Consumer Emissions (Climate Change) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on introducing this Bill and thank him for explaining it. In this parliamentary Session, we are having a flurry of Bills and debates around targets in all sorts of areas and this Bill simply adds to them. While we on these Benches fully agree that reducing carbon emissions is a critical element of meeting our 2050 target, we do not agree that drawing this Government’s focus any further away from the policies that will make that possible is helpful. The UK has signed up to many targets around climate change, most of which this Labour Government have singularly failed to meet. It is clear that yet another target will not lead to the step change that the Committee on Climate Change identified was needed in Labour’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions. Instead, we need meaningful policies. We need proper incentives for consumers to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, such as our plan for a green deal for householders. We need proper information to be made available to consumers about energy-efficient appliances so that they can make the right choices and, as we have been calling for for years, we need to get smart meters rolled out to domestic households as soon as possible. There is another aspect of the Bill with which we simply cannot agree. The requirement for the Government to take responsibility for carbon emissions produced outside this country would be extremely difficult to measure, let alone influence. Climate change figures are already hotly debated, so let us imagine the disagreements over which of the dozens of measurements to use when costing the total carbon footprint of a television built in Japan with parts made in China. Such a measure would also be counterproductive in relation to the reduction of global emissions. Yesterday, the noble Lord participated in a long and interesting debate about the successes and failures of Copenhagen. The deepest disappointment came from our failure to persuade some developing countries of the opportunities that a move to a low-carbon economy will offer. Quite understandably, many countries are worried that they, the countries least able to afford such measures, are being expected to restrain their growth at huge cost to compensate for the extravagance of richer, more developed countries. We should be encouraging greater industry links with those countries in order to drive investment forward in their infrastructure and working practices. We need to work with those nations to build mutually beneficial agreements that allow for economic growth while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions. I have not been very encouraging about the Bill, so I end on a more positive note. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is quite right in the fundamental principle behind the Bill, which is that the answer to carbon emissions lies with the consumer. The role of government must be to free companies to respond to the growing demand for low-carbon goods and services. Unfortunately, the Bill does not do that and I am afraid that we cannot support it. However, this has been a useful debate.