policies and programmes will result in the meeting of current and future carbon budgets,”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 142, I shall also speak to Amendment No. 159. Both amendments deal with the boundary between what the climate change committee should do, advise or have executive power over and what the domain of government should be. There is an important role for the climate change committee, as an independent advisory body, in looking forward and making a technical assessment of whether government policies and programmes of the time will meet proposed carbon budgets of the current period in its annual reports. This is a particularly important area for the climate change committee, because in many ways all that it does under the Bill is to advise on carbon budgets and now, we hope, on adaptation as well. But there is the very important, independent audit role—not a political role—of assessing whether government programmes and policies as they are will mean that those budgets and future targets will be met. That is not a politicised issue because it is not up to the Committee on Climate Change to decide on those budgets, because that has already been decided. Nor is it the role of the committee to decide what policy adjustments are needed to get to those targets. It is an early-warning, objective look by an important body to see and to report—it is open to the public and to Parliament—and to assess whether the Government’s policies are likely to be successful in meeting the targets that they have agreed should be set. We feel strongly that these amendments are still important. I note with some satisfaction that government Amendment No. 157 gets pretty close to my amendment. I was very pleased to see that they have moved in this direction. However, these amendments are significantly better and I hope that the Government will respond to them positively. I beg to move.