Tony
Baldry: Should not the Committee take notice of the House
of Lords on the issue? The House of Lords has a large number of people,
such as Lord Wakeham, who have been through the process so often and
who have understood at the sharp end how the machinery of government
works. The other House collectively put that in because it recognised
that the carbon budget will work only with such a
mechanism.
Mr.
Gummer: I am sure that is right, but I want the Minister
to take seriously what he would be doing by taking “Prime
Minister” out. First, I do not think it will be out
permanently—the House of Lords will put it back in again,
because it is so clearly important. The public will see taking it out
as the Government resiling from the centrality of the
issue. My
hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle was right to point out
that the issue is not about the present Prime Minister. Many of us have
our doubts about the present Prime Minister and his commitment to
climate change, but some people do not have those doubts. That argument
is perfectly reasonable and even party political, but I do not mind.
The measure relates to any Prime Minister. I want the incoming Prime
Minister to know that the issue is his or her responsibility. I want
people to recognise that until 2050 that is their responsibility, in a
way that nothing else is. That it is not in any other Bill, because the
Bill is not the same as other Bills. No other Bill has ever laid such
responsibilities on the Government. No other Bill has ever looked
forward, specifically, to a point so many years ahead. That is why the
Bill is important. If the Minister goes on in this way, I am seriously
worried about the impact that it will
have.
Gregory
Barker: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the argument
boils down to a simple issue—leadership? On the issue of climate
change, which runs across the economy and society, involving every
aspect of our national life, not having the Prime Minister at the helm
sends an extraordinarily confusing and weak message to the British
electorate. The issue is so important, yet it can be devolved to a
Secretary of State whom they may never have heard
of.
Mr.
Gummer: I hope the Government will show a greater
awareness of public feeling about the matter than has sometimes been
true of late. The Minister is the sort of Minister who might understand
that. I very much hope that he will desist from pressing the
amendments.
Martin
Horwood: I oppose Government amendments Nos. 4 and
5. The
Minister has great intellectual powers, but even those are stretched by
trying to justify the removal of the words “Prime
Minister” from clause 14. He seriously suggested that it was
less confusing to have the words “Secretary of State” in
the Bill, arguing that that somehow implied responsibility across
Government. From our earlier debates, it is clear that the confusion
would be far greater if the words “Secretary of State”
appeared in the
Bill. As
the hon. Member for South Swindon rightly pointed out, we are not
talking about the delivery of the policies in detail. We are talking
about a duty to report to Parliament. That seems an easy duty to lay,
legally, on the Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for Suffolk,
Coastal is exactly right. When I was in business, lawyers were paid to
tell us how to do things, not paid to tell us how not to do them or why
they are impossible.
It is
important for the words to be retained and extended to clause 18 as
well, and to clause 36 to take account not only of the initial
proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets, but of the duty to
report on compensation for budget excess, if that occurs, and to
respond to the committee’s periodic reports on progress.
Amendment No. 85 spotted a reference to the Secretary of State that we
had not identified, although probably not the most crucial one, in
respect of the person who lays the order. However, I am happy to
support it, for the sake of
consistency. My
hon. Friend the Member for Northavon, with uncharacteristic unkindness,
once referred to DEFRA as a “piddling little Department”.
Let me put it more sympathetically. Staff and Ministers at DEFRA have
often proved themselves very committed and very understanding of the
issues of climate change. Indeed, its former Ministers have
periodically added to the ranks of the greenest Members of Parliament.
The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal is a case in point, but
there are some on the Labour benches as well. If DEFRA is piddling, it
is at least piddling in the right direction. The risk is that it is
simply outgunned by much more significant Departments.
The
Department for Communities and Local Government refuses to accept that
housing targets should be amended in a housing downturn, when the
growth rate is half the rate anticipated when those targets were set.
The Department refuses to accept any arguments about the environmental
consequences of ploughing ahead with those high housing numbers without
democratic consultation at local level.
When large
amounts of land are cleared for development—both greenfield and
brownfield, to accommodate extremely high numbers—the result is
that, in a downturn, the greenfield sites, having been released for
development and being the more profitable, are developed first, so the
environmental damage is greater. The argument should be in favour of
sustainable development, and the understanding of sustainable
development should be promoted in order to change such
policies. The
Department for Transport, contrary to what the Minister implied, is
giving a green light to the third runway at Heathrow and is responsible
for policies relating to the level of investment in our railways. It
seems an opportune moment to mention the Swindon-Kemble line, a crucial
part of that investment, where the doubling of capacity needed would
help to take people out of their cars in large numbers and stop them
travelling from my constituency to Swindon to avoid the terrible rail
service that we have at present. Such investment is crucial to the
local battle against climate
change. The
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform proudly
boasts of its support for renewables, but refuses to accept feed-in
tariffs in the passage of the Energy
Bill—[Interruption.] The Minister chunters,
but we were in the Committee at which feed-in tariffs were specifically
rejected by the Minister for Energy. They have been pushed into the
long grass, or at least the medium-length grass, for yet more
consultation, and could take years to implement. DBERR also endorsed
the building of Kingsnorth power station, with CO2 emissions
70 per cent. higher than any
alternative.
Mr.
Woolas indicated
dissent.
Steve
Webb: The Minister shakes his head, but I have been on the
Environmental Audit Committee when Energy Ministers defended the
building of Kingsnorth without locking in carbon capture and storage
technology.
The
Chairman: Order. I remind the Committee that we are
engaged in line-by-line scrutiny, which is a very good principle. I ask
the Committee to look at the amendment under consideration, which
reads: “leave
out ‘Prime Minister’ and insert ‘Secretary of
State’.”
Martin
Horwood: I am grateful for your guidance, Mr.
Cook, and of course you are right. I should have been pointing out on
each of the examples that DCLG is responsible not to DEFRA, but to the
Prime Minister, that the Department for Transport is responsible not to
DEFRA, but to the Prime Minister, and that DBERR is responsible to the
Prime Minister, as is the Treasury, whose green taxes are such a
crucial element of the battle against climate change. We are seeing the
potential undermining of public support for green taxation because of
the Treasury’s unwillingness to link green taxes explicitly to
reductions in other taxes to make it clear that it is
revenue-neutral.
The
international Departments are similarly responsible to the Prime
Minister and not to DEFRA. They are responsible for climate change
negotiations at international level and for policies that will
influence the way in which Governments all over the world tackle
climate change in their own
environments. Ms
Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab): Is
it not also true that all the examples cited by the hon. Gentleman
would, under the Bill, be subordinate to the targets that we are
setting for CO 2 emissions, so the issue of who is
responsible is
irrelevant? 12.30
pm
Martin
Horwood: The hon. Lady makes an important point, but it
actually supports our argument for having
the Prime Minister’s name on the face of the Bill. It is
precisely because all the policies and proposals set out in clause 14
will be implemented by a range of Departments that it is important to
make a Minister responsible for them and for laying the report before
Parliament. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs simply will not be responsible for most of those policies and
their
impacts.
Steve
Webb: Further to my hon. Friend’s response, is it
not also the case that there is an aggregate target for the whole of
Government, rather than individual Departments? If the Prime Minister
is not responsible, the Department for Transport might say that it
would only do a small bit of the work, although it felt that the
Government targets were great, because someone else should have the
hassle of doing the rest of it. Only the Prime Minister has the
authority to bang heads
together.
Martin
Horwood: My hon. Friend is exactly correct. We are all
familiar with the experience of trying to raise an issue that seems to
blur boundaries at ministerial questions and being told by the relevant
Minister that it is a matter not for them, but for one of their
colleagues. DEFRA’s
website sets out the precise impact of the various areas with regard to
carbon emissions. The 2006 figures showed a UK total of 554 million
tonnes. Of those, 221 million tonnes came directly from energy supply,
which is the responsibility of DBERR and through it the Prime Minister,
but not DEFRA. Business contributes 92 million tonnes, which, again, is
the responsibility of DBERR and the Prime Minister, but not of DEFRA.
Transport contributes 133 million tonnes, which is the responsibility
of the Department for Transport, and the residential sector contributes
81 tonnes, which is largely the responsibility of the Department for
Communities and Local Government and the Prime Minister, but, again,
not of DEFRA.
The only
areas that are directly attributable to DEFRA’s responsibility
were the 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 from agriculture and
400,000 tonnes of CO2 from waste management. Obviously, the
picture on methane is different, but even in that regard a substantial
amount comes from non-DEFRA areas of responsibility. Some of the larger
sources of emissions, such as transport and energy supply, are still
increasing, so it is vitally important not to send the wrong signals on
who will take responsibility.
This is both
a political and a legal issue. Politically, the rapier-like question
from the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood precisely highlighted why we
have to worry about a lack of interest from the Prime Minister on the
issue. The fact that the Prime Minister has decided to abandon the
chairmanship of that vital committee is possibly an indication, which
Opposition politicians fear, that he is losing interest. This is a
wonderful political opportunity to reinforce the Prime
Minister’s personal commitment and ensure that all future Prime
Ministers are held similarly
accountable. In
legal terms, my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon briefly mentioned
two pieces of legislation that set an important precedent—the
Intelligence Services Act 1994 and the Regulation of Investigatory
Powers Act 2000. As GCHQ is located in my constituency, I am
particularly pleased with those examples. The point is that they cover
an important matter of absolutely vital national interest. It was for
that reason that the then
Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr.
Straw), made it clear why the powers in that Bill were being laid on
the Prime Minister and not on himself. He said that it would offer
public reassurance on the use of powers in that Bill, and the power
given to the Prime Minister was to lay before both Houses of Parliament
a copy of every annual report made by the interception of
communications commissioner under subsection (4), together with a
statement on whether any matter had been excluded from that copy in
pursuance of subsection (7). That is an
identical kind of reporting requirement to those that we are discussing
in relation to the clause. If it was legal for him, why is it not legal
under the Bill? That seems to be a powerful legal argument. The right
hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal made an eloquent plea for the Minister
not to wriggle out of the situation on legalistic grounds. That is
exactly right, otherwise we might suspect that fiddling is still a more
appropriate
description.
Mr.
Weir: The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal made an
impassioned plea, and I endorse his argument. Throughout our
discussions, we have been saying that the United Kingdom is a leader
and is making a strong commitment by drafting the first Bill on carbon
reductions. A further signal would be to include the Prime Minister in
the Bill to show that the reduction of carbon emissions is the greatest
issue of our
age. On
a more practical level, over the years carbon budgets will perhaps
become the most important part of the Government’s business in
setting the carbon target to 2050. It will be a cross-departmental
process, and it will undoubtedly mean great squabbling between
Departments on how the carbon cuts are allocated. As has been pointed
out, many carbon-emitting industries are not under the control of
DEFRA. At present, 37.4 per cent. of carbon emissions come
from the energy industry, and 17.8 per cent. come from other
industries—both sets of emissions are under the control of
DBERR. In effect, more than 50 per cent. of all carbon emissions come
from its departmental portfolio. It might therefore be more appropriate
for DBERR to have control of carbon emissions, not DEFRA. The
decarbonisation of our energy supplies will be crucial in whether we
can reduce carbon emissions in the first place, irrespective of what
form of energy we might support in the
future. I
ask the Minister to consider a point to which he has referred on
several occasions. The reduction of carbon emissions concerns not only
the UK Government, but devolved Administrations. There will have to be
great contact between the various Administrations to reach agreement on
how they tackle their part of carbon reduction. For example, the
Scottish Parliament is to have its own climate change Bill, which is
due to be published shortly. There will be similar movement in Wales as
the Assembly gain more powers, which will happen under the measures
currently passing through this place. The same will apply to Northern
Ireland, so there will have to be great contact between the First
Ministers of the devolved Administrations, along with the
Prime Minister, through the Joint Ministerial
Committees. If
we are to impose reductions and agreement is to be reached between
Departments and the devolved Administrations, the matter must be under
the personal
control of the Prime Minister. They must provide leadership to show that
we are all working together and demonstrate the importance of such
matters throughout the United Kingdom. The clause needs to retain
reference to the Prime Minister in order to send out a clear
signal. | 
