Mr.
Gummer: I have listened carefully to the Minister, and I
respect his argument. However, he has pushed me into a position that is
slightly different from the one that I thought I would be in. The
difficulty now is that he has admitted—I mean
“admitted” not in the newspaper sense, but in the sense
that he has stated something—that the work in his Department is
based on the assumption that we are, whether we like it or not, in the
area of 80 per cent., if one takes a reasonable view of the
responsibilities of the rich
countries. The
Minister also said that the figure in the Bill is based on a mechanism
that is similar to the one used in his Department. I am loth to have a
Bill in which all the other figures are based on the up-to-date
situation, but that figure is based on a much earlier
scenario. The
Minister has explained his difficulties, but nobody is asking him to
say that he will accept everything that the Climate Change Committee
recommends. This situation is different from the Low Pay Commission,
for example, because the Government did not have a minimum wage to
start with. They did not say, “We will have a minimum wage of
£4.02.” They said, “Give us a
recommendation.” I know that the parallel is not exact, but we
have a minimum wage in this case. Will the Minister be kind enough to
explain whether it is really sensible to leave in a figure from 15
years
ago?
Mr.
Woolas: I point the right hon. Gentleman to the phrase
“at least 60 per cent.”, which includes everything above
60 per cent.—the process does not stop at 100 per cent. I
disagree with him in one respect. If he thinks that no one had a
minimum wage in mind, he is wrong. I seem to remember the Transport and
General Workers Union lobby, which was for £7.50, was it not? I
jest. The
parallel with the Low Pay Commission does work in that parliamentarians
pressed us to commit up front to accepting whatever was recommended.
The argument at the time was that it would give the country greater
confidence if it could see that the figure had been arrived at by an
independent process that was then subject to the due process
of Government decision making, including, incidentally, the
devolved Administrations, which have not been mentioned in this case.
Such a process would give
stability. As
I have said, I have exhausted my arguments. I hope that I have
persuaded my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North, who moved the
amendment, of the virtue of my case. I repeat, I find it very difficult
to conceive of circumstances in which both the Government and
Parliament would not accept the
advice. Mr.
David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab): I am extremely grateful
to my hon. Friend for responding to the debate so carefully and
painstakingly. I want to reply as briefly as possible to the key
arguments. Essentially, this single digit amendment has triggered the
best part of three and a half hours of debate. The only benefit is that
that may reduce the time needed to debate part 2 of the Bill, because
the majority of the debate related to clause 32, which is in part
2. I
want to reiterate the three arguments in favour of the Bill containing
the “at least 80 per cent.” formula. I entirely
understand the case presented by my hon. Friend the Minister, but it
seems to me that if we accept—I think that the whole Committee
does—that
the Climate Change Committee will have an advisory responsibility later
this year, we cannot simultaneously argue that there should be a figure
in the Bill, because it is for the Committee to advise us on what that
figure should be. To follow the logic of arguing that the matter is for
the Climate Change Committee, there should be no figure at all and the
reference to “at least 60 per cent.” should be deleted.
However, if that is not the case—it is not—and the
Government’s position is that “at least 60 per
cent.” should be included, it logically follows that if
“at least 60 per cent.” is obsolete, we should go for
something
higher. Gregory
Barker: The hon. Gentleman’s point about taking out
the figure is valid. The Conservatives considered that proposal very
seriously. The problem is that while it is intellectually coherent, it
is a very difficult message to convey and is capable of being
misconstrued in the outside world. One has to be practical and accept
that people who take an interest in such matters are looking for a
lead. It is much easier to communicate and carry with us support from
outside with the 60 per cent. figure, with the understanding that we
are looking for a higher figure from the Climate Change
Committee.
Mr.
Chaytor: I appreciate that point, and I do not propose to
table a further amendment to delete “at least 60 per
cent.” All hon. Members, including the Minister, accept that the
science has moved on and that the matter involves not only science, but
economics, political
judgment and our negotiating position in the post-Kyoto negotiations to
reach a settlement for beyond 2012. Taking into account all those
factors, “at least 80 per cent.” is the more realistic
figure at this
stage. I
want to reiterate a point that I made in my opening remarks, because I
may not have made myself clear—following the advice of the hon.
Member for Banbury to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test
earlier, I am tempted to repeat the whole argument. Essentially, the
issue is here regardless of climate change. Because of the finite
nature of fossil fuels, it makes absolute sense to set a higher target
to send the right signals now to business, industry and the population
of all western industrialised countries as a whole that our way of
life, technologies and expectations must change. The sooner that we
prepare for that, the better and less painful it will
be. In
respect of the target date, the Minister made the important point that
the interim target of 2020 is more important than the target of 2050,
because of the trajectory. However, we need two dates in order to have
a trajectory, and we cannot have a trajectory on the basis of a
starting point. I want to challenge the notion that 2050 is less
relevant or not relevant. We need a starting point, a mid-point and an
end point. Having said that, I do not accept that there is overwhelming
significance in the choice of a target or a
date. It
being twenty-five minutes past Ten o’clock, The
Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put,
pursuant to the Standing
Order. Adjourned
till this day at One
o’clock.
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