Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am going to speak personally here: I welcome the passion of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on this subject and on the previous amendment; he has brought us back to what it is all about—the fundamentals and challenges of climate change. I am a member of a local authority. In the previous amendment I should have declared my interest as chairman of a regional development property company, although I am not involved in domestic dwellings. I have a couple of questions. I agree that local authorities are fundamental to making the Green Deal work and helping to deliver our carbon targets nationally. I welcome particularly the various transition town organisations that have sprung up throughout the country, due sometimes to the frustration of the local authorities regarding their lack of performance in this area, and are trying to move this whole agenda forward. One of the things that I have learnt from my European experiences is that if institutions do not have the power to change things, you should abolish them rather than invent more of them, which is what tends to happen in Europe. It is a challenge that we have our own carbon budgets at a national level and, even at that level, the levers to make them happen are there and valid, but a number of those are beyond the reach of the UK Government. Car emissions have been mentioned; that is a European single market decision. The way that UK carbon budgets have been set up and brought together means, strangely enough, that in the whole of that carbon area, if we have huge improvements by industry covered by the EU ETS, they are not reflected in the performance of UK plc. There are other areas, not the least of which is nothing to do with Governments—offshoring. One of the easiest ways for certain local authorities not to meet their carbon budgets would be to rely on that the fact that major employers move or cease to exist. I am in favour of these proposals in principle, so I would like to understand what levers local authorities have in order to have a real effect on carbon emissions in their areas. There is a persuasive power, which is important, and a co-ordination power, but I would like to understand from the proposals how it is felt that what I see as a relatively powerless local government—in comparison with the golden days in the 20th century and early this century that we were talking about—fits in with that. I have a personal plug to make as well about something that I feel is important. An issue for all carbon budgets is that we should look at carbon consumption within an area as well as carbon production. That way you get rid of offshore issues and that sort of thing. We cannot achieve this to that level of sophistication, and I am not asking for it in terms of a local area, but I would like to hear how local authorities can affect those carbon budgets to make this exercise necessary. This is important as local authorities are essential to delivering this package, but we should be careful before putting too many obligations on local authorities to ensure that they are able to deliver what we want them to. Having said that, I understand that a number of major local authorities are promoting this—I know that Bristol, a Liberal Democrat/Labour authority, is one—so I am sure that the answers are there.