Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, unsolicited advice in the sense of what my noble friend was asking for on daylight. I specifically emphasise in Clause 30 that the committee may do these things at the request of a national authority; for example, the Secretary of State or the devolved Administrations. However, when the committee comes to form its budgets, its advice and the targets—because that is its central purpose—it will clearly, as we have debated, commission and look at all kinds of work and research. It is up to the committee; it is not our job to second-guess it. I am not saying in this case that it would necessarily be the case of daylight hours—I have gone past that. The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, raised a general issue. If the committee wants to do something it thinks is appropriate—in forming its advice to Government—not on policy but advice on the budgets, it is free to use these powers. It is not a free for all—no one is arguing that. It is constrained within its functions, as I have said, for the purpose of carrying out its functions. But its functions to give advice and to set those budgets are pretty widespread. This is an incredibly powerful committee to that extent. I am not offering Clauses 30, 31 and 28 as an alternative and we do not need the provisions of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. The things that the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, was getting at could well be facilitated by a combination of Clause 28 and Clause 30 maybe. But leave Clause 30 on one side if there is no request. The climate change committee has to be a self-starter and set in its parameters because obviously we do not want to overload it. The Government have requested it to do certain things as a priority. There is the issue of looking at the 60:80 target for a start. We need to keep the issue clear and focused. The committee can only do things on request. In other words, it is not completely constrained as to what it can do by every measure and only receiving written requests from a national authority, Secretary of State or the devolved Administrations. If it thinks it necessary, as a result of carrying out its function, to give advice on very wide areas 50, 20 or 10 years ahead, it can do these other things. It is then up to it to say, ““That is what we thought was appropriate to use””. That is why general ancillary powers are there. ““General”” means general; ““ancillary”” means extra; and ““powers”” means the powers. So it is up to the committee to take cognisance of that. I can see circumstances where it might want to say, ““We need to go beyond our function and commission some other work or carry out some other function””. It is not constrained by Clause 31. It can do anything it wants as long as it can link it to its functions. That is a perfectly reasonable response. So there is an opportunity for the committee to express its views on progress in tackling climate change. I do not think there will be any issue. It will be a high-profile committee in terms of media and the public perception, and very powerful in terms of its advice to Parliament. We have discussed the importance of insuring that the committee is adequately resourced to carry out its tasks. We have accepted that. I have already said that—speaking from memory—it should receive the same kind of servicing that the Stern report received. I approved of that. That is what I said originally. It will have the same kind of backup that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, and his team had. That is important. At an operational level, the amendment could distract the committee from its key task and could be disproportionate and overburden the committee. It will have dedicated resources but it is not a completely free-for-all. In practical terms, the committee and the Government will have to agree a work programme because of making best use of its resources—and I have no doubt that Parliament will want to scrutinise those. Documents will be made public. Everyone will see what it is focusing its resources on. Its remit is to provide expert advice on the budgets and not to go beyond that. But I will only be repeating myself if I go down the road of making policy options on some of the issues raised. I think that in many ways the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, goes too far in the way in which the proposal is set out—though not in relation to what he seeks to achieve: ensuring that the committee has freedom and common sense and that it touches the boundaries and deals with unpopular issues. The Committee on Climate Change will have to offer advice on some very difficult issues, and that might be unpopular. But it will be for the Government to formulate policies to put that advice into operation. The buck rightly stops with the Government, who are accountable to Parliament. We do not want to burden the climate change committee with being the centre of attention in the cockpit where we are discussing the way forward in implementing the budgets and advice it recommends.