Steve
Webb: These are important issues. In a world of cap and
trade emissions trading schemes, is there not a danger that the hon.
Gentleman’s new clause would not
achieve what he wants? For example, following legislation allowing for
many more coal-fired power stations, the Government might simply offset
the carbon elsewhere in the trading scheme, so even the worst Bill
would be compatible with this
one.
Gregory
Barker: Of course that is a danger, but we should at least
be asking those questions, and I think that we should be able to hold
to account civil servants and Ministers who come before Select
Committees and the scrutiny of the House of Commons and the House of
Lords. They should have to defend their judgment that the Bill that
they are introducing is compatible with this Bill and stand by the fact
that it is appended to the front of the
Bill.
Mr.
Gummer: Is that not surely the point? Those people would
have to ask themselves a very difficult question: “Can I
honourably sign this document and say that it is commensurate with the
Climate Change Act?” It is tremendously important to ensure that
that is
done.
Gregory
Barker: I attach value to that judgment, given my right
hon. Friend’s previous experience as a Secretary of State.
However, the hon. Member for Northavon is right to say that it is not a
failsafe. If a Government or a Secretary of State is determined to get
around it, and can sleep easily with his conscience at night, it would
not provide a failsafe. However, as a parliamentary barrier providing
the checks and balances that are available to us within the system, it
represents a useful mechanism for ensuring that there is a greater, if
not complete and infallible, compatibility across the legislative
process.
In the
Government’s version, even with a preamble, there will be no
active duty on Whitehall to give serious consideration—total
consideration—to climate change impacts. In our version,
including the statement of compatibility, that would be an integral
part of the initial process, before a Bill even came to Parliament.
That would be the value of it, as my right hon. Friend
implied. I
understand that some legislation would be affected in less severe ways.
The Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, for
example, was an extremely important Bill that was going to have a more
or less minimal impact on carbon emissions. It would be relatively easy
for a Minister to make such a statement on such a Bill. However, for
the Planning Bill, it would require a tremendous amount of work on the
part of officials for the Minister to make such a
statement. The
new clause is about placing climate change issues at the heart of
Government decision making. It would make certain that the unified
approach that is so necessary to success was taken in practice. We all
know that half measures will not suffice. A change of awareness, as
well as a change of policy, must be driven right the way across
Whitehall. We need a complete change of culture, and the new clause
would help to drive that culture change. If the Government are truly
committed to the ambitious and dramatic action to stop climate change
that we need, they will support the new
clause.
Mr.
Gummer: If we must take legislative powers to force people
to do something about plastic bags, it is not unreasonable to insist
that Departments take seriously
the issues of climate change as underlined in this great Bill. I know
that the Minister will have been advised that there are all kinds of
difficult reasons why he should not accept the new clause. I shall put
to him the results of my own questioning of Departments in recent
months about the impact of their measures on the emissions in this
country. They were some of the worst answers to questions that I have
ever had. I will use just one set of
examples. I
asked the Department involved about the decision to close 2,000 post
offices. I asked what measures it had taken regarding the effect on
emissions of closing post offices. I asked both generally and
particularly. I had asked those questions of the Post Office, which
told me that the Government had told it that it was to close the 2,000
post offices and had not told it anything about any need to measure the
emissions relating to that. The Department said that it did not know
what the emissions were as a result of the closure of post offices
either in general or in particular. It did not say, but the answers to
the questions certainly suggested that it did not care much either,
because that had not been part of its
calculation. It
seems that if we are to take this Bill seriously, we must start by
taking it seriously at the heart of Government. That means that the
Department responsible for the Bill has to recognise that it is, in a
sense, a missionary to the dark interior, that the dark interior is
much of the rest of Government and that however strongly we and the
Department believe, that does not make it a general belief. I say to
the Minister that this is one of the moments at which the phrase that I
mentioned at the beginning of our debates, “Better not”,
is very dangerous indeed. He needs to accept that he requires our help.
He needs a statutory basis on which all Departments have to take
seriously this Bill, not in general but in particular. Whenever they
present something to Parliament for Parliament to consider, they must
previously have asked themselves what it will mean when it comes to be
measured against the climate change requirements to which this
Government, this nation, the European Union and, I hope, people beyond
that have
agreed. This
is a difficult thing to say, but I have to say it. Civil servants are a
vital part of the whole structure of government. Their most important
role comes when they are powerful enough to say to Ministers,
“Actually, you can’t do that because the law says that
you can’t”. Twice in my ministerial life the permanent
secretary has come to me regarding a decision that I wanted to make.
The first was my refusal to close a ministerial office in Cornwall
because I thought that it was wrong for Cornwall to have no offices
from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries of Food. The second was my
decision to spend Government money on the cleaning up of the site of
the dome—I thought it wrong that an area so close to London
should be carcinogenic and that that needed to be done. In both cases,
I had to sign a document accepting that the permanent secretary had
advised me that I was going against the advice of civil servants, and
that I had made a political decision against that advice. I am proud of
both decisions and do not mind saying when they were.
At that
point, the civil servant is at his or her most powerful and, in a
sense, important. On both occasions, I had to think the whole matter
through again, because one could clearly be held accountable for that
decision in a special, personal way. I believe that that is precisely
what should happen to every Minister on every issue brought before them,
and that is why I support the new clause. That may be extreme, but
Members on this monumental Bill should not allow people to think that
it is like any other Bill. It is the new politics—if I may coin
a phrase that may ring across the Benches. The new politics means that
we must get everybody to understand that from now on, all our actions
will be in a new context. This is a
framework Bill because it changes the framework within which political
decisions are made. Our problem—and I return to the
phrase—is that in that sense we are missionaries to the dark
interior, not only within the Government but within the Opposition and
the Liberal Democrat party. However much we say that everybody is
convinced about this issue, we all know that among our colleagues there
are some who are burning with it, some who accept it and some who just
about accept it. That is true for all of us. The hon. Member for
Cheltenham may shake his head, but I know some of his colleagues whom I
would not trust with an environmental policy for very long and he knows
them too. That is the truth.
This Bill is
the means with which we change the way that everybody operates in a
real sense. That is why the Government must start there, and why this
offering to the Minister is worth taking up. It will mean that the
whole force of the civil service will be able to act when Ministers try
to swing the lead whenever it is convenient, politically acceptable or
because certain circumstances arise. All Governments are involved in
this. I do not want to say this in an unpleasant way, but this measure
is probably more likely to affect those of us on the Conservative
Benches than those on the Labour Benches, at least at the moment. We do
not do this to make things difficult for the present
Government—I want Ministers of every Government under every
circumstance to understand that they must take the issue into
account.
I do not
agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle on this
matter. He mentioned the question of a legal Bill. I am appalled that
the policies of the predecessors to the Ministry of Justice, for
example, meant that our decisions about magistrates courts and courts
were made totally unthinkingly. In my area of the country, we thought
that we would save money by concentrating magistrates courts in
particular places, but we have hugely increased the carbon impact.
Policemen now have to come from all over the county—they have to
go to one place—and the same applies to
witnesses.
9.30
pm That
was all paid for by the Ministry of Justice, or whatever the Department
was previously called. It found that its budget had reduced, but the
move increased the Home Office budget—the police
budget—the local authority budget and most individual budgets,
and, above all, it increased our carbon budget. If the Department had
had to say to Parliament that its policy would have had an effect
contrary to the intentions of the Bill, it would now have to explain
itself.
This is part
of the transparency agenda that the Committee seems universally to
support. I hope that the Minister will see the new clause as lifeline
for him and for DEFRA, and that they will not dismiss it because of
those who say, “Better not”. The biggest better-notters
are those in the Treasury. I bet that they have said, “Better
not,” with an enthusiasm that suggests that the Minister had
better not fail to listen.
Mr.
Woolas: A very important point has been made. My attitude,
and that of the Government, is again, not surprisingly, to support the
sort of locking-in mechanism of which the hon. Member for Bexhill and
Battle and the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal spoke in favour.
Such locking-in legislation is required, but we believe that the
superstructure of the Bill already provides for it.
I am in
danger of repeating my arguments on new clause 10. We agree that an
important point underlies the new clause. It is about ensuring that the
Government of the day take account of the full range of policies,
including those that increase emissions as well as those that bring
them down. However, as I said in response to the debate on new clause
10, we believe that robust processes are already in place to ensure
that, at every stage of policy development, the carbon impact of
policies and legislation are assessed. I certainly agree that
legislation is often the end of the process, so it is important to
build that in.
A similar
measure was debated in the other place. As a result of deliberations,
we made a commitment to amend guidance in the explanatory notes. Such
notes accompany all primary legislation. The change requires that the
section of the explanatory notes covering the impact assessment makes
specific reference to the more detailed carbon impact assessment. That
is important when taken in the round with the carbon budgets, the
carbon reduction commitment and, perhaps, future cap-and-trade
schemes.
The new
policy is that revised guidance will be published in time for Bills to
be introduced in the 2008-09 Session, but I confirm that that change
has been applied to legislation being considered in this Session. At
page 66 of the explanatory notes, in paragraph 402, the Committee will
see the result of that process. The section that summarises the impact
assessment now includes a discussion of the Bill’s carbon
impact. By explicitly detailing the carbon impact of each policy in the
overall cost-benefit analysis, and, when applicable, the package of
parliamentary documents, we can ensure that the objective is
met.
A
compatibility test, in addition to the points that I have made, would,
I fear, have limited practical effect. The difference between that idea
and the Human Rights Act compatibility test, on which I believe the
hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle based his new clause, is that while
with human rights we can look at every individual measure, it would, in
practice, be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate
that a single piece of legislation was, on its own, incompatible with
the aims of the Bill. It is better to look at the carbon budget policy,
backed up by the other measures that I have
mentioned. The
right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal cited the interesting example of
the Post Office, but the new clause would not catch that because it
deals with primary legislation, which is only part of the picture,
although that is not to diminish the right hon. Gentleman’s
point. In the new politics, if may use his phrase, we believe that the
carbon budgets that flow from the Bill, which, I agree, create the new
epoch, will fundamentally change the way in which decisions are taken,
not just across Whitehall but across the wider economy.
Taken
together, the package will achieve much more than a compatibility test
just for primary legislation. While I accept that it would be a
high-profile statement,
in practice it would be very difficult, if not impossible in some cases,
for legislation to fail the test. I fear that the measure would not add
anything. Gregory
Barker: I am disappointed by that response. I appreciate
what the Minister says about how processes will change and about the
legislation that will be considered, but there is another test that he
did not mention. It might not be the legal or technical tests that we
are used to, but it is the embarrassment test. That is probably what
lies at the heart of the Government’s reluctance to accept the
new clause. They know that to bring forward measures that would allow
coal power stations to be built unabated, a third runway at Heathrow
airport, or other such measures that we cannot anticipate now but will
come forward in time, would run counter to, and fly in the face of, a
progressive climate change strategy to reduce our emissions. Everybody
knows that; one does not need a degree in politics or an understanding
of the administration of government to realise that. A brazen statement
stamped on the front of legislation saying that it was incompatible
with the Climate Change Act would be deeply embarrassing for the
Secretary of State and the ministerial team responsible for bringing it
to Parliament. The Minister knows that much legislation would fail the
embarrassment test.
Mr.
Gummer: The Secretary of State would have to work harder
to win the case, and that loads the dice against taking easy ways out.
The proposal is worthwhile. Why do we not do implement it for that
purpose? If it does not do any other harm, it is not unreasonable to
add it to the Bill.
Gregory
Barker: I think so. It is a shame for a further reason. I
do not know how one would measure this, but the proposal would add to
the Bill’s long-term effect. The ministerial team must take a
great deal of credit for the effect that the Act, as we hope it will
become, will have. It was not the Secretary of State, but the Minister
of State—the Minister for the Environment—who brought it
forward on Second Reading, and it is the two Ministers before us who
have piloted it through Committee and who will be responsible for it.
They will have an extraordinary legacy for any parliamentarian: an Act
that will hopefully last for decades to come. This is a pioneering
piece of legislation and the new clause would make it more effective. I
will not suggest that it would make it incredibly more effective, but
it would give it more teeth and add to its likely impact. Therefore, it
is sad that the Minister has not resisted the other forces at work
within the Administration—those who say, “Better
not,” as my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal
points out—and has set his face against accepting a
common-sense, practical and workable addition to the Bill.
In the light
of a lack of support, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion. Motion
and clause, by leave,
withdrawn.
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