Martin
Horwood: I apologise for not saying when I first spoke how
good it is to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr.
Atkinson. If
we accept for a moment the hypothetical possibility that at some stage
during the next 40 years there might be a Conservative Government, I
suppose that it is wise to be cautious about their ability to wriggle
out of certain commitments. It might be more likely that there will be
a Liberal Democrat Government in that time scale. Who knows? The Leader
of the Opposition might be from the Green party. If we accept that
there will be Governments of different colours and opinions, it is wise
to propose amendments that would make processes more watertight and
transparent, so, in that sense, I support the spirit of the amendment
and certainly accept the Conservative Front Benchers’ good
intentions. However, I do not think that amendments Nos. 57 and 70 are
as critically important as amendment No.
56. In
the circumstances that amendment No. 57 envisages—when the
Government appear to be obstinately refusing to take account of the
committee’s advice—it is likely that we would all be able
to draw our own conclusions about the likely impact of climate change
on the UK. If we do not, civil society and non-governmental
organisations will do so in our
stead.
Mr.
Weir: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying and
agree to a large extent, but amendment No. 57 proposes that
the Secretary of
State “shall
consult the Committee on the effect”.
Does not that give the
committee the chance to say, when the Government do not accept its
advice, that that will mean X, Y and Z? Given the argument about the
importance of scientific evidence, it would be useful for Members of
Parliament to have that before them when they debate the matter in the
House.
Martin
Horwood: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but I do
not think that that is necessary in the context of the Bill as a whole
because the committee’s responsibility is to adjust the budget
and look sector by sector at the impact regarding the future plans. It
will still be mandated to only those targets and will make further
advice based on the Government’s revised position, including
their refusal to accept a target at that position. Therefore, the
committee’s processes will reveal a lower opinion on the impact
and certainly the steps that need to be taken. He might be right that
that could be useful. It would certainly serve one purpose: to add to
the embarrassment of any Government who were needlessly wimping out of
tough decisions. In that respect, I have enough sympathy with the
amendment to allow it to go
forward.
Mr.
Gummer: I will try to resist the temptation to remark that
some Committee members find it impossible to put party politics aside,
even when they clearly do not arise, and that is always true of the
Liberal Democrats, as one of their Members has shown regularly in this
debate. That is sad, because this is an issue on which we ought to try
as hard as possible to have a common view.
The reason
why I hope that the Minister will find a reason to go at least some way
towards this relates to the simple matter of the Environment Agency. I
happen to have invented and set up the Environment Agency, so I know
what I got wrong. I thought that I had set up an independent agency
that would provide advice from which the public and Ministers could
take their view. Over the years, the Environment Agency has come to
provide advice that fits in with the budget that the Government set for
things, and that is altogether different from the original
intention.
In my
constituency, for example, the Environment Agency advises the
Government on coastal defence on the basis of the three-year budget
that is put in place, even though the advice ought to be based on what
might happen over the next 100 years. I had hoped that the Environment
Agency, as is stated in legislation, would announce its advice in
general on various scenarios so that the Government could then decide
on a scenario, take responsibility for it, accept the agency’s
independent advice on the cost, and then decide what had to be done and
what the timetable would be.
That
experience leads me to be concerned that the Minister and the
committee, because of their good heartedness, believe that no one would
behave differently from them. I feel rather bitter about that example
because the result is not what I thought would happen. It would be
helpful to make it clear that at the point at which Parliament is
discussing that disagreement, there will be a real objective assessment
of the difference between what would happen if we followed either the
Climate Change Committee’s proposal or the Government’s
alternative suggestion. This would not tie the Government any more. It
does not make this less of an advisory committee; indeed, it makes it
more of an advisory committee. However, the amendment does mean that if
we were faced with such a situation in the House of Commons and the
House of Lords, we could say, “This is what the committee says.
It is not worth making this change; we have to tell the Government that
really the cost of this is not satisfactory.” We would be able
to debate the matter without trading disagreeable bits of
science.
2 pm
I do not
want to enter into this issue too deeply, but one of the problems with
the science is that it is rare that there is much agreement on a
specific thing, although, for example, there is widespread agreement on
a target of 80 per cent. plus. However, many bits of the science are
much more complex, so arguments can be deployed on either
side. Parliament
would do well to insist that it had the latest judgment of the
committee on the Government’s proposals in its debates so that
an informed decision could be taken. That would underline the role and
the importance of
Parliament. I
cannot imagine that this Government would not go back to the committee
or that they would not tell people what the committee had actually said
and pretend that it had said something else. However, I hope that they
will be prepared to accept the amendment simply because it would do
them no harm. It would not do any harm to the next Government, but it
might ensure that at some time in the future, when times were tough
just before an election, somebody would not try to do something through
which Parliament was not given the
truth.
Martin
Horwood: I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman a serious
question, and also, as a flood-hit MP myself, pay compliment to his
achievement in setting up the Environment Agency, which was appreciated
last year. The body of work required to deliver on the amendment is
substantial. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that by the time that
work has been completed and the committee has delivered its conclusion
on the likely impacts of the change, it might as well have undertaken
the work of the reassessing the carbon
budget?
Mr.
Gummer: That intervention worries me, because the sort of
changes that we envisage are changes of considerable importance. If the
hon. Gentleman is saying that Parliament would have to rubber-stamp or
agree to the Government’s changes without those changes being
satisfactorily tested against the knowledge and the science, that would
be very dangerous. The committee would have to get a wiggle on, talking
about wiggle in a different sense. It would have to do the work and
provide the Government with a clear indication of the consequence of
the decision to ignore its advice. That advice to the Government should
be available to Parliament so that we can make a sensible decision. If
the Government had got it right, no doubt we would support it, and if
the Government had got it wrong, no doubt we would oppose it, but at
least we would do so in full knowledge of the
facts.
Mr.
Woolas: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bexhill and
Battle for moving the amendments. Let me make three points to back up
my argument that the amendments are reasonable, but the process is
covered by other clauses, particularly clauses 33 and
55. My
first point is the most important. There is a danger of us
misunderstanding the relationship between UK emissions and temperature
in the UK. The UK’s contribution accounts for 2 per cent. The
change in the target is very important for the carbon budgets, and only
in the context that I described could it take place.
The link between the possible change in target and
the potential change in temperature is less than the margin of error in
the calculations in the first place. We must
always remember that our emissions do not dictate our average
temperature. A constituent of the Under-Secretary of State for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for
Lewisham, Deptford asked her the other day whether she could avoid
climate change by going to her house in France, which rather
crystallises the difficulty that some people have. I am not suggesting
that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle has that difficulty, and
certainly not that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal has. It
was just a point worth making.
Clause 33(2)
states:
“Advice
given by the Committee under this section must also contain the reasons
for that
advice.” It
is envisaged that the committee will put forward various public
scenarios containing ranges, given that we are talking not about
arithmetic but about science. As the months and years roll on, the
United Kingdom climate impact programme, which we will publish in
November, will play an important role. It is relevant practically to
the Bill, and it will set out the United Kingdom’s best science
to give us the range of scenarios based on parts per million and on
temperatures.
Amendments
Nos. 57 and 70 are already covered by the processes in the legislation,
and because of the scenarios that I have described, the amendments
would not achieve precisely or even generally what the hon. Member for
Bexhill and Battle seeks. I shall back up that point. Clause 4 already
requires the Secretary of State to set out his reasons, and if he were
to set the 2050 target at a level different from that which was
recommended, there would still be transparency, because in those
reasons, one would see the scenario with which he had differed from the
committee. That is a long-winded way of saying that one would already
be able to see the committee’s advice in the Secretary of
State’s scenario, were it to differ from the
committee’s.
Mr.
Gummer: What happens if the committee gives three
scenarios and the Minister decides not to take any of them? The Bill
does not say that he has to take any. He could take one that was
mid-way between two of them. In other words, he could modify the
scenario, and there would be no independent evaluation of what happens.
Indeed, that is exactly my concern. In those circumstances, lay
people—Ministers are usually lay people—would be able to
say, “It looks more or less right. I think we can’t quite
do that, but if we come in between them, it ought to be okay.”
There might be very good reasons why that would not work
satisfactorily, and I should be happier if I knew what the committee
thought about, let us say, a mid-point between two of its
scenarios.
Mr.
Woolas: I take the point, but in practice the
committee’s publication of its advice and reasons would cover
those potential circumstances. It would be like publishing a logarithm
book. It would contain all the options. Because the relationship
between UK emissions changes at the margin, remembering that we are
talking about the cumulative amount of carbon in the air under the
curve of the trajectory over that long period, the
relationship between UK emissions and the global
temperature is less than the margin of error in those scenarios, even
on current knowledge.
There could
not be any gap. Parliament would go bonkers and would turn down the
affirmative resolution if the Secretary of State were to deviate from
the accepted advice of the committee. I cannot see that arising, as the
committee’s advice would be public. The UK climate impacts
programme will be hugely important in setting the scenario, and will
evolve. It is not conceivable that the Secretary of State would deviate
from the target in a manner that was not based on the scenarios and
premises of that programme’s report. I urge the Committee to
consider achieving the hon. Gentleman’s reasonable objective
through clauses 33 and
55.
Gregory
Barker: I am grateful to the Minister for that
explanation. It is considerably more sensible and rational that the
disappointing partisan comments from the Lib Dems which, if anything,
water down and weaken the Bill, rather than improve
it. I
understand the Minister’s argument, but I do not agree that
clauses 33 and 55 achieve exactly what my amendments propose.
Amendments Nos. 57 and 70 would bring greater clarity and certainty to
any future decision-making process. However, I appreciate that a
further layer of the onion lies beneath those clauses. If it is
intended to publish a range of scenarios, more information will be
available than one would have anticipated from a straight reading of
the Bill. On the understanding that that is how it is intended that the
Bill be interpreted and the committee will
function—
Mr.
Woolas: Has the hon. Gentleman considered that the
devolved Administrations would have to be consulted? I am sure they
would set out their reasons. That might give him further
reassurance.
Gregory
Barker: Yes, the devolved Administrations are an
interesting element of the Bill. We will discuss their role later,
particularly the ability of the Secretary of State, rather than the
Prime Minister, to have a genuine locus in the decisions taken by the
devolved Administrations. What we have is not perfect, but I take on
board the Minister’s arguments and reassurances. On balance, and
in the interests of forging consensus where possible, I beg to ask
leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn. Clause
4 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman: It may be opportune to point out that we are
about a third of the way through the Committee stage and have just
finished clause 4. There are another 89 clauses and six schedules to
deal
with.
Clause
5Carbon
budgets Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Miss
McIntosh: I am mindful of your strictures, Mr.
Atkinson. I refer the Minister to my earlier comments and to the point
raised by the CBI. Clause 5 deals with the setting of five-year carbon
budgets, on which we all
agree, and the setting by 1 June 2009 of three
consecutive carbon budgets for three-year periods. The CBI broadly
supports that. The Federation of Small Businesses also supports it, but
commented: “The
balance between economic growth and environmental legislation must be
maintained because only by increased investment in research and
development by the private sector will we find solutions to the
problems of climate
change.” The
CBI says that it wants a credible framework within which to work
towards a low-carbon economy, and it believes that the interim target
and rolling carbon budgets could help by giving the right balance of
certainty and flexibility. It goes on to say
that “alongside
the risks, the shift to a low carbon economy offers the UK a unique
opportunity to develop innovative environmental technologies of the
future and prosper in new, multi-billion-dollar world
markets—but only if research funding is better co-ordinated and
prioritised.” Today,
at Innovation, Universities and Skills questions, the Minister for
Science and Innovation announced, in response to a question, a
multi-million pound research programme for delivering the building of a
low-carbon
economy.
2.15
pm In
the interests of joined-up government, can the Minister give the
Committee an assurance today that he is going to satisfy the points
raised by business, through the Federation of Small Businesses and the
Confederation of British Industry, that targets will be set? His own
final impact assessment, to which I referred in relation to previous
clauses, and page 17 of the Stern review suggest that industrial
sectors with high-energy intensive production exposed to international
competition are probably going to face the most adverse impact on
output and employment.
I am trying
to support what the Minister is doing, but can he satisfy business that
there are going to be measures whereby the environmental targets that
he is expressing in the Bill are balanced by some degree of inducement
to change behaviour, perhaps by using alternatives to fossil fuels, and
encourage less intensive energy burning of fuels generally? In trying
to change business behaviour through the carbon budgets imagined in
clause 5, is it the Government’s intention to use the moneys
that they have set aside to encourage businesses to change their
practices in that
way?
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