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The second duty is very similar. Under the Bill's current framework, the Committee on Climate Change is required to report on the progress and effectiveness of the measures. The Government are required to present their response to the committee before both Houses of Parliament. We feel most strongly that this response should be presented by the Prime Minister because it concerns how the Government are progressing as a whole in meeting their carbon budgets. We anticipate that the proposals and plans will be drawn up by government departments in consultation with the committee. However, whether these plans have been effectively driven across departments is manifestly not in the brief of the Secretary of State for Defra; only the Prime Minister has an adequate scope of responsibility and authority stretching across government.
I turn briefly to a few of the objections raised in Committee. First, on precedence, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, usefully pointed out that certain briefs such as defence, foreign affairs and the Home Department require the Prime Minister to sign off reports. The Minister claimed that these and other prime ministerial duties were accidents of history. However, this is certainly not the case. The Prime Minister is responsible because they affect the nation as a whole. The whole of this project needs very clear leadership to achieve the necessary goals. Combating climate change is a very necessary goal.
I do not think that any Prime Minister would claim that his mandate with regard to the country’s national security is accidental but we can consider other recent legislation passed by this Government that does require the Prime Minister to lay reports before
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“The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Interception of Communications Commissioner under subsection (4), together with a statement as to whether any matter has been excluded”.
Here, as in our proposals, it is quite clear that it is not the duty of the Prime Minister to write the report or to take on the entire burden of its preparation in Downing Street; he is simply responsible for laying it before Parliament. This has a very real effect. If the Prime Minister receives the report and has responsibility for laying it before Parliament, this offers strong reassurance that the importance of the proposals to combat climate change is understood at the very highest level of government. This is the most effective way to ensure that climate change is a constant echo in Cabinet and in policy meetings across the Civil Service. It would also serve to strengthen the role of the committee. By having the Prime Minister’s commitment, the stature of the committee is also increased. This would be a welcome step towards cementing the climate change committee’s importance in government and in the eye of the public.
The reason we offer these refinements to our amendments stems from the idea that the reports to which our previous amendments referred were of a scientific rather than a factual nature. Thus these new amendments refer to clauses that deal with the effectiveness of proposals and policies. We feel that placing the burden of presenting the reports on to the shoulder of the Prime Minister would be the best assurance that these policies and programmes are receiving the importance they deserve; namely, the highest importance. I beg to move.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, in speaking to these amendments to which my name is added, I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on this issue. As was said at the previous stage, although the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, whose name is printed on the Bill’s front page in respect of the human rights convention, shares Cabinet responsibility for Defra with the Secretary of State and therefore takes a lead on this issue, there is a slight problem regarding the various areas in which other departments have a say.
According to government figures in 2005, the share of carbon dioxide emissions from energy industries was 37.4 per cent, which is the responsibility of BERR—then the DTI—and from road transport it was 21.6 per cent, which is the Department for Transport. From other industries it was 17.8 per cent, although a vast proportion of that was from agriculture under Defra, and residential emissions were at 14.9 per cent, under the DCLG and Defra. There are other areas, such as the MoD, which will produce quite a few carbon emissions of their own. Is it really acceptable to believe that, if there is to be a turf war between departments, the Prime Minister will accept whatever is put forward by the Secretary of State for Defra?
In the amendment, we are not asking to overturn the whole remit of collective Cabinet responsibility, but we are asking the Prime Minister to lay the report before the House of Commons, which is quite a different thing. That would give a degree of satisfaction that the
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I was lobbied about this by a number of different people. One person who e-mailed me was particularly apt when they asked, “If the Prime Minister is not prepared to do this on climate change, what is the point of a Prime Minister?”. I thought that was a rather nice rhetorical question. However, we have all clearly seen this issue going up the political spectrum quite dramatically. We have just had an amendment on how this affects other departments through the Department for International Development. To say that it is going to affect each and every one of us is an understatement. I have been to a number of recent meetings where people have tried to express what a cut of 60 per cent means. It means that you are not going to be taking flights overseas on a regular basis. You are not going to be doing a lot of the things that we now take for granted, which will be difficult. It will be up to the Prime Minister to take the lead and to express to the country why we have to take those difficult positions and the basis for them. On that basis, I very much hope that the Government accept the amendment.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, the noble Lord who opened the debate and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, failed to understand the inevitability of other Ministers being involved. No one can deny that this is a hugely important issue; climate change inevitably assumes that role. But it is misconceived to think that other Ministers cannot be involved. They are regularly involved. It is many years since I was a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, but I recall very few occasions when I could make a decision, or the Secretary of State could do so, on his own. Inevitably, other Ministers have to be involved. That being the case, there can often be fierce disputes at Cabinet level; I think that the noble Baroness would agree that inevitably disputes arise between Ministers. They often do. They are finally resolved in favour of a solution that may or may not commend itself to this House; but they are resolved.
Because of that, it is quite wrong to present a situation whereby the Prime Minister had automatically to be involved in the dispute in question. Because we have had collective responsibility in the Cabinet for many, many years, the Prime Minister inevitably—although I should not use that word again—has had to be involved in every issue that comes before the Cabinet. The noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Redesdale, are wrong in supposing that the Prime Minister can stand back. He or she does not do that. It is wrong to imagine a situation in which the Prime Minister can abdicate responsibility. It does not happen like that.
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Lord May of Oxford: My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Committee on Climate Change and I hasten to add that I am not necessarily
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Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord May, has expressed a very important view. This is probably one of the most crucial amendments that we will look at on Report. So far, noble Lords have discussed it as if devolution did not exist. We keep doing that. We must remember that things have changed and that although we talk about cross-departmental decision-making, a number of the departments concerned have been devolved. Several of the departments which have had to agree to the measure are in Scotland, where the decisions will have to come through the First Minister, who with others will have to agree the target.
We will come to that issue in Amendment No. 233, when my noble friend the Duke of Montrose and I will make a suggestion about how such agreement might be arrived at. If the Prime Minister was the person who had to report to Parliament, many of these problems would be reduced, because he is the Prime Minister of Scotland. The remit of the Secretary of State for Defra does not run in Scotland, where there is a separate department. A confusion is being concocted in the Bill, which means that it simply will not work. The Government should listen hard to this; I do not know if this amendment is the solution, but there must be one. It seems to me that, on the face of it, if the Prime Minister was the person who put the ideas forward in the House of Commons, with the agreement of the Secretary of State for Scotland in Cabinet, Defra and so on, that would help the matter, at least in terms of presentation.
I hope that the Government will listen to this, but when I mentioned this problem in another context to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, his answer showed that the Government simply had not thought about it at all. He simply said, “That’s devolution for you”. That is not an answer. This is a real problem and the Government should think very hard about it. I support the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, I support the amendment for the reasons that I set out in some detail in Committee. I am not suggesting that my noble friend is insensitive but on this occasion I hope that he will be able to be more sensitive to the calls that have been made in the House. I want to concentrate on other amendments, as my noble friend knows.
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The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I supported this amendment in Committee, and it was also one of the issues to which the Joint Committee drew attention. It is important not only from the UK’s point of view but in relation to prime ministerial standing and backing of this issue. If the Prime Minister is to put all his weight behind this and discuss it in international fora, it will be far better if his name is on the vital bits of paper that go before Parliament.
I also support what my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour has just said. It is very important that we do not forget the other parts of the UK besides England. If you want to get Scotland on board on this matter, it is important to have the involvement not of the Secretary of State but of the Prime Minister.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I have some sympathy with what has been said. We have to look at how we can achieve a coherent government message and mandate running through the delivery of the Bill. Whether that implies writing the Prime Minister into this legislation in a rather, although not completely, novel way, I have yet to be utterly convinced. However, it is incumbent on the Government to come back to this House at some stage during the passage of the Bill to explain how, if the Prime Minister is not to be written in, we can have a coherent and mandatory cross-government position for the delivery of the Bill. If my noble friend, whom I think I saw entering the House half way through the last Question, needs an example, then the Bill and its objectives are entirely contrary to the commitment to aviation expansion, as was reflected in the answers to the House during the fourth Question. Therefore, we need some coherence here. This may not be the way to do it, although it is one way of doing it. However, I hope that the Minister will at least contemplate this matter and come back with his suggestion at a later stage.
Lord Tugendhat: My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend. If the Prime Minister is not responsible for this task, it is not at all clear that the Secretary of State for the Environment, or whatever the department will be called at the time, necessarily should be, quite apart from the very powerful points made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord May. It is obvious that climate change involves the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Potentially huge costs are involved in anything to do with climate change, and they concern the Secretary of State for Transport, or whatever that department will be called at the time, and various other departments as well. It is not clear that the Secretary of State at Defra is the natural leader; because of the financial implications, it could just as easily be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Therefore, the Government should seriously consider the point about the Prime Minister, not only because he is the ultimate spokesman for the Government and ultimately responsible for their policy but because this is not an issue that falls naturally into any one department. It crosses departments to a much greater degree than almost any other issue that is likely to come before Parliament.
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Lord Dearing: My Lords, I support the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that if the Government are not minded to accept the amendment, it is incumbent on them to come forward with proposals which would enable them collectively to take decisions. In my view, it is easy to set targets, but when delivering them involves very painful decisions that lie right across government, the chances of making progress through an individual Minister are minimal. I have not held ministerial office but I have sat at the side of many a Minister over many years and I know the realities. You cannot deliver other than with the Prime Minister’s support and some inter-departmental machinery. Therefore, I say to the House that the Bill is a dead duck in terms of delivery, as opposed to setting targets, unless there is something along the lines of the amendment or some very powerful alternative.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, in no way do I resile from the amendment moved by my noble friend or from the observations of my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour about devolution. In reference to my noble friend on the Front Bench, the relevant fact is that the Prime Minister is part of this amendment. On a technical issue, when the Minister responds will he confirm that the reason why we got rid of Ministers in departments and had Secretaries of State instead was to conduct the drafting of Bills so that Secretaries of State were totally interchangeable and any Secretary of State could exercise a Secretary of State’s responsibilities? In the same way, long ago, when we had capital punishment, the request for a royal pardon had to be delivered by the legal advisers of the person who had been convicted to a Secretary of State. During the Summer Recess there was always a duty Secretary of State in London who could receive such a request, as time would be important. That was at a time when there was a Secretary of State for Air and a Secretary of State for War who did not serve in the Cabinet.
Baroness Northover: My Lords, I point out that there is a precedent for this. It is in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said at an earlier stage that the Prime Minister did not have duties in this regard. The Act says:
“The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Interception of Communications Commissioner”—
under various subsections and so on. So the Prime Minister is not writing the report or taking the full resources of the commissioner into Downing Street to comply with that, but he is responsible for laying the report before Parliament. He has that role, so there is a precedent.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, I do not wish to disagree with my noble friend Lord Brooke, but I support the amendment. In earlier debates on the Bill we spoke about our anxiety that it has not attracted the great thrust of the public behind it, a public who realise how important it is in the current situation. That is an additional reason why the Prime Minister should be the specified person to take this forward. I accept the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord
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Lord Rooker: I have got to do my best. I want to disabuse noble Lords. I do not have the answer in front of me but when I used the phrase in Committee “accident of history” I was referring to the fact that the Prime Minister had a role in making certain appointments as a result of accidents of history. That was the point I was making. I did not go on to delineate the appointments, but I am reminded of that having read, like most who have just spoken, the Friends of the Earth brief. That was the context in which I was speaking.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brooke, is quite right in what he says. Until 2005, of course, there was still a Minister of Agriculture; there was no Secretary of State. I know that was a problem from 1997 to 1999 for certain jobs that Jack Cunningham did or could not do because of the terminology. Secretaries of State are now interchangeable and that is the reason for that drafting.
The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said that he had not held ministerial office but that he had sat at the side of Ministers. Every time he speaks I am reminded of the phrase in Gerald Kaufman’s book, How to be a Minister, published in 1982, when he was at the Department of Trade and Industry. Amid the Post Office issue, he would send for this character, Mr Dearing, who would arrive with all his bountiful advice which was first class. Nevertheless, I move on to the dodgy part of the debate, which is trying to answer this.
One issue that has been raised was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. I do not think that she was complaining about the fact that the media have not covered our debates, although that has been a common theme for one or two noble Lords. It is possible to take to an extreme the sentence in the briefing that noble Lords have received. It said:
“It is a fact of life that the actions of the Prime Minister are more likely to be covered by the media than the actions of a Secretary of State. These amendments are therefore likely to lead to a better informed public and so a stronger ‘court’”.
I am a mere Minister of State. It so happens that—as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said about names on paper—mine is the only name that will ever appear on the Bill. I was surprised about this a fortnight ago, simply because I had forgotten that when the Bill arrives in the other place it will not have the list of the great and the good—12 of them—on the back, which would normally be headed by the Prime Minister, because the Bill will be brought in from the Lords. Therefore the period before the Bill becomes an Act is the only time my name will be there. That shows that names on paper are worth nothing.
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Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am making a genuine point. What counts is the substance of the Bill and the operation of government.
I have obviously failed to get an issue across in Committee. Do not get me wrong; I am not knocking it. A lot of points have been raised to which there has been an inadequate response. On the point of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing—and, in some ways, the point of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat—we will probably have to look again at how the machinery of government deals with climate change legislation over, say, the next couple of decades; one cannot look as far ahead as 50 years. Because the Secretary of State is interchangeable and will come and go, the machinery of government is bound to change. Departments are bound to change, as they have done even in the past few months. There must be a degree of confidence for the public—and business, because of the decisions being made—that there is a system in Whitehall for dealing with this; a system other than putting “Prime Minister” in the Bill.
Tackling climate change will require actions by future Governments and future business. We must do that in a way which does not damage us. However, there are good reasons why it is not appropriate for the duties in the Bill to be placed on the Prime Minister. I will come to the precedents. I never claimed that there were no precedents at all. There were roles for the Prime Minister, and some mentioned here today and in the brief could be held not to be on the same scale as the Climate Change Bill and matters of national security which the Prime Minister deals with on an individual basis.
The issue of the Secretary of State is very important, because of what the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, said. The Interpretation Act 1978 makes it clear that “the Secretary of State” means one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State. That is the advantage for legislation in terms of the machinery of government. They can all act and, therefore, it may be the Secretary of State for Defra, but it could be other Secretaries of State. The Bill, as it is now, is agreed by the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Administration. So, on the argument raised with me about the devolved Administrations, they agree with the Bill as drafted. As far as I know, they have not come forward during the passage of the Bill with any argument to substantially change how this part of the Bill is drafted on the basis of discussions in your Lordships’ House.
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