Climate Change

My Lords, I am not surprised that the Minister is a bit disappointed; it is very disappointing. One in three government buildings has the lowest possible rating for energy efficiency. I quote an article in the Observer, which states: ""Overall, 98 buildings were rated G"—" which I think is the lowest score— ""and a further 34 scored F. In total more than 70% were rated E or below, which means that they are less energy-efficient than normal buildings of their type"." Of course, none made the top score of A. What I found most extraordinary when reading the article was that the new Home Office building and the newly refurbished Treasury are only rated F; that is pretty near the bottom. Noble Lords will see why I particularly liked this quote from Paul King of the UK Green Building Council, who said: ""The only thing that sets the government buildings apart is that we actually know how bad they are because of this quirk of European policy that has required these energy certificates for public buildings. What we desperately need is similar information about the rest of the UK's buildings"." If they had used the Bill that I put through Parliament properly, they would have just that information. In conclusion, we could find the finance to reach our 2050 CO2 targets. As other Members have said, it is challenging. We have the science and technology to do it, and we have a lot of will. We have lots of legislation, both UK and European, to help us to do it. I hope that the Minister can indicate that we will have a bit of a step change in the rate at which we try to tackle the issues that we have been debating today. That is not only because many of us care about the planet and the well-being of the human race, but because we have a golden opportunity in the recession. We can create lots of green jobs that will help people in the difficult times of the credit crunch and so on. What I really want to say today, with which I am sure many in the Chamber will agree—not everybody, of course—is that we need to get on and do more. We need to do it better and, above all, we need to do it faster.