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Lord Rooker: We have got off to a good start. It would have been even better if I could have announced
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I agree with my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis about purposes and objectives. No one has mentioned the central duty of the Bill, which is clearly set out in Clause 1—to reduce the UK’s net carbon account by a certain figure by a certain date. It is clear, unambiguous, and one cannot avoid understanding the meaning. The UK remains committed to the European Union’s 2 degree target, but there is no simple relationship between that target and the UK’s 2050 target, which is why we oppose the amendments.
The increase in global average temperatures will be determined by atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There is significant uncertainty in the relationship, which is why bodies such as the IPCC use a range of probability to reflect the current level of scientific understanding. It is not clear how the amendments address that uncertainty. In addition, the science is clear that the UK cannot operate alone. We are responsible for only 2 per cent of emissions. People will argue that as it is only 2 per cent why are we bothering? The point is that we want to give a lead. We cannot achieve the 2 degree target on our own. That is clearly impossible.
At the moment, reaching the 2 degree target referred to by several noble Lords depends on atmospheric concentrations, and there is a degree of uncertainty. For instance, if atmospheric concentrations of the gases reach around 450 parts per million, it is estimated that there will be around a 50 per cent chance of exceeding the 2 degree temperature increase. It is likely that we will need global emissions to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and for global greenhouse gas emissions to reduce by at least 50 per cent by 2050 on 1990 levels. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are already at 430 parts per million in a CO2 equivalent, and rising at more than 2 parts per million per year. Even if global emissions stopped today, there is around a 30 to 40 per cent chance of exceeding that 2 degree target.
Not accepting the new clause is not to shirk our responsibilities. We recognise that developed countries such as the UK must take a lead in reducing emissions. That was the agreed principle of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is why we have set ambitious targets through the Bill, and why we will be asking the independent Committee on Climate Change to review whether the targets should be tightened further. It is clear that the world will tackle climate change only if we take urgent and ambitious action together. That is why we are introducing the Bill in the first place; we need not apologise for that. To people living in other countries that will probably be damaged far more than the UK, we can proudly say what we are doing through the Bill; it is clear in the Long Title and Clause 1. It is also why we are working hard at international negotiations, including currently at Bali, where the Secretary of State and the team are to launch the negotiations for the post-2012 framework.
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The amendments do not capture that important element of the UK’s efforts to tackle global climate change. In addition, significant uncertainties arise from the amendments—I am not nit-picking, but they seek to change primary legislation although I realise that they are in some ways probing—around, for instance, the concept of the UK’s fair share or how we will assess the UK emissions necessary to contribute to a particular level of global temperature. We think it better that there is a clear objective such as the 2050 target—a short number of words set out in the first part of the Bill.
I sympathise with the right reverend Prelate’s efforts to tease out the uncertainties in the relationship, but I am afraid that we cannot accept Amendments Nos. 3, 11A and 14 at this point. The proposals risk cutting across the review of the 2050 target which the Committee on Climate Change will carry out. The review will consider the scientific developments since the royal commission’s report in 2000; I fully accept that it was a long time ago and that things have changed, but that is what we are putting the Committee on Climate Change together for. The committee also has to take account of the wider international context. Amendment No. 3 also risks cutting across the UK’s efforts to secure international consensus. It would determine the UK’s “fair share” of global emissions to 2050 on the basis of the approach known as contraction and convergence, in the absence of international agreement on a different way of allocating the emissions between countries. As your Lordships will be aware, the long-term goal of guiding global action on climate change and how it should be allocated between countries is the subject of complex and delicate international negotiations. It is not a simple question; I am not saying that in a pejorative sense.
The contraction and convergence approach has some attractions, in that it identifies a fixed level of stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations, and that it is based on the idea of comprehensive global participation. However, one key element of any future regime has to be its workability. One concern with contraction and convergence is how globally acceptable, and in consequence how workable, it will prove. A number of other approaches to determine a fair and equitable share are being discussed at international level. Given that there is some way to go in building the consensus within the international community that would be required to agree on a framework for a way forward, it would be premature for the UK Government to commit themselves in law to any framework at this stage. By nailing our colours so firmly to the mast in favour of one approach, we risk undermining our ability to persuade international partners to sign up to any workable approach commensurate with the scale of the challenge.
Amendments Nos. 49 and 142 relate to carbon budgets. Clause 8, which we shall obviously come to in due course, already requires carbon budgets to be set with a view to meeting the 2050 target. That will ensure that, in the committee’s advice on carbon budgets and the Government’s decisions, budgets are set to put the UK on the right trajectory to meet the 2050 target. It is not clear how the amendments will
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I shall turn briefly to Amendment No. 157—
Lord Redesdale: As I understood it, the 2050 targets were set so that we did not go past the 2-degree threshold. What is the basis of the targets if not the 2 degrees?
Lord Rooker: I will come back to that. I have not said anything that contradicts it; the basis is exactly the same as when it started. As I said, these targets were set some time ago. One of the reasons that the Committee on Climate Change is being put together to review this is to bring the up-to-date science forward so that the Government can make the decisions, with the approval of both Houses. In other words, it is not fixed; otherwise we would not need the Committee on Climate Change. We would be relying on the science of some years ago and targets set more than seven years ago. We are accepting that the science has moved. That is implied, if I have not spelt it out sufficiently—the Government do not seek to gainsay it at all. It is just that the process we have arrived at, in bringing a plan to Parliament, gives us the flexibility—which we will discuss in later clauses—to make the adjustments necessary to take account of the science. I suspect that the science will move in coming years also.
As I have said, we have already announced that we will ask the committee to review the 2050 target and report on whether it should be tightened up to 80 per cent. In this review, the committee will need to look at all the evidence and provide its advice on the appropriate level of the target. It will, of course, include all the scientific developments, nationally and internationally, since the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s report in June 2000. The committee’s review of that 2050 target is the appropriate place to look at this kind of question.
I freely admit, as I have said to noble Lords privately and on Second Reading, that in the absence of having the final framework of how the Committee on Climate Change will work and its powers and functions—which will be debated in both Houses—and without knowing the names, stature, background and independence of the individuals, which we are not currently able to say as they have not been interviewed prior to appointment, the House is being asked to agree the basic framework on the basis that we get the rest right. We will know about the functions and powers of the committee if they change as they go through Parliament. By the time we get to Report and Third Reading we will have an idea of the membership, background and calibre of the committee, so that the House can be assured—or otherwise, as the case may be—of what it wants to do about reinforcing the Bill. I am not asking the House to take this on a blind promise. That information will be known at the relevant time.
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury: I am sorry to intervene, and am sympathetic to the complexity of what the Minister has to manage. But it is precisely
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4 pm
Lord Rooker: The right reverend Prelate has no need to apologise. Save for one other Bill that I helped to steer through this House just after I became a Member—after the 9/11 catastrophe in the United States—this is the only Bill to touch every department of government. I can assure the right reverend Prelate that while Defra is in the lead—some department has to manage it—the whole of Whitehall is engaged in the Bill. Whitehall is more engaged than it would have been if the Bill had started in the other place because it has received the distilled results and consequences of the Second Reading in your Lordships' House; and the message has gone around that in the Lords this will not wash as it is now. Therefore, some aspects put forward by Members of the Committee will require more flexibility. All the departments mentioned by the right reverend Prelate and others are actively engaged with the Bill team, which is Whitehall-wide, on what we need to do to secure a Bill with which we can all be satisfied. The Committee stage notwithstanding, early in the new year, at Report stage, there will be opportunities to look at what we do with the Bill, including the structure of the Committee on Climate Change, to see whether the House thinks that the Government have got this right.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: To what extent are the devolved assemblies and the Scottish Parliament engaged equally with the Whitehall departments?
Lord Rooker: The Whitehall departments are still engaged with the devolved assemblies. We still have a Scotland Office, a Wales Office and a Northern Ireland Office. These are UK targets and the devolved Administrations are committed to following them. They may have to legislate for this in their own way and that which is reserved to Westminster will be covered in this Bill. We are not legislating for England only; this is the UK's contribution; but the devolved Administrations are fully on board and are actively participating in the discussions on the Bill.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My noble friend referred to the fact that the Committee on Climate Change would consider all the international evidence on the difference between 60 per cent and 80 per cent. Paragraph 45 of the report of the Joint Committee states:
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“Bearing in mind however the weight of scientific evidence before the Committee that a target of more than 60% is likely to be necessary”.
To what extent was evidence before the Joint Committee which suggests that the 80 per cent target might be necessary? Has that already been considered in the departments? It would be interesting to know that before the debate on the 60/80 issue.
Lord Rooker: All I can say to my noble friend is that the Bill refers to at least 60 per cent. There is a strong indication there that the Government accepted that 60 per cent was the minimum and that the desirability was to be above 60 per cent. That is probably an inadequate answer for my noble friend. The fact is that it was considered relevant in Whitehall and among those planning the Bill that the target would be not 60 per cent but at least 60 per cent.
Lord Teverson: I thank the Minister for going through the Government’s view of this new clause in great detail and the other amendments in the group. I return to the understanding of temperatures in the past and their variability. I am sympathetic with the many Members of the Committee who spoke about the habit of statisticians who talk about great accuracy in statistics when there is none. There is considerable research about these temperatures and there is sufficient evidence on which we can rely. Our own Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology’s publication on climate change science states:
“Over the last 100 years the global mean surface temperature has warmed 0.74oC ±0.18oC, although there is significant regional variability”.
We all understand that there are limitations, but that shows that we can have confidence—as much as we can in any climate change science—about the figures that we are discussing. Indeed, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we start to question the numbers that the Bill is based upon. The Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill, chaired so well by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, went through so much of this so that both Houses could assure themselves that the figures were correct.
I return to the amendments. I agree with many of the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, particularly those in his second intervention. There is a great need for clarity in the Bill. The fact that something has not been done before in UK domestic legislation should not put us off doing something special here, as the Bill is very special. Therefore, we owe it to have clarity. We are asking the Committee on Climate Change to consider revising the specific targets in the Bill, so it is important to have that context and objective in the Bill. That is why the argument for having 2 degrees centigrade in the Bill, and at the beginning, remains important. We will wish to pursue this, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 not moved.]
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Children’s Plan
4.06 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement on the Children’s Plan made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary for State for Children, Schools and Families. The Statement is as follows:
“The first ever Children’s Plan, which we are publishing today, follows months of consultation with parents, teachers, professionals, and children and young people themselves, up and down the country.
“Over the last 10 years, the lives of children have improved. School standards are up and child poverty is down, while we have many more outstanding schools and many fewer failing schools. However, following our detailed consultations, the results of which I have laid before the House, I have concluded that we need further reforms to deliver a world-class education for every child; that we must do more to prevent children falling behind or failing to fulfil their potential because of learning difficulties, poverty or disadvantage; and that, while there are more opportunities for young people today than ever before, families want more help to manage the new pressures that they face in balancing work and family life, in dealing with the internet and modern commercialism and in letting children play while staying safe.
“The Children’s Plan is our response. First, Mr Speaker, there are new measures to support the learning of every child. The early years are critical. So as we raise the entitlement to free nursery care for all three and four year-olds from 12 to 15 hours, we will now allocate over £200 million over the next three years to ensure that young children get the highest-quality care in their early years, with at least two graduates in nurseries in the most disadvantaged areas, and we will extend the offer of free nursery places to 20,000 two year-olds in the most disadvantaged communities.
“School standards are rising, but I want to accelerate the improvement. I have therefore asked Sir Jim Rose to undertake a root-and-branch review of the primary curriculum to create more space for teaching the basics—English and maths, with a foreign language in all primary schools—and to ensure that all children start secondary school with the personal skills to succeed. If our Making Good Progress trials are successful, we will implement ‘stage not age’ testing nationally—the biggest reform to national curriculum assessment since its creation.
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“To back our teachers, I am today allocating £44 million over the next three years so that all new teachers will be able to study for a masters-level qualification, and to establish a new Future Leaders programme to bring even more talented people into teaching.
“Supporting parents is central to this Children’s Plan. In future, every parent will have a record of their child’s development and education through the early years and into primary school, and the Minister for Schools will consult parents and schools over the next few months, and legislate if necessary, to ensure that every child has a personal tutor who stays with them as they progress through secondary school; every parent receives up-to-date information about their child’s progress, attendance and behaviour, using ‘real time’ reporting and new technologies such as mobile phones or the internet; and, so that parents know what they can expect, how they will be consulted and how they can express concerns and complaints, every secondary school will have a parents’ council.
“Parents also want earlier intervention if their child falls behind. Alongside one-to-one support for reading and maths at primary school and our new Every Child a Writer programme, I am allocating £18 million over the next three years to improve initial teacher training about special educational needs and to find new ways of identifying dyslexia earlier. Following the Bercow review, Ofsted will lead a full review into our special education needs provision in 2009.
“In our consultation, head teachers told us that schools need more support from other services to tackle all barriers to learning. Today, one in 10 children has a diagnosed mental health problem, but schools repeatedly say how hard it is to get the CAMHS children’s mental health service to engage with them early enough. So I have agreed with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health that we will launch a review of CAMHS to investigate how it can work better with schools and to identify where early support is most needed. Our two departments will also produce the first ever child health strategy in the spring.
“We will also enhance inspection across schools and children’s services and examine whether children’s trusts arrangements need to be strengthened, including through further legislation if necessary. To further improve services for parents and to enable better early intervention, we will publish new guidance for Building Schools for the Future to ensure that, where possible, schools are designed with other services—health, police, social care, advice and welfare services—collocated with them. Because schools must be sustainable for our children and their children, we will now set a new ambition that all new schools will be zero-carbon by 2016.
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