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The amendment aims simply to ensure that the Bill has a proper aim. The logic behind it is straightforward: if the Bill seeks to solve the problem of climate change, that should be on the face of the Bill. As it stands, the Bill’s only real objective is to reduce the amount of UK emissions by an arbitrary figure, which even the Government now seem to recognise might not necessarily be the right one. Why is the Bill’s true purpose not reflected in the legislation?
We take our cue in mentioning the 2-degree increase in temperature from what seems to be the general consensus in the scientific community. That is what we seek to address. Indeed, the text of the amendment is based on a European Council document, cited by WWF. If the Bill is to have the scope that the Government seem to hope for it—that it is to be a serious assault on the problems associated with the rise in the earth’s temperature—we see no reason why this should not be reflected in legislation. We hope that the Minister will agree. If this is the scientifically identified problem, we should not shy away from naming it.
The amendment would also create a general duty, which we believe would focus the Bill. It is necessary to ensure that the committee sets a new, higher target for 2050, and to provide a framework or focal point for the other matters on which the committee will be working. This general duty means that our amendment goes further than the Liberal Democrat amendment, although it goes very much in a similar direction.
The Second Reading debate indicated that there will be much discussion in Committee about the precise percentage of reductions in carbon emissions. The Bill’s professed goal is being disputed. As all your Lordships agree that the genuine overall aim is to stop global warming, will the Minister consider reflecting this consensus in the legislation in the beginning? Any debate on the objectives of the Bill should be tethered to the scientific reality of the more general purpose of this legislation. In essence, we want to ensure that our objectives are clear. Although the magnitude of this problem is daunting, that should not keep it from being stated in the Bill.
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury: I am content that the noble Lords who have spoken have put into the public domain the main concerns that I suspect we all share. It is important that your Lordships recognise that we, too, on these Benches recognise that this is probably one of the most important issues ever to come before your Lordships’ House. That is why there is yet another amendment to an opening title in my name.
Climate change has in the past been seen as an issue concerned solely with the environment, but I shall take a few moments to explain why it is so much more important and wide ranging. That is why my amendment includes a subsection to require the Prime Minister and other Secretaries of State to take personal responsibility for this and not to leave it simply in one area.
First, climate change is an economic issue. Sir Nicholas Stern’s report for Her Majesty’s Treasury illustrated this strongly, setting out clearly and powerfully the costs of dealing with climate change
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Secondly, climate change is a key development issue. Recent Christian Aid research from Bolivia found that communities have noticed detailed and profound changes in the local weather and in plant and animal life. This is having an effect on their local food supply, the clothes that they wear, their sources of income and how they live.
Thirdly, climate change is a security issue. My noble friends will know of my interest in the Sudan, with which the diocese of Salisbury has had links for some 35 years. The conflict in Darfur has been described as the first climate change war. It is obvious, but still important to say, that the causes of any war are complex and manifold and that the conflict and consequent destabilisation in Darfur have a multitude of causes. However, greater pressure on scarce land and water resources has clearly contributed enormously, just as it has in relation to the use of the waters in the Upper Nile area. As in so many areas, climate change does not create the problem, but it does hugely worsen it. Sudan is the country with the dubious distinction of having the highest number of internally displaced persons—more than 5 million. One feature of a world in which the climate is allowed permanently and catastrophically to change would be massive increases in such displacement and in the overall levels of migration.
Fourthly, climate change is an issue of justice. The poorest countries which are feeling the very worst impact of the problems that I described are the ones that have contributed and largely still contribute the least to the problem. We must act on that.
I am concerned that the targets in the Bill are not strong enough. They were drawn up seven years ago and they are out of date. It is right for the Government to say that they will be put before the committee established by the Bill, but it is bad practice for us to pass a Bill that is already out of date when we start considering it. That is why it is important that we commit the leaders of our country—the Prime Minister and the heads of all the departments—to act together in this matter. It is not a matter just for the department dealing with environmental issues.
The Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester has said that if every country adopted Bills that only included equivalent levels of emission, global temperatures would rise by 4 to 5 degrees centigrade. Someone should take responsibility for this in the world and offer leadership. If we go on telling other people what to do about things but do not do anything ourselves, we will be in a weak position to take any leadership on this matter in the world. It will not do to stand by waiting for somebody else to take responsibility. That is why we need this Bill. Of course it can legislate only for what we do in this country, but it must include the whole range of the issues that I outlined. That is why my amendment uses rather stronger terms than those used by my noble colleagues.
Lord Redesdale: My noble friend has spoken about Amendment No. 1. I want to speak to Amendments Nos. 142 and 157, which are in my name. I agree with
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Amendment No. 142 deals with the aims of the committee. One of the problems that we have is with the committee itself, which has not yet come into existence—I do not believe that the members of the committee have been interviewed yet and they will have no power until the legislation comes into force. The committee will deal with science that is continually developing. The right reverend Prelate described how science is becoming old and how targets are being revised even as we speak. However, the 2 degrees Celsius target is most important because it is the one that most scientists agree will cause catastrophic change: it is the tipping point. Amendment No. 142 would ensure that the committee had an overarching aim to remind the Government that that was the target that we must meet.
Of course, if it was only up to the British Government to meet this target, the situation would be a great deal simpler. We have only a small influence on the total amount of gases emitted. However, if reports in the papers are to be believed, the amount of carbon dioxide that we are emitting has exceeded the levels that we thought had been reached, because of the carbon that we export to other producing countries. Amendment No. 157 would make it clear to the committee that that should be one of its objectives, along with making sure that recommendations of further cuts dealt with the rise of 2 degrees Celsius. That would be a clear aim of the committee’s recommendations.
Lord Clinton-Davis: Having been mentioned by the noble Lord in his contribution, I would like to answer the points that he raised. The Bill and the amendments that have been tabled should have a clear objective, but that is a matter for speeches rather than for definition in the Bill. It is important to recognise whether the Bill is justiciable. No amendments can address that point. As I say, the objectives must be defined by the Minister in his speech in support of the Bill. It is an appropriate matter to raise at Second Reading, but it is not appropriate for inclusion in the Bill. It is wholly inappropriate to try to illustrate the purposes of the Bill in a clause. If we applied domestic legislation as a precedent, the noble Lord could not point to a situation where that had been done. Of course, it has been argued that we are faced with a new situation, which we are. That does not mean that we have to devote ourselves to an irrelevant consideration as far as the Bill is concerned. I think that it is an irrelevant consideration—important to raise at Second Reading, but not, as a matter of course, in the Bill itself.
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Baroness Carnegy of Lour: The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury has tabled a very interesting amendment. He made the point that Secretaries of State should be made directly responsible for the actions required. Did he really mean to refer to what the Bill calls the “national authorities”, meaning Ministers in the devolved Assemblies as well? I realise that he speaks from the Benches of the Church of England, but I do not think that the intention of his amendment will be met unless the devolved Assemblies are also given responsibility.
Viscount Bledisloe: I have a question for both opposition Front Benches. If this objective is to be put in the Bill, plainly it must be capable of being decided in court whether that objective has been fulfilled. What is the pre-industrial level? How does one know what the pre-industrial level was? Even more fantastically, what are the “pre-industrial levels”—in the plural—as appear in both proposed new clauses? How on earth can an average temperature increase be of more than 2 degrees above various pre-industrial levels? The temperature can only possibly have risen above a specific pre-industrial level that is capable of absolute ascertainment.
3.30 pm
Lord Dixon-Smith: The noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, raised a point that also concerns me. The difficulty with temperatures is that they are very imprecise. The historical record clearly indicates that there have been considerable fluctuations in temperature over time. The record can be traced much further back than the pre-industrial level if one looks at the archaeological record. A more positive measure of what is going on in the atmosphere has always been, and still is, the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide. We can take that record back for a million years through the use of air bubbles in ice cores, which also contain carbon dioxide. That has been done. For roughly a million years, until somewhere in the 19th century, that level fluctuated around 270 parts per million, give or take about 10 or 15 parts. That record is consistent. So that is the first problem I have with this.
Secondly, 2 degrees centigrade where? Are we talking about 2 degrees centigrade here, 2 degrees centigrade in central Africa or 2 degrees centigrade in other places? If my reading is correct, some fairly recent research has shown that the temperature in this country has risen in the past decade by nearly 1 degree centigrade on average. If we were to keep up that rate—and that is where we are today—we would be way over 2 degrees centigrade. That indicates that we are perhaps already past the tipping point.
The third point about the 2 degrees centigrade is that it is severely open to question whether we might not already have gone past the point which will take our temperatures up to that level and beyond it, in which case we have something of a problem. So although I agree with absolutely everything that has been said, I find myself in considerable difficulty over including these amendments in the Bill.
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Finally, I was absolutely delighted to hear what the right reverend Prelate had to say about our aspirations for leadership in this matter. He neatly trumped what I was going to say later. I may bore the Committee by repeating those remarks but at least he has the assurance that I will try to abbreviate them.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: I support the amendment tabled by my noble friends. It is not as though they plucked the 2 degrees out of the air. The Joint Committee received an immense amount of evidence from very eminent scientists about what the Bill should aim to do. I believe that their amendment results from that. It is not something that they have thought up for themselves.
The part of the amendment that I particularly support concerns the fair and equitable concept. Although I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, says about leadership—the Government said a lot about the leadership role that the Bill plays—the Bill should, for the reasons laid out by the right reverend Prelate, be as much about cleaning up our own act and setting our own house in order as telling the rest of the world what to do. The amendment is particularly important because it would set the tone for the rest of the Bill. As we debate the level at which international credits should be set and what role the EU Emissions Trading Scheme should play we should keep very much in mind that individuals in this nation consume three, four or even six times as much as people not even in the poorest developing countries of the world but those on a middle income. We are really very greedy. We should make sure that we start to play a fair and equitable role and do not rely on some of the mechanisms that we could rely on, which would do very little. The amendment would establish a powerful context for that.
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I see the logic of including an objective in the Bill. The arguments put forward by the proposers of all three amendments seem to me strong and convincing. This is an exceptional Bill, as the Government have said many times. Therefore, it is reasonable that it should have some exceptional features. Therefore, if it does, it is also reasonable to depart from precedent to this extent. I see the logic of the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, and the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. However, on the question of justiciability, this seems an issue which arises in relation to other targets in the Bill and not just the 2 degrees centigrade. I am not certain that this is relevant to these clauses. As far as the figures are concerned, the science has evolved. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, was saying, we had much evidence put to us on the Joint Committee.
The science has evolved enough for specific figures to be feasible, testable and satisfactory and to be included in this Bill. Therefore, I support the direction of Amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 3. However, I believe that the clearer, shorter and simpler this Bill’s objective is, the better—in particular, with regard to clarity of the 2 degrees centigrade figure. As between the three, I would prefer the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.
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Baroness Byford: I support my noble friend’s amendment. When we debated this Bill at Second Reading, many of us were concerned that it is a skeleton Bill: that it leaves a lot of powers out—that there was not enough within it. We will discuss that in detail later.
Although one could say that the amendments may not be appropriate at the Bill’s final stage, they raise an important issue, upon which the right reverend Prelate has touched. It is clear that we are leading the world with this Bill. I do not agree with the comment that because it is a different Bill—because it has not happened before—we cannot take a stance on it at this stage. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis.
It is important that we have a slightly greater steer at the beginning of this Bill. If the Minister is unable to accept these amendments—I suspect that he will not be able to—the Government might consider strengthening what we have before us, because it is not strong enough. I would be concerned if I were in one of the foreign countries that will be most affected by it but which have very little control over what effect carbon emissions are having there.
I said at Second Reading that it is a moral issue. It is not just about what we do in this country, although that is enormously important to our people; it is much more important in relation to our responsibilities worldwide. I hope that the Minister will not just say that the Government cannot accept the amendments but that they will give serious thought to strengthening and improving the direction—the message—set out at the start of the Bill. I support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Having read the amendment and listened to the debate, I am not convinced this amendment is necessary as a preamble to the Bill. The Government obviously take climate change very seriously. That is why they have produced the Bill, which is detailed and deals perfectly adequately with every matter raised during the debate so far. Additional verbiage in a Bill of this sort will not help the objectives, which some have doubts about. Statements have been made during this debate which one must query. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, described this climate change as being unique. It is by no means unique. As everyone knows, climate change has been happening over a long period of time.
Lord Clinton-Davis: When I made the statement, I was referring to something that was said by the Opposition; it does not necessarily accord with my own views. I do not think that I would depart in any way from what I said. The job of the Bill is to enact exactly what we want and it should be justiciable, and in no way can this be.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I am interested in what the noble Lord has just said. I support the point that he made, but I am dealing with a statement that he made during his speech and that others have made before him. If the House of Lords had been around 12,000 years ago, we would not be debating a 2 per cent increase in temperatures; we would probably have been debating a 10 per cent decrease in temperatures. The situation now is by no means unique—
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Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: The uniqueness is in the man-made nature of the climate change.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I did not want to go into that, but I will now go into the nature of it. Man has been doing all sorts of things over a very long period of time. Nature is actually very clever, because in many instances, it manages to undo the damage that has been done by man. But on that point alone it is being claimed that global warming is due to man-made activity. I do not necessarily dispute that, but the approach that this House and others are taking to rectifying that position is, if I might say so, quite absurd. They are blaming man for increases in temperature, yet they are quite happy to see the world’s population rise from 6 billion at present to 9 billion in 2050, so that the contribution of man could increase by 50 per cent. That is not being taken seriously.
Secondly, if man is going to make a real contribution not only to climate change but to other environmental aspects, people have to learn to live within the means of the planet. They are not doing that, and that is not what they are expected to do. In fact, every country in the world desperately wants to increase production year by year. That really is quite ridiculous and it cannot happen. If you believe that man’s activity will cause this huge climate change, you have to do something realistic about it and not just play with the problem; that is what we are doing in this Bill. I have to say that. After all, we make a contribution of only 2 per cent to CO2 emissions, so what we can do, except give a lead, is very limited. If the country and the world want to deal with the problem realistically, they have to make some very difficult and very serious decisions.
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I would like to respond from our point of view. There has been criticism of the amendments. Those of us who want the Bill to be sound and thorough are grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Stoddart of Swindon, the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, and my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith for criticising, to some degree, the way we have presented an amendment that is more concerned with aims in the abstract than mechanics in the detail. That may be a challenge to good law—I do not know. However, when people look at the legislation 43 years from now, all the speeches that we are making will be totally forgotten. They will want to know what we were seeking to deal with when we set out. That has been made clear; all the evidence that we have received has shown that carbon emissions are leading to global warming, and that is what we are seeking to address. It is proper that we set out in the Bill what we are seeking to address by the mechanical means that we are giving the Committee on Climate Change, future Secretaries of State, Prime Ministers and Governments dealing the problem—those who will determine action for many years to come. That is why I believe we are right to debate these proposals at the beginning of the Bill.
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