My Lords, in proposing Amendment 2A in this group, I will go roughly along the same lines as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. We had to wait six minutes to get any indication of the previous speaker’s attitude towards these amendments.
We have all had approaches from a plethora of organisations; in my years in this House and the other place I can rarely remember such a broad coalition. You normally get the greens and one or two others, but it is quite surprising to get support from across the spectrum of industry, banking and environmental
concern for an amendment along the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and I are proposing. The amendment I have tabled is in some ways slightly different from the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, in so far as it seeks to define the decarbonisation obligation, which it sees as the level of carbon intensity of electricity generation which may not be exceeded in total kilowatt hours. However, it does not set a target by plucking a figure out of the air. The idea is that it should give the Minister probably longer than the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, which gives the target of 1 April. Amendment 2A mentions 12 months, which would mean another six months in the process. That is important in itself.
The other fundamental requirement is that having set up a Committee on Climate Change, the Secretary of State should take account of what the committee has to say and what its findings are. It is a very important body, formed of a distinguished group of people from academia and business who take an interest in these matters—and it has a distinguished chairman from this House. However, it is not the only body. We are seeking to establish a consensus that would broadly agree to the figures that would then emerge.
We have international obligations, some of which have been imposed upon us, in so far as we have been forced to troop in and put our hand up in the Council of Ministers. In this instance we seek to fill a gap in the British obligations beyond 2020, a gap that would effectively extend from 2020 and 2030. It is important that any Government can go into Europe with a clear programme so that we are not seen to be chasing an agreement—and equally, so that the target figure we would set ourselves would be arrived at by British agreement and British discussion. A country of 60-plus million people with our diverse industry, economy and geography is that kind of country, the limitations or parameters of operations of which are very similar in many respects to a lot of the member countries of the EU that will be sitting on the Council of Ministers in this area.
Some say, “We mustn’t be allowed to be dragged along by the EU”, but in this instance we would be, in many respects, ahead of the game—not, however, to get our green badge to put on our jacket. Rather, we will have made a rational decision on the basis of sound information and wide discussion, and we would be doing so because it is necessary for us to have a degree of foresight. I will not use the word “planning”, but “foresight”. We have to recognise that the investment requirements of our energy economy are not just only long term. I remember talking here about setting down roads. We know that we have a 2050 target, but frankly, at the moment, after 2020 there is no road map and no signposts or proper targets. We must recognise that we will not have 30 years of doing a bit of this and that, then a mad helter-skelter run between 2040 and 2050 to try to get to where we are supposed to be. This has got to be done on the basis of proper consideration. These amendments give business, the investment community and the people who are engaged in research signals regarding the kind of timescales in which to operate.
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I was selected as a parliamentary candidate in 1978 for a seat which had five collieries. The boundary of the seat was the Grangemouth petrochemicals complex. East Stirlingshire in Clackmannan was the kind of place where energy was the life-blood of the local economy. I am not going to dwell on that. Suffice it to say that the number of times I have had to change my mind in the past 35 years has been such that I realise that you cannot chisel things in stone. You cannot pour quick-setting concrete on your ideas and hold on to them. They have changed. We took a very important decision last week, and I commend the Government for getting the strike price although it may not be exactly what we want. We know that the nuclear component will be able to make a contribution. It will be over a period of 60 years, not just 30 or 35 years.
We are talking about a number of other technologies and a number of other things which require support and investment. This investment has a lot of people interested and almost prepared to put their money where their mouth is. People have been writing us letters saying that they would be interested in coming in in the future. The sooner we get this started, the better. We cannot wait till 2016. If something is decided in 2016, it will begin to happen in 2019. We talk about putting off decisions till the next general election. It will be the general election after that. There are too many people in this country who are unemployed. There are too many people who have uncertain industrial futures, whose talents and energies could be deployed if we had a stable path ahead, if we had the opportunity for rational decisions to be made and the flexibility, if things do not go the way we want, to change them. That is why this amendment is suggesting it be done by regulation. In some ways, regulation is not the most democratic of means, but if you get it wrong you can always change it fairly quickly. You can change it on the basis of consultation before you put it into legislation.
There are those who do not wish to have anything to do with carbon reduction because they deny that there is a crisis in this area. The Flat Earth Society used to be their natural home—that has now been changed. Instead, they sit alongside the anti-Europeans who tell us that we are being dictated to. For most people, the need for carbon reduction is understood and appreciated.
We do not need to fear Europe if we have for the next 50 years proposals and policies which can take us into the Council of Ministers and other places with a clear agenda that is in line with the rest of the Bill. This is the thing I find surprising. The last speaker epitomised it. They are in favour of everything but specific action in one particular area.
I can understand that the Whips think that this Bill is the finest work of God and man and therefore need not be amended. I think that is wrong. We need to fill in gaps. We need more specifics. This proposal is the means of providing the specifics which will give the opportunity for rational investment decisions to be taken in the very near future with the prospect of employment and other savings being made with the reduction in carbon in the very near future.