My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 62 and 63. Amendment 62 seems pretty basic post-legislative scrutiny, so I am not quite sure why it is not in the Bill already. The Government are bringing in this legislation and it makes sense for the Competition and Markets Authority to report on whether the legislation works in practice. That is fairly fundamental, is it not? If it does not, then, obviously, we can improve the legislation; if it does, then the Government can pat themselves on the back. The amendment should have been in the Bill. I am expecting the Minister to say, “Yes, of course, we’ll write it in now.”
On Amendment 63—I wish I had added my name to it; I agree with everything that we have heard so far from noble Lords—I have said before that we should have a provision such as this in every single piece of legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, just said, it is basic to what the Government claim to care about. The principle should underpin everything that they do. We know that the scale and size of the net-zero problem is huge, and the Government will need a lot of help. They will need a lot of private and public investment, and it will involve a lot of changes to government taxation and spending.
Any aspect of government that thinks that the climate emergency is not part of its remit is not thinking hard enough about it. We need both the whole of government and the whole of society to address the work on the climate and ecological emergencies. Every Bill that comes through here, every tax levied and every pound of government spending should move us towards net zero. There is an environmental saying: doing nothing risks everything. The Minister will say that the Government are doing a lot. I would argue that they are doing bits and pieces, so the saying could be: doing bits and pieces risks everything as well. We need a coherent approach.
I was asked whether I would still like a meeting with the Minister. Yes, I would, and I would like to throw down a little challenge. If the Minister or his team can come up with any issue that is not relevant to our
climate emergency, I will be happy to argue how it is relevant. I look forward to that meeting, and I might bring some heavyweights with me.