Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree substantially with the comments of the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose. I will not interfere with his comments on Scotland; I do not consider myself an expert on that—on this issue at least. This is a helpful and welcome amendment, which goes some way towards clearing up the considerable confusion felt in Committee about what would happen when the pilots finish and how they will be dealt with and rolled out. I am not sure that it goes as far as we would want in order to clarify the situation but it goes some way. The Minister pooh-poohed the idea that the House of Lords would want to know much about this or get involved in it until the affirmative instruments were introduced. There are means by which Members of this House can debate things if they really want to, and we may want to do so even if the Government do not think that it is terribly important. Some of us are very interested in this. The amendment suggests that the contents of the interim reports will be very much the same as those of the final reports—apart from the concession that they are interim. One assumes that the assurances given in Committee about what the reports will include—some of us tried to make the legislation much more detailed—will apply. I assume that that is okay. There is still concern about the process getting quite messy. Let us assume, for the purposes of this debate, that there will be five pilots; some of us think that there may be a different number in the long run. If there are five pilots, they may take place over different periods of time—one may be longer than another or start later than another—they may finish at different times, and some of them may run over the three-year limit within which an interim report has to be provided. It is not clear how the rollouts will operate. Suppose that there are several three-year schemes and a two-year scheme, which finishes and is a great success, and it is thought that the provisions of that scheme should be rolled out across England. That can be done while the other pilots are still taking place. When the other pilots report—on an interim or final basis—can there be a rollout of a different scheme? Is that possible under this legislation or would it mean that the orders rolling it out would be amended to encompass different things? For example, there could be a highly successful sack-based scheme and the Government could say, ““This has really worked well in the Cotswolds, we want to roll it out across the country””. What would happen if further information comes through six months later about a successful weight-based or volume-based scheme somewhere else? Would there be amendments to the statutory instruments, to the affirmative orders, or would there be different orders from which local authorities could choose? There seems to be scope for messiness, certainly confusion, over what is possible and what is not, after a series of reports. Equally, if an interim report comes back within three years, and there is a rollout on the basis of that, can the authority carrying out that pilot continue with it, even though it is different from what has been rolled out? On the basis of the interim report, the Government may modify and amend the scheme and then roll out that amended scheme. What would happen to the pilot scheme in the remaining period of time? Would it continue to the end, when we would get the final report? I am not sure that all the detail has been thought out properly. There is plenty of time—this has to go through the House of Commons, and Members there can enjoy themselves talking about it. The government amendment is an improvement but they are not quite there yet.