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However, in the end, it seems to me that the argument about the powers of the Secretary of State is subordinate to an even more powerful argument, which, as my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach said, is the control of Parliament. Ultimately, as I hope the Minister will acknowledge, the Secretary of State has no power except for that derived through Parliament and, in this case, through this Bill. It seems to me that that is the sovereignty that we have to preserve. I accept that essentially the executive authority of the Government comes from the Crown and, in that sense, Parliament has the right of oversight and of regulation. However, when it comes to new legislation, there is no question at all in my mind that the view of Parliament has to be paramount.
I listened to my noble friend Lord Taylor with a certain amount of delight because I can envisage the time when we become the Government and I shall be embarrassed to some degree by his present proposals. I can imagine a future Conservative Secretary of State having slight difficulty as a consequence of these amendments. I am not absolutely convinced one way or the other about the argument but I am convinced that parliamentary control is paramount. That, it
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We need to recognise the territory that we are getting into in this Bill. It goes way beyond the Bill itself, which is essentially procedural and sets out a parliamentary mechanism. It does not deal with the detail of the energy policies that will be required. In a month or two, a planning Bill will come to us from the other place and it will have to deal with aspects of the implementation of things that may make this policy and energy policy work. The whole complex has to come together and fit but I think that on balance, because my noble friend has preserved the oversight of Parliament, his amendments deserve the most serious consideration.
Lord Teverson: I will break in on a good quality debate among those on the Conservative Benches. The noble Lord is right to stress that changing targets is a crucial part of the Bill. Getting the balance between science and political decisions—between the powers of Parliament and the Secretary of State—is important and difficult.
I was heavily persuaded by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. We say that it is important that the part of this amendment that says that the recommendation is improved by resolution of both Houses of Parliament is right. We should remember that this Bill looks to 2050. Even within that timescale, this House might be reformed—at least slightly—so that it feels that it has the ability and integrity to reject orders more regularly than it has done in the past.
However, my own view is that we cannot be—or the Government or the Secretary of State cannot be—completely tied down by the Committee on Climate Change. Indeed, if this amendment went through, it could lead to extreme pressure on the independence of the committee when there was a diversity of views. That argument may not be completely de rigueur, but it is practical—that these different bodies and people have different roles. Therefore it is essential that the climate change committee has to be consulted, heard and considered on any target changes. However, at the end of the day, the Secretary of State has to retain a sensible degree of executive power in this area.
Lord Campbell-Savours: If you want to concentrate the committee’s mind on the need to act responsibly, you have to give it real power. The danger of a committee that does not feel that it has power is that it will act irresponsibly. It may well come up with conclusions that are simply impractical. I disagree profoundly with the position taken by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. If I might say, there is an element of inconsistency in his case, when I compare it with his earlier contributions during the passage of this Bill.
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At this party, I see three people or organisations taking decisions—the committee, Parliament and the Government. There are going to be conflicts between those three. The problem is that when Governments take decisions, they are subject to all the pressures that they could be subject to. Members of this House, many of whom have been Ministers, know exactly the pressures to which I am referring—such as lobbyists and outside organisations—all of whom are exerting pressure and often producing decisions and making recommendations to Parliament that Members of Parliament, in their wildest understanding and dreams, cannot even begin to understand.
You often look at legislation and think, “Where on earth did they get this idea from?”. For example, the Gambling Bill went through and many Members of the other place could not understand who had asked for it. In all the years that I was a Member of Parliament in the other House, I never had one letter asking for gambling legislation to be introduced and yet, somehow, it appeared out of the woodwork. It arose as a result of pressure being exerted by lobbyists. It is those pressures that worry me. As they exert their way through the system—and they will be exerted on the Government when they are faced with crisis decisions in this very area where important decisions are going to be taken on policy—the Whips drive them through, very often in opposition to the views of Members of Parliament. That does not happen uniquely on the Labour Benches; it happens on all sides of the House. We all know that Members of Parliament often find themselves voting in a way that they do not altogether agree with, but in this area the danger is that decisions will make their way through the system. They will find their way into Parliament and will have been promoted by Government. They will be opposed in the Committee on Climate Change because they are not its recommendations, and they will simply be driven through the House of Commons. I am very worried about that.
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I like this kind of amendment. I do not think that we should turn our noses up and say that we have to secure the position of Secretaries of State who must be free to take decisions regardless of the view of the scientific community, which has repeatedly been called in aid during the many amendments that have been moved on the Bill. I hope that Ministers will look sympathetically on this amendment.
Before I close, I shall refer to the Prime Minister’s evidence to the Liaison Committee, because it might help to guide our judgments on these matters. During the Recess I watched the whole of the Prime Minister’s contribution to that committee. He talked about top-down government, which is quite interesting in the context of this debate. In reply to a question from Tony Wright, he said:
“If you look at every problem that a modern economy and society like ours faces, whether it is the environment, whether it is terrorism, whether it is community cohesion or whether it is skills or facing the global economy, one of the lessons that I have learnt is that you cannot have top-down government anymore,
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I agree with that sentiment. All I am saying to Ministers is that if that is the Prime Minister’s sentiment, why in this particularly precious area, where the very future of the planet is concerned, can we not delegate this area of responsibility to those outside who, if given the power, will act responsibly and come up with the right recommendations?
Lord May of Oxford: I shall speak in support of what I conceive to be the essence of this amendment: the preservation of an appropriate balance between government, Parliament and the science in the broadest sense, embracing the economic as well as the physical and biological sciences, made immanent, one hopes, in an appropriately constituted climate change committee. In briefly elaborating that, I crave the Committee’s indulgence and apologise for being out of the country for the first two Committee sittings. I have read the reports with considerable interest. I was not surprised but very favourably impressed by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who frequently said that while he did not necessarily agree, he could see the point and would go back to the department. I am equally clear that I am surrounded in this Committee by people who understand far better than I how to construct the verbiage of these arcana, which will put in place properly what we all wish—an appropriate balance between Government, Parliament and a climate change committee.
It is not going to be easy. This discussion started as if it was coming from only one Bench, but we are looking at a time span of 50 years in which different Governments will come and go. We need a framework that is robust against those changes.
Perhaps I may venture—and then I will shut up—a typical academic mini-discourse on the subject. A fascinating paper is about to appear in one of the world’s premier journals. It is one among many such papers as people concentrate more on the social science of how to resolve what is variously called the free-rider problem, the prisoner’s dilemma or the tragedy of the commons. It is a fascinating and depressing experiment done by a group of people in Europe, but headed in Switzerland. Students were put together in groups and each group member given a chunk of money. They went through 10 rounds of five-year quotas, as it were. They played 10 rounds in which each student had to put in a certain fraction of the money that they owed with the idea that, at the end of the exercise, if they had reached a certain target sum of money, they would all get to keep the money they had not put in. If they failed, however, they lost all their money. It is a crude and flawed metaphor for asking people to make decisions today that will lead to later and later decisions contingent on what other people decide about whether we will achieve the goals that we are trying to set ourselves.
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Depressingly, the outcome of those experiments was that at the beginning most people tried to cheat and hoped that others would help. Then they realised that they were all going to lose and tried to catch up. There was a curious pattern of not enough action at first and then trying to catch up at the end. More often than not everybody lost and they all went away with nothing. That is why I am concerned about the inevitable political tensions to take it easy now—not to do the uncomfortable thing, not to bite the bullet on nuclear power, not to put in tough building restrictions. You can name your own favourite thing that we need to do. This is why I would have preferred annual and not five-year targets, so that they were not sowing seeds for a future Government to reap. That is why I would have preferred the Secretary of State to outline in general and not binding terms broadly how he saw the annual target being met. I recognise some of the impracticalities.
The real need is to recognise the essentially different interests of individual Governments and even individual Parliaments. The supervening realities against these unresolved paradoxes of co-operation lead me to believe that we have to be really careful about putting this legislation in place in a way that is even-handed in ensuring the strength of the appropriately constituted climate change committee, the Government—made appropriately immanent in the Secretary of State—and both Houses of Parliament. Much as I listened to the criticisms of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, I am in favour of the broad spirit of the amendment. I think that the Committee probably is also, if it is appropriately done.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I have not joined in this discussion before but I listened to the debate with great interest. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, talked about the problem being between Parliament, the Government and the committee. The noble Lord, Lord May, referred to the committee as science, which he is quite right to do.
I remind my noble friend Lord Taylor and the Committee that not only Parliament and the Government will be concerned; the devolved Parliament and Assemblies will be concerned as well. They will have a great deal to say on this. Mr Salmond, the First Minister, is already saying that in no way will there be nuclear power plants in Scotland. I think he is saying that for political reasons; he cannot be saying it on scientific or cost grounds. But he is saying it and he is going to go on doing so. The Government know that and no doubt will allow for it when they bring forward their proposals. The political situation will be quite complex. It will not be just the Westminster Parliament and the Government having to deal with these matters with the committee, it will be the devolved bodies as well. I would ask my noble friend to remember that when he thinks about the future of his amendment.
My noble friend Lord Crickhowell was speaking as a former Secretary of State for Wales, and no doubt he was thinking about what is to happen when someone has to make a critical decision on something immediately or in the very short term. As I understood him, he was asking where the power is to lie. The situation is rather
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Lord Puttnam: I urge the Minister to regard this amendment as an entirely honourable and almost noble attempt to strike a balance in an extremely difficult area. I want to add one argument to those of my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, who I agree with entirely. Let us remember that the people principally affected by this Bill are the young. They are going to demand a different kind of politics, and I think that this amendment attempts, not unsuccessfully, to strike the type of balance that the young will be seeking. We will be asking for behavioural change from them in the form of changes in attitude towards the environment and changes in thinking about their futures. I do not believe that all that can be achieved through a determinist position by any Government, and I identify completely with the quotation used by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. I hope that the Prime Minister meant what he said to the Liaison Committee because he is spot-on: politics will not continue to be done as it has been in the past, and this Bill is a litmus test of how far the Government are prepared to advance in changing the very nature of politics.
Lord Rooker: I am grateful for the debate. I do not want to be accused of not listening because I agree with many of the points that have been made. Also, although there has not been a lot of support for the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, he made a central point that seems to be lost sometimes; that is, that “the Secretary of State” means the Government. As an ex-Secretary of State, the noble Lord probably realises that. Decisions are not made by an individual in a ministry; it is not like that. It is not possible—although it would be convenient, of course—to have all our energy provisions wrapped up in one Bill with one ministry in charge. All that is for the Government. Otherwise there would be no division of labour at all.
The noble Lord, Lord May, apologised for not being here for previous sittings, and we understand fully the reasons why. But he was certainly here in spirit because his amendment was fully debated even though he was not personally present to move it. Members of the Committee found it incredibly helpful to have that amendment before them that day because it provided us with a possible lifeboat while we looked for a solution.
As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said when he kicked off, this group of amendments raises the question of the relationship between the Government, the Committee on Climate Change and Parliament, which we discussed before Christmas and no doubt will discuss again. My answer today is the same: so far as issues of transparency are concerned, we undertake to take this group of amendments, as with others before it, away for consideration. That is genuinely meant and is not a one-off response to a particular debate. There is a theme running through the amendments concerning the Committee on Climate Change and its relationship with Parliament and the Government.
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In the end the country will still want to know who is in charge, and thus be able to hold them accountable. The country cannot demand that the Committee on Climate Change be accountable to “the people”; people will demand that from their elected representatives whether they be at Westminster or in the devolved Administrations. We have to find a satisfactory way round that. But as I say, consideration has already commenced regarding the transparency of the decision-making process and the relationships between the three bodies and it is hoped that we will be able to come forward with something on that at Report. It is not my job to push the Bill along; it is the will of the Committee. I only have the same message to give in this area of debate: we will very seriously consider looking at the transparency arrangements.
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We do not believe that the decisions should be made by an unelected body. They must be made by a body accountable to Parliament, with proper scrutiny, which is another area that we have committed to consider again. Obviously we want advice from the independent committee, and we want far more robust scrutiny than Parliament or its mechanisms have at the moment. We will take away and consider aspects of that part of the process; it is important. We will do this where there are similar thrusts behind different groups of amendments, which are clearly there on the Marshalled List. Looking ahead, there are amendments to Clauses 19 and 20 that cover the same issue. I shall make exactly the same commitment on behalf of the Government.
Amendment No. 97 specifically relates to the alteration of the length of budget periods under Clause 18. The Committee on Climate Change does not currently have a role. This is because the only circumstances in which the powers in Clause 18 may be exercised are if a change to budgetary periods is needed to keep them in line with similar periods under European or international agreements to which the United Kingdom is a party. As we have discussed, the key reason for choosing the five-year period proposed in the Bill is to ensure that the UK framework mirrors international timescales. There is no need for the committee to have a role in decisions about the length of budget periods, as any decision to move away from a five-year period may only be based on changes in the international situation. Any use of that power would simply realign the United Kingdom with those international frameworks. I make that point in relation to Amendment No. 97 because I do not want to be too dismissive. There is a practical reason why the committee will not have a role in changing the budget periods.
The general thrust of this group of amendments concerns the relationship between the three bodies, certainly as far as Parliament, individual Members in both Houses and people outside are concerned. They need to trust that the system is working and can only do so if it is genuinely transparent. As I said, we will come forward after discussion with proposals to make sure that this issue is far more transparent than it is in the Bill at present.
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Baroness Byford: Before my noble friend responds to the Minister perhaps I may raise a couple of issues. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord May of Oxford, was able to be with us today and I reiterate our thanks to him for his previous amendment. I totally support the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who reminded us of how important this Bill is to the young. My grandchildren are aged 14, 12 and 12. When you ask them what is important to them, they bring up climate change as one of the most important things. I am sure that the ways we do business now will have changed enormously in 50 years’ time.
I support my noble friend’s amendment. It may not be perfect, but that is another matter. I am a strong believer in the need for a consensus between the Government, science—though I am no scientist myself—the committee itself and Parliament. I am raising these points now, before my noble friend replies to the Minister’s response, in order to try to help the Committee. In the previous two sittings the Minister has been very honest in responding and has taken our points on board, saying that he will come back with ideas on Report. I have a feeling that we are covering the same ground again and again in many of these amendments. Is there any chance that we might have a more general feeling for how the Government might meet us halfway on some of the proposals that we debated in the previous two sittings and are debating again today? Otherwise we are clearly going to keep going over the same ground, raising the same issues with the Minister, and we will get no further until Report. That does not mean that I think that it is a waste of time. But perhaps we are not progressing on this Bill as we have on previous Bills when the Government came back between sittings and gave us a slightly fuller response on how they saw matters progressing.
Lord Rooker: I do not know about previous Bills but the House has its procedures. We are not revising a Bill that we have received from the other place; we are doing the first round of work and it would be impossible for the Government to keep coming back during the Committee stage. Once the Committee stage is over we shall complete an analysis of the voices—we are working on that now—discuss that with the parties in the House, collectively as well as individually, and see where we can move; we know areas where we want to be able to move now. What the noble Baroness is asking for is impossible during the Committee stage.
Lord Teverson: I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, that the Bill is an indicator of the way in which politics needs to change in the future. However, we will not change politics by delegating to a meritocratic, although extremely worthy and important, committee. The key is changing the way in which democratic politics works in this country, rather than this particular area. That is why it is a risk to put huge powers into the Climate Change Bill. I am persuaded by many of the things the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said and we on these Benches will consider this fully again.
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