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Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Climate Change Bill [Lords] |
Climate Change Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John Benger, Sara
Howe, Committee
Clerks attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 24 June 2008(Morning)[Mr. Frank Cook in the Chair]Climate Change Bill [Lords]10.30
am
The
Chairman: Good morning. Before we begin, I should make one
or two comments and preliminary announcements. I choose to foster an
easygoing exchange of views and I would hate people to get frustrated
with heat, so, it being the summer, members of the Committee may remove
their jackets during Committee meetings. I would ask all members at all
times to ensure that their mobile phones and pagers are turned off, or
at least rigged for silent running during Committee
meetings. There
is both a money resolution and a Ways and Means resolution with the
Bill. Copies are available on the table. I remind members of the
Committee that adequate notice ought to be given about amendments. As a
general rule, my fellow Chairman and I do not intend to call starred
amendments, including any that might be reached during an afternoon
sitting of the
Committee. The
Committee, as members have been informed several times, has been
selected as a pilot for the use of laptops in the Room. I would like to
make one or two points at this stage about their use. I have never seen
a Committee start so much agog. We have had the room thronged with
people since about 10 minutes to 10, and yet there is not a
proliferation of laptops. I have to say that I am not displeased about
thatyou will see that I do not have one, although that is
probably because I am too thick to use one.
Laptops may be
used only by members of the Committee sitting within the body of the
Committee, the Committee Clerks and, of course, Hansard. Members
should ensure that all laptops have the sound mutedwe do not
want signals to be going off across the room. The Chair will not
entertain points of order about the operation of laptops or the
network. Such items must be retained for moments when the Committee is
suspended, if I choose to suspend it. Finally, members are expected to
use laptops responsiblyI should remind the Committee that we
are here to give the legislative proposals line-by-line scrutiny. I
would hope that all hon. Memberswe are all honourable Members,
I trustwill use the laptop in that venture, to further scrutiny
and line-by-line
examination. The
Committee will first be asked to consider the programme motion on the
amendment paper. Debate is limited to half an hour. We will then
proceed to a motion to report written evidence, which I hope that we
can take formally. Without more ado, I call the Minister to move the
programme motion.
That (1)
the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at
10.30 a.m. on Tuesday 24th June)
meet (a)
at 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 24th
June; (b)
at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 26th
June; (c)
at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 1st
July; (d)
at 9.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. on Thursday 3rd
July; (e)
at 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday 8th
July; (2) the
proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1
to 32; Schedule 1; Clauses 33 to 45; Schedule 2; Clauses 46 to 48;
Schedule 3; Clause 49; Schedule 4; Clauses 50 to 69; Schedule 5;
Clauses 70 to 74; Schedule 6; Clauses 75 to 80; new Clauses; new
Schedules; Clauses 81 to 93; remaining proceedings on the
Bill; (3) the
proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a
conclusion at 7.00 p.m. on Tuesday 8th
July. Thank
you, Mr. Cook. It is a pleasure to serve under your
chairmanship of this important Public Bill Committee considering the
Climate Change Bill. I would like to say how much I am looking forward
to the deliberations of the Committee, after one of the most extensive
consultations on draft legislation and the consultations and scrutiny
in the other
place. I
note your remarks about the use of laptops, Mr. Cook. I am
in the same camp as you on that. I congratulate the hon. Member for
Cheltenham on being the first Member, in the history of this place, to
have a laptop during the proceedings of the House. No doubt press
releases to the Cheltenham papers are on their way out as we
speak. The
programme motion is before us. I am pleased to report to the Committee
that the usual channels have reached a consensus. There are no knives
in the motion. Across the House, we have a consensus on the objectives
of the Billhow do we, in the United Kingdom, help to resist
dangerous climate change? The second clause of the programme motion
states that the agreed end date is Tuesday 8 July. That gives us
sufficient time, so I am happy to move the programme
motion. Gregory
Barker (Bexhill and Battle) (Con): It is a pleasure to
serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook, on this important
and ground-breaking legislation. The Opposition will do their best to
assist the Government in producing the best piece of legislation that
we can and to make it fit for the immensely important task of combating
global climate
change. The
Minister is right that there has been a dialogue between the usual
channels, which suggests that the proceedings will be brought to a
close on 8 July. However, I sound a note of caution. We do not yet know
how the debate will progress. Many important amendments are to be
debated and, as the Chairman reminded us, they will be discussed line
by line. There are some crucial points to discuss. Although there is
broad support for the Bill, there are some sharp points of difference
on individual clauses and amendments. The Government propose to delete
or remove some of the substantial clauses that were added by
Conservative peers in the House of Lords. Those additions made it a
much better Bill. We do not want in any way to stifle or cut short
debate of those important issues.
When the usual
channels made their informal agreement over the time likely to be
needed for debate, we had not seen the amendments to the Bill. As we
now know that
the Bill will not be ready to receive Royal Assent before the spill-over
period, I wonder whether the artificial cut-off on 8 July is necessary.
If hon. Members felt that we should continue because there are still
important matters to consider, I for one would not favour an artificial
date to guillotine proceedings.
I am mindful
that we need to expedite matters in Committee, but that needs to be
balanced with a proper respect for the views of all Committee members.
We have a number of learned and expert Members on both sides of the
Committeemembers of the Environmental Audit Committee, and hon.
Members with a long-term interest in the subject. We have a former
Secretary of State who was a key figure in the early stages of the
Kyoto agreement. I hesitate to agree to an arbitrary cut-off date of 8
July.
The
Chairman: At this point, I should remind hon. Members that
the date of 8 July was set by the House and not by the
Committee. Steve
Webb (Northavon) (LD): It is a pleasure to serve again
under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook. We will certainly engage
constructively on the Bill over the next fortnight or so. As you know,
we voted against the programme motion in the House because we thought
that two and a half weeks was an absurdly short period in which to
discuss the many substantive issues. Now that the Government have
indicated that they want to reverse most of the defeats in the House of
Lords, we shall have some pretty meaty debates. Therefore, it is
disappointing that we have so little time, but so be it.
We are
concerned that the Government have not yet tabled their amendments on
single-use carrier bags. If I remember rightlyI am sure my hon.
Friend the Member for Cheltenham will be surfing the net as I speak to
correct methe idea of a levy on single-use carrier bags was
raised in the Budget several months ago. I am disappointed that the
Committee, which finishes two weeks today, has not even received those
amendments. We had been promised that the amendments would be tabled in
good time for the Committee to consider. I hope the Minister will
ensure that the amendments are tabled expeditiously. These are
important issues and we are keen to get on with debating
them.
Mr.
John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con): I, too, express my
pleasure at working under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook. It
would be wrong not to remind the Committee of my principled objections
to the whole programming system. This is a good example of what a
disappointment it is to the House that we have such automatic decisions
to programme matters and have end dates voted for or against by the
majority in the House of Commons.
When we have a
Bill on which there is considerable consensus, as is the case with the
Climate Change Bill, it is crucial that we debate it properly, not
because we wish to defeat it or make changes for the sake of it, but
because it is so important to get it right. There are people outside
who dislike the whole concept of climate change, who do not believe in
it and do not accept it. I see that The Observer ran a
poll that showed that the majority of people in Britain still do not
believe that climate change is caused by human intervention, so we have
a real battle there.
Getting the
legislation right is a crucial part of our job. I have been in the
House a long time and in my experience the most dangerous Bills, the
ones that we are most likely to get wrong, are those on which there is
a general agreement in principle and we do not take the time to do the
detailed work from point to point. I took through a number of
agricultural measures where that was the case. Everybody was in favour
of the measure but I could cite points on which we did not spend the
time properly and therefore found that things were unintentionally
wrong. The Daily Mail is ready to explain why we, once again,
failed the nation and I am keen that we should not do that.
Without much
hope, although hope springs eternal, I trust that the Government will
recognise, as I know the Ministers do, that if we find that the debate
leads us to want to spend longer on some aspects than we had hoped, it
is always open to the Government to go back to the House and say that
we need more time. I hope they will take it in good spirit that some of
us want to get the Bill right, rather than get through it quickly. I do
not want the Bill to go beyond the spill-over season, but I want to get
it right because we will have to defend it over a long period. It must
last. By its nature, it is a lasting Bill, which is why I am so pleased
that the Government have introduced it. It sets the parameters for a
long period, and getting it right is as important as enacting it at
all.
Mr.
Woolas: I thank hon. Members for their comments. I want to
provide some reassurance. First, subsection (2) is a
resolution of the House and not of the Programming Sub-Committee. It is
the resolution of 9 June, when the House agreed an end date. Secondly,
in response to the point made by the right hon. Member for Suffolk,
Coastal about knives and guillotines, I reassure hon. Members that
there have always been guillotines. The controversy around the
introduction of the programming process related to knives. My
predilection is against putting knives in Public Bill Committees,
because of the point made by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle
that we cannot know where the interesting and controversial bits will
be in the
proceedings.
Mr.
Gummer: Just for accuracy, until 1997 there were no
guillotines unless a Committee went on so long that it had to be
brought back to the House. We used to do these Committees without
guillotines, and when it was a non-controversial Bill, such as this
one, we got our work done significantly better, because nobody felt
that they had to do it in this way. I am very sad that we have decided
on this much less British way of doing things since
1997. 10.45
am
Mr.
Woolas: At the time of the review of programming, I was
the Minister with responsibility for House proceedings, when I took the
right hon. Gentlemans point very seriously. I researched the
past to see how guillotine motions have been used, and I can tell you,
Mr. Cook, they were nasty, brutish and short. As the right
hon. Gentleman has said, they were debated on the Floor of the House. I
point Members to the evidence, which shows that programming has not led
to less scrutiny of
Bills. Indeed, the evidence up to 2005I have not seen the
evidence since thenshowed that more line-by-line scrutiny had
taken place.
I want to
assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Under-Secretary of State for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for
Lewisham, Deptford and I have open minds on what is a sensible
approach. We do not wish to use the Governments majority to
push through this measure, not least because there is a strong
consensus on the objectives of this Bill.
There is
another reason for reassurancethis Bill is one of the most
scrutinised Bills in modern history. It has been through draft
pre-legislative scrutiny, which I know that the right hon. Gentleman
supports,
twice. The
hon. Member for Northavon said that we have rejected most of the House
of Lords amendments, but we have accepted a large number of them. If
that were the case, Government members of the Committee would have some
problems, but we will see as we go through the
debate. The
actual resolution of the Programming Sub-Committee has given us
suggested timings and the order of debate, as agreed by the usual
channels. In my view, having consulted the officials, there is adequate
time, but we shall
see. Question
put and agreed
to. Ordered,
That, subject
to the discretion of the Chairman, any written evidence received by the
Committee shall be reported to the House for
publication.[Mr.
Woolas.]
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©Parliamentary copyright 2008 | Prepared 25 June 2008 |