Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
MONDAY 21 MAY 2007
MR WILLIAM
WILSON, MR
MICHAEL WOODS
AND MR
TOM BAINBRIDGE
Q280 David Taylor: Are the three
of you not united in wanting to have your legal cake and also
wanting to eat it? You are saying, I think collectively, that
any action which might be taken, in the certain knowledge of what
the facts are, will tend to be too late to do any good but that
any action that might be designed to anticipate what might be
likely to happen and head it off will be too early for us to be
sure about the facts. There is a huge void between those two areas
into which you are trying to plot events, is there not?
Mr Bainbridge: I think the answer
to that is that for the pre-emptive action to work, it requires
a mechanism that is not there. It is not simply having a mechanism
to allow a Judicial Review on a normal basis.
Q281 David Taylor: It is not there
in the Bill or it is not there in the legal system?
Mr Bainbridge: Not there in the
Bill.
Q282 Patrick Hall: The Committee
on Climate Change is an independent statutory body, advising ministers
on carbon budgets and looking at whether or not they should purchase
some from abroad and reporting to Parliament every year. There
are a number of issues which arise out of contemplating how that
would work. I think in your evidence, Mr Wilson, you claimed a
distinction between pure science, as it were, or giving pure advice
from the point of view of scientific advice and advice which takes
on the wider role in which these things work in the real world
of society in the economy. I think you suggested that distinction
is one which would not be healthy if it were not made clear, in
other words you are suggesting that the Committee should purely
deal with scientific advice and other issues are the stuff of
governments. I just wonder why you feel there is a need to make
that distinction?
Mr Wilson: If I can give the example
of the Expert Panel on Air Quality Standards. It gives the best
possible scientific advice that it can on what level of a single
pollutant is acceptable or tolerable or whatever, and then Government
takes a decision about what actions it is going to take and how
much it can afford to do in what order, and that is the sort of
distinction I think that is not made here. I think the Committee
on Climate Change has got enormously important functions, obviously,
but the matters which it has to take into account before it considers
its advice include scientific knowledge, technology, economic
circumstances, fiscal circumstances, social circumstances including
fuel poverty, energy policy and international circumstances.[3]
By the time it has done all that I wonder how many staff it is
going to need and what sort of budget it is going to need in order
to be able to do its job effectively. What I think needs a sharp
focus in the Bill is what you really want this Committee to do.
My suggestion is that it has got enough to do to be a fully authoritative
scientific advisory committee, giving the best advice it can to
Government on the issue of climate change and what could be done
about it both at the UK, EU and international level, and that
it should be for Government to take the difficult policy choices
about what to do about things like fuel poverty.
Q283 Patrick Hall: That is a point
of view but it is still advisory.
Mr Wilson: Yes.
Q284 Patrick Hall: It is advisory
whether it is purely scientific, it could be advisory but take
on board the broader context because the reports to Parliament
that this Committee will be making, if you have your way, as it
were, will be purely about a scientific balance of opinion about
the rate of change in carbon emissions, et cetera, and
will be silent on the context of those occurrences and implications
of what needs to be done about it. It will be presumably for the
Government then to maybe report to Parliament as well. You think
that is a clearer job, do you, that it is just on whatever the
balance of the science is?
Mr Wilson: I think where possible
it helps if the scientific advice is kept separate from all the
difficult political choices that have to be made as a result of
it.
Q285 Patrick Hall: But they have
to be made, do they not?
Mr Wilson: They do have to be
made.
Q286 Patrick Hall: And they should
be open as well.
Mr Wilson: Absolutely.
Q287 Patrick Hall: When the Bill
is published, this is a draft Bill, if the Bill makes it plain
that it should be the way you suggest, would we not want to see
that those other issues are taken on board in terms of the parliamentary
debate and the public debate?
Mr Wilson: Certainly, yes, I agree
with that.
Q288 Patrick Hall: Okay. It is still
advisory though whether it is a hybrid or just deals with science.
Do you think there is a case for the Committee to be more than
advisory, to have some teeth to maybe make policy to seek to enforce
some of the carbon targets?
Mr Wilson: Again, personally I
think that is quite difficult because if it is supposed to be
having a remit which covers all these factors in clause 5(2) then
to give it a task, for example like the Monetary Policy Committee,
and say, "Here is an area of public policy, you get on with
it", it is very difficult in terms of accountability.
Q289 Patrick Hall: Yes but what the
Committee on Climate Change is dealing with is very complex indeed,
is it not?
Mr Wilson: Yes, it is.
Q290 Patrick Hall: It is wide-ranging.
There is a specific task that the Monetary Policy Committee has
to deal with which is quite different from the Expert Panel on
Air Quality Standard; it is quite different from that.
Mr Wilson: Yes, but because it
is more wide-ranging and because it takes into account great aspects
of these things like fuel poverty and social circumstances and
so on, I am not sure whether you could successfully have a committee
just delegated with the responsibility for deciding those things
without a different structure of accountability.
Q291 Patrick Hall: If the Committee
was to be dealing with the science only, and if it then had teeth
to try and ensure that its recommendations were enforced, it would
then be entering the area that you say it should not enter which
is the technology, the social and economic impacts which earlier
you said is the stuff of government, would it not? There would
be a danger then, if it was more than purely advisory, and its
remit was scientific only, it would then be saying if it had teeth,
and I am not sure how this would work, that is why we are looking
at these matters, it would then be trying to enforce or develop
policy into areas—but only from a scientific starting point—which
are more complex and which government is about.
Mr Wilson: Yes, I see what you
mean.
Q292 Patrick Hall: Where is the balance,
do you think?
Mr Wilson: I think the balance
is really if you go back to square one and ask what you want the
Committee to do and whether you want it to be an independent committee
with a `sub-contract' to manage a whole issue for government,
or whether you want it to give the best advice on a distinct area,
but to focus on it quite sharply and to keep, for government,
the choices about what you can do in what order and affected by
things like expenditure. If you have to take those sorts of factors
into account before you give scientific advice my point is that
clouds the issue of the scientific advice that you may think it
necessary to give.
Q293 Patrick Hall: I think that is
helpful but whatever happens do you not think it would be assisted,
whatever it does, that its advice is published?
Mr Wilson: Certainly, absolutely.
Q294 Patrick Hall: Not just its annual
report?
Mr Wilson: No, I am all for that.
Q295 Patrick Hall: Does anyone else
want to comment?
Mr Woods: I agree with William.
I think the remit of the Committee needs to be clarified. Lawyers
often talk when they are trying to come up with solutions about
`what is the mischief?'; ie what is the Committee designed to
do? Is it designed to cover climate change science or is it designed
to provide a check on what the Government is doing or is it a
hybrid—I do not think that is clear in the Bill at the moment.
On the international front, if I can draw the parallel again,
we have the IPCC, that is the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate
Change, which produces assessment reports, and has just produced
a new one. It covers the science though also filtering in the
social impacts, adaptation et cetera. It produces the figures
that then the States are supposed to act on under the Kyoto Protocol.
Perhaps that is a model that could be looked at. It is supposed
to be more independent, although obviously it is still politically
sensitive; that is one model. Another model is more like the Monetary
Policy Committee, something that is driving the policy decisions
rather than the scientific advice. As I say, I do not think it
is clear, as yet, what the Government wants the Committee to do
under the Bill.
Q296 Mrs Moon: I am just wondering,
if we went down the route that you are describing, where the Committee
gave the expert scientific advice and disregarded the social policy
implications—and it is all in public, the scientific advice—whether
we are setting ourselves up for a tension, where a minister has
to take the social issues into consideration which may well have
quite severe implications when reaching a decision in the setting
of carbon budgets because the social policy issues may well be
very dramatic. Are we then in a situation where if a minister
ignores the advice of the Climate Change Committee that we could
have scope for a legal challenge of the Government if that advice
is not taken, and where does that leave us?
Mr Woods: One would be getting
closer to that but it depends on how strong the advice from the
Committee was and how unreasonable the minister was seen to be
in ignoring that advice. If the minister can show that he took
on board the advice, he took on board concerns about social impacts
and then decided on a certain route, although a challenge might
be raised, it should not be successful. The minister retains the
ultimate political discretion.
Q297 Mrs Moon: Who does he have to
show this to?
Mr Woods: Show? Sorry?
Q298 Mrs Moon: That he has taken
into consideration and has looked at the advice from the Climate
Change Committee but, because of the social policy implications,
he has decided to override the advice in setting the budget, who
is he going to have to demonstrate this to and how often? Are
we going to constantly have Government facing, potentially, a
legal challenge?
Mr Woods: It seems to be happening
quite a lot. Almost every year one is finding a new energy review
or Stern Report coming though I suppose that might be necessary.
I suppose scrutiny would be undertaken not only over the road
but also up the road at the High Court.
Q299 Mr Cox: So far we are not making
good progress, are we? We have a policy of suggesting a Judicial
Review, an appropriate legal sanction, that you have described
as impractical and essentially unenforceable or pointless. We
have a Committee, which is at the heart of the Bill which you
have described as ill-defined, and the Bill not making up its
mind as to precisely what it is. These are pretty core and fundamental
provisions of this Bill. Where are we left with in your original
analysis that this was a step forward? So far you have blown two
holes in it, big ones.
Mr Bainbridge: I guess the question
is how much the Bill is a fait accompli or a work in progress?
3 Note by witness: See Clause 5(2) and paragraph 1(3)
of Schedule 1. Back
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