Clause
14Duty
to report on proposals and policies for meeting carbon
budgets
Mr.
Woolas: I beg to move amendment No. 4, in
clause 14, page 7, line 20, leave
out ‘Prime Minister’ and insert ‘Secretary of
State’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following: Government amendment No.
5. Amendment
No. 33, in
clause 18, page 10, line 4, leave
out ‘Secretary of State’ and insert ‘Prime
Minister’. Amendment
No. 76, in
clause 36, page 19, line 10, leave
out ‘Secretary of State’ and insert ‘Prime
Minister’. Amendment
No. 77, in
clause 36, page 19, line 13, leave
out ‘Secretary of State’ and insert ‘Prime
Minister’. Amendment
No. 85, in
clause 36, page 19, line 19, leave
out ‘Secretary of State’ and insert ‘Prime
Minister’.
Mr.
Woolas: We move on to clause 14. The reason for the clause
is that an essential objective of the Bill is to provide transparency
about the Government’s plans and actions for tackling climate
change. As part of that transparency, the Bill requires the United
Kingdom Government to publish their proposals for meeting each carbon
budget. The report produced must be laid before Parliament as soon as
is reasonably practical after the setting of the budget. By providing a
clear indication of the strategy, the Government aim to reinforce
business and public confidence that robust plans are in place to ensure
that the budget will be met.
The 15-year
plans published under clause 14—the three five-year
budgets—play an important part in providing the greater
predictability that the Bill aims to introduce. Businesses and
households that are planning investments will want to know not just the
overall level of the UK-wide budget, but the choice of policies that
could be implemented to ensure that the budgets are
met. My
right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced that the first three
carbon budgets and the plans for meeting them will be set out alongside
the 2009 Budget. That timing draws an important parallel, also made by
the Chancellor. Just as our public finances must balance over an
economic cycle, so we must live within our carbon budgets for the
health of the wider world and, therefore, for ourselves. The report
will be crucial in bringing together a range of policies and showing
how they will combine to meet the carbon budget. That will be a
combination of existing measures—those, for example, contained
in the energy White Paper—and new measures, to be announced
within the report or over the months before its
publication. At
present, clause 14 places the duty on the Prime Minister, reflecting a
change made to the Bill in the other place. I agree that, to tackle
climate change, we need a strong effort, not just across Government,
but across society as a whole. All parts of our society will have a
role to play. It is also the case that the Prime Minister is personally
committed to the fight against climate
change.
Gregory
Barker: The Minister refers to the Prime Minster who, with
the best will in the world, does not have a long tenure left. Speaking
about legislation that he hopes will run to 2050, surely the Minister
cannot make such a reference and expect the Committee to accept
arguments based solely on the current occupant of No. 10? We do not
know what the personal commitment of any given incumbent of No. 10 will
be in 2020, 2030 or 2040. It does the Minister no good at all to set
out a personal conviction about the current, temporary occupant of No.
10 when defending the legislation.
Mr.
Woolas: I am grateful for the intervention. I was taking
the opportunity to make a partisan point. Hon. Members on both sides of
the Committee do that and the Government have the right to do so as
well. I do not argue that we should take direct reference to the Prime
Minister of the day out of the Bill because the current Prime Minister
is personally committed to the policy goals of the Bill. My argument is
based on the definitions of how we make legislation in this country.
Bills refer to the duties of the Secretary of State and throughout the
years that has clearly been interpreted to mean the Government
collectively. That is why actions and instructions are given in that
way.
By placing
specific duties on the Prime Minister of the day, the wrong
interpretation could be given and political mischief could be made. The
Daily Mail and The Guardian might suggest that not
putting the words “the Prime Minister” in the Bill could
be interpreted as meaning that the individual Prime Minister of the day
was not committed to the aims of the Bill, which would not be
fair.
David
Maclean: Please correct me if I am wrong, but does not
Lord Stern continue to report to the Prime Minister on forestry issues?
If that is the case, surely it is inconsistent for the clause to refer
to the Secretary of State instead.
Mr.
Woolas: Knowing Lord Stern of Brentford, I do not think
that he considers that he reports to anyone. He says what he thinks and
he says it robustly. I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s
argument. Amendment
No. 33 would have the effect of transferring further responsibilities to
the Prime Minister as an individual, in this case in relation to the
report required under clause 18. Amendments Nos. 76, 77 and 85 would
transfer responsibility to the Prime Minister individually for laying
before Parliament the Government’s response to the annual report
of the committee, as required under clause 36. I have explained why we
disagree with the amendments, and I have moved new clauses to give
responsibility to the Secretary of State, which, let me make it clear,
means the Government collectively.
Gregory
Barker: My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and
The Border makes a good point about Lord Stern, but he is not the only
senior policy adviser on climate change issues who reports not to DEFRA
but to the Prime Minister. Johan Eliasch, whom the Prime Minister
trumpeted with great publicity last year during his brief honeymoon, is
another individual who reports directly, privately—I have not
seen any of his advice published or any interviews that he has
given—and confidentially to the Prime Minister. How are those
considerations likely to be elucidated by the Secretary of State for
the Environment?
Mr.
Woolas: We are talking about law. It is the custom and
practice in the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament that duties are
placed upon the Secretary of State. As I have already explained, that
means the Government collectively. The Secretary of State delegates his
or her duties to his or her Ministers and we are all appointed by and
are accountable to the Prime Minister. That is clearly
understood.
12
noon There
are two intentions behind placing the duty on the Prime Minister. One
is including the Prime Minister’s name as an indication that the
Government accept that this is a most important matter—we have
described it as the most important matter facing humankind. The
argument put by others is, I believe, politically motivated, given that
a responsible Minister would take the advice of parliamentary counsel.
There are important reasons why, under legal process, the Secretary of
State is used. I am advised that it is not possible to take legal
action against the Prime Minister individually. It is possible to take
action against the Secretary of State only, the meaning of which is the
Secretaries of State collectively. There is good motive and bad motive
behind this attempt to include the Prime Minister. As ever, I am being
honest with the Committee.
Tony
Baldry: Can the Minister help me on a boring machinery of
government point? We all understand how, for example, public spending
is worked out. Departmental Secretaries of State have bilaterals with
the Chief Secretary and eventually the Budget gets carved up. Clearly,
getting the carbon budget sorted out will require a fair amount of
negotiation among various Departments as to where the burdens fall. It
would help the Committee if we could understand whether a Cabinet
Sub-Committee will do this and, if so, whether that will be chaired by
the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Given
that I suspect that there will be some fairly serious horse trading on
this matter, one might imagine that, at some stage, the Prime
Minister—whoever that might be—will have to adjudicate.
Can the Minister give us some guidance on the machinery of government
process for setting the budget? That is something of a policy wonk
question, but the answer will be helpful to the
Committee.
Mr.
Woolas: That is an important question. I bet that neither
the Daily Mail nor The Guardian will report the answer,
but that is probably because it is an important subject. I shall stop
making digs at those two newspapers as it is probably a bad career
move. The
answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is, as he will expect,
that the Cabinet will take overall responsibility, but there is an
existing Sub-Committee on Environment and Energy—the ED(EE). I
occasionally get sent to it. The Cabinet Sub-Committee is dedicated to
the environment and energy and is chaired by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Its membership includes the Secretaries of State with
responsibility for environment, energy, transport and communities and
local government, and people from other Departments. That Committee has
been established under the authority of the Prime Minister to take
collective decisions in this area. We envisage that the Cabinet itself
will take the final decision. I hope that that has shed some light on
how we intend to proceed.
Several
hon. Members
rose—
Mr.
Woolas: Rather than stopping interventions, I have now
prompted more, as transparency always
does. Mr.
Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): Will the Minister
confirm that Prime Minister Blair chaired the energy and climate change
Sub-Committee under the previous
Administration?
Mr.
Woolas: I cannot confirm that, but I shall come back to
the hon. Gentleman. The Cabinet Sub-Committee structure is much
improved in my view. It is much more streamlined, much clearer and more
pragmatic. Sofa government has ended and proper decisions are taken in
proper places under the new structure, which I welcome. The hon. Member
for Banbury asked an important question because behind it is
recognition of the importance of the carbon budget-setting process and
the policy-setting process that flows from
that.
Steve
Webb: One of the Minister’s arguments against
including the words “Prime Minister” in the provision was
essentially that we do not do that kind of thing in legislation. I am
sure that he will have been briefed and will thus be aware that the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 places a duty on the Prime
Minister to report to Parliament. One reason for that was that there
were concerns about the power and it was felt necessary to assure
people that the Prime Minister was involved. If it was okay in that
instance, is not the present one even more
important?
Mr.
Woolas: Perhaps I may deal first with the point made by
the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood: the previous Prime Minister
chaired the previous Committee on energy and the environment, and the
Deputy Prime Minister was the deputy Chairman. The Committee is now
chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I congratulate the hon.
Member for Ruislip-Northwood on his recollection and, perhaps,
homework.
To return to
the question asked by the hon. Member for Northavon, there is a
difference. I have checked out the list of things that the Prime
Minister is required by legislation to do, in contexts where my
predecessors as Ministers in this situation lost the argument. There
are some pretty obscure ones, but the difference is that the very
nature of the Bill, as the hon. Gentleman accepts, is to put a legal
duty on the Government to meet their carbon budget. It is not possible,
I am advised, to take legal action against the Prime Minister. Legal
processes relate to the Secretary of State. That should give the hon.
Gentleman the reassurances that he needs.
Miss
Anne McIntosh (Vale of York) (Con): I mean to help the
Minister. He says that he does not want the Prime Minister to be
mentioned in place of the Secretary of State in the provision because
the legal action that might arise could be pursued against only
Secretaries of State collectively. However, does he realise that what
we want the Prime Minister to do in this instance is report on the
policies, not deliver on them? If we consider the percentage of carbon
emissions for which DEFRA is responsible, the Minister will know that
the bulk of such emissions fall to other Departments. That is an
additional reason to agree to including the Prime Minister in the
provision—purely with respect to the duty to report to
Parliament—rather than the Department, whose duty it will be to
deliver.
Mr.
Woolas: I take the hon. Lady’s point, although I am
disappointed that she does not support my efforts to increase the
standing of the work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs in future—the provision would have consequences in that
regard. My arguments about breaking with the way we do things remain
valid—I do not use the term “break with
tradition”, as I am all in favour of that if it makes an
improvement, unlike, often, the hon. Lady’s party. The
traditionalist wing of the Conservative party argues that we should
keep things as they are unless there is a good reason not to. A good
reason has not been put forward. Therefore, to be consistent, the
traditionalists should support the status
quo. My
point is that there is a good reason for designating Secretaries of
State in law, rather than the Prime Minister or other Ministers. It is
not just a matter of tradition, but part of our legal framework. I ask
the Committee to accept my explanation. I think that I have answered
the question asked by the hon. Member for Banbury by explaining the
seriousness that is given to the matter within the machinery of
Government. I hope that the matter will not be pressed to a
vote.
Gregory
Barker: I also want to move amendments Nos. 46 and 47 to
51.
The
Chairman: Order. The amendments being debated with
amendment No. 4 are Government amendment No. 5 and amendments Nos. 33,
76, 77 and 85. Amendments Nos. 46 and 47 to 51 are in the next group
and are not to be discussed
yet.
Mr.
Gummer: I feel very strongly about this matter and think
the Minister has been ill advised as to why this is so necessary. I
remember when we started on this
whole course, when the then Prime Minister set up the first committee
that was to report on these matters, under Sir Crispin Tickell. That
committee reported directly to the Prime Minister; that was the purpose
of it. Sir Crispin had access to the Prime Minister. He reported to the
Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister presented such reports as he
made. That was done so that we could say that the issue of climate
change was so important that it had to be a central concern of the
Government as a whole.
That was in
the days in which there was a much stronger Department of the
Environment in the simple sense that—and I make no
criticism—it had control of local authorities. It spent a
quarter of the budget of the nation. It controlled planning, water and
other resources. It was a Ministry that had in its own hands the
mechanisms of delivery of many of the issues of sustainable
development. In particular, it had the mechanisms by which we would
meet our carbon budget. Even in those circumstances, and with a
Secretary of State whom I think most would admit actually cared about
these matters, and was in the same position as the present Secretary of
State for EFRA—I am not making a distinction—it was felt
by the Government to be far too important not to commit the Prime
Minister to that purpose.
In the days
when I had to explain that, because the concept of climate change was
nothing like as central as it is today, I used to use the example of
the Health and Safety Executive’s belief that if one runs a
business, even if one has a special health and safety director or
officer, health and safety should be the responsibility of the chief
operating officer. In every company on whose board I have ever sat, I
have always insisted that that should happen. Only by doing that does
one say that the most important thing about the business is that people
go away at the end of the day as healthy as they can. That is duty No.
1 of any employer. It is a mechanism of showing that a business has
chosen to emphasise what is the key issue for its future.
The key issue
for the future of the United Kingdom and the world is dealing with
climate change. In history, in circumstances when that was much less
understood, the Prime Minister took that responsibility. Rather slowly,
it has emerged that under the Cabinet arrangements under the previous
Prime Minister, he took that view too. I remember the announcement when
he said that he had to be chairman of this, and the Deputy Prime
Minister had to be his deputy, because it was so important. I did not
choose the Deputy Prime Minister; he did, and that is the situation,
but if he were the Prime Minister, that was the right thing to
do. The
body is now chaired, if I may so, by the one man who appears to know
nothing at all about the issue, but who is there because it is accepted
that one cannot deal with these matters unless not just the
responsibilities of DEFRA, but the energy bit as well, are treated
together. As neither of those Secretaries of State could chair it, we
have to have somebody else. As happens in all Governments, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer is given the job, whether he knows anything
about it or cares about it. I think that that is a thoroughly bad way
forward.
In the quality
of life commission that I had the honour to chair, we proposed that the
new Department that we would create would be a much more powerful
version of DEFRA and would retain and bring back some of the powers
that were sadly removed from it ad hominem, or ad feminem—we all
know how DEFRA was created. Our idea was that there would be somebody
in that Department who was the equivalent of the Chief Secretary to the
Treasury so that it was accepted that the carbon budget would be a
tough one and somebody in that Department—the Minister might
find himself in that position—would have the power that the
Chief Secretary has to say not just to DEFRA, but to all Departments,
“You have to meet the budget.” No doubt people would come
to that Minister, even though he was a junior in the Cabinet. The one
time someone goes to a junior Minister is when they go to the Chief
Secretary to argue their case. The Secretary of State for Defence would
be there arguing with the Minister about his carbon budget, although
the hon. Gentleman would then be a right hon. Gentleman and a very
powerful
man. 12.15
pm That
is the concept that we had. We recognise that it demands a serious
change in the structure of Government. If we could have put that in the
Bill, that would have been good. It would be non-party political to say
that the two Departments created ad hominem and ad feminam have failed
because they were each built for a person and not for a purpose. That
is one of the problems with the Department for Communities and Local
Government, and it is the problem with DEFRA too. I have no doubt that
any Government, including the present one, will change the structure of
Government given the effluxion of time, so that they face what has to
be done, rather than operating on the basis of personalities, of who
has to be given
what. If
that is the case, we will have a more powerful DEFRA, so the argument
could be that DEFRA should have the responsibility. However, that
argument does not stand, for a simple reason. It will be an uphill
battle for all of us to make people understand that doing the job that
we need to do is the central purpose of Government. We need those token
statements. I say that as a traditionalist. We should never change
things unless we can show that they are broken, but if we can show that
they are broken, we should change them rapidly. The present system is
broken. The Department is not strong enough. It does not even chair the
Committee that it should be dealing with. There is nobody in the
Department who has ever shown that he could make other Ministers meet
DEFRA’s the demands. I say that with great sadness, because it
ought not to be
so. We
have to find a way through, and I beg the Minister to think again. He
is making the situation worse. He knows perfectly well that if we had
“Prime Minister” in those places in the Bill, the
difficult legal situations would not matter a fig. I remind the
Minister what I said about the lawyers in the Department of the
Environment when I went there: they are there to deliver what the
Government want in a way that makes what the Government want legal.
They are not there to explain to the Government why they cannot have
what they want. If the Government wanted the words “Prime
Minister” in the Bill, they would appear there. That is a fact.
The Government would tell the lawyers to go
where they ought to go, to the underground dungeon where they find the
legal mechanisms to deliver the policies that the Government decide
on. I
do not support the proposition of the interesting argument about who
one can sue who for what. I just want to say to the Minister that if he
takes the words “Prime Minister” out of the Bill, he will
say something very clearly to the public. He may not mean it, but he
will say, “The Government do not take the same view of the
importance of the Bill as the House of Lords took.” It may have
been better for the House of Lords not to put “Prime
Minister” in, although I do not happen to think so, but as those
words now appear in the Bill, I beg the Minister not to remove
them.
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