Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I can be extremely brief. It is most unfortunate that debates come again at this time of night—the wrong time of day. I have made my position perfectly clear. At this Dispatch Box, I always speak for the Government unless I speak for myself. I agree with daylight saving as a technique for lots of reasons. However, I have spent the best part of 14 days on my feet in this House trying to stop this House making the climate change committee an executive policy-making committee. I am therefore a little surprised by what I heard earlier. The amendment would amount to that. The only saving grace is that I will not even attempt to use my small speech. I will, however, answer the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, by repeating what I talked about before in the inadequate speech that I delivered. The evidence that I used was the specific Building Research Establishment evidence about buildings; it did not cover the totality of what would happen to society. Last Friday, I do not think the Government could give a view in the other place because the Bill was talked out. I am not wholly convinced that there is a total government-wide view on this. DBERR is the department that leads on this. If there was a lot of pressure on the department from business, you would think that it would be on the case, but it is not because there is not a lot of pressure from business in total. There is the status quo—do nothing—because there is no pressure to do anything. I can offer only the reality. We are dealing with the Climate Change Bill. As I have said, I have spent all this time arguing that it should not have a policy remit to say how we meet the targets or the budgets that will be set by suggesting other things, such as different forms of power generation. There are all kinds of issues. We are trying to stop that because that is not the role of the Committee on Climate Change. I would be falling into a trap simply because I agree with the policy issue, but that is not the issue. That is not the role of the committee. However, on the question about the committee advising on this issue, I would draw the attention of the House and that of the other place to the fact that about the only area of the Bill which would be relevant is Clause 30, ““Duty to provide advice or other assistance on request””. The clause states: "““The Committee must, at the request of a national authority, provide advice, analysis, information or other assistance to the authority in connection with””," a whole series of things. In other words, the committee has the power to consider this issue if asked to do so under Clause 30. I cannot go beyond that. It would not make sense from my point of view to make a long speech on this at this point.