Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, we welcome the Government’s willingness to report on the efforts they are making to mitigate the impacts of climate change; as the Minister pointed out, that is largely the effect of these amendments. The necessity of such a programme now seems finally to have been met with the equal necessity of informing Parliament about the progress of its implementation. We welcome that. There is still a curious feature in the government amendments in this group. There is no real time constraint on these reports. The government amendments require successive reports to be laid before Parliament at least every 30 months—two and a half years—after a programme has been created. For the report to be meaningful, it must come some time after the programme has been implemented. However, there is no timeframe for the programme. Is two years long enough? Surely the progress could be tracked in a shorter timeframe. Can the Minister explain how, for example, he arrived at 30 months? These amendments refer also to the section on reports on the impact of climate change. What will be the frequency of the reports? Our amendments propose yearly reports. In introducing his amendments, the Minister said that one year on data collection is not long enough for reportable differences to be noticed. But the government amendments remove the timeframe altogether. The Secretary of State also has in the Bill the power to delay the report for as long as he likes provided he publishes a statement saying why. That is unacceptable. There is a need for stronger provisions to ensure that this information is regularly and thoroughly reported on. The government amendments do not seem to go quite far enough.