Climate Change Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Gregory Barker (Shadow Minister, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook, on this important and ground-breaking legislation. The Opposition will do their best to assist the Government in producing the best piece of legislation that we can and to make it fit for the immensely important task of combating global climate change.
The Minister is right that there has been a dialogue between the usual channels, which suggests that the proceedings will be brought to a close on 8 July. However, I sound a note of caution. We do not yet know how the debate will progress. Many important amendments are to be debated and, as the Chairman reminded us, they will be discussed line by line. There are some crucial points to discuss. Although there is broad support for the Bill, there are some sharp points of difference on individual clauses and amendments. The Government propose to delete or remove some of the substantial clauses that were added by Conservative peers in the House of Lords. Those additions made it a much better Bill. We do not want in any way to stifle or cut short debate of those important issues.
When the usual channels made their informal agreement over the time likely to be needed for debate, we had not seen the amendments to the Bill. As we now know that the Bill will not be ready to receive Royal Assent before the spill-over period, I wonder whether the artificial cut-off on 8 July is necessary. If hon. Members felt that we should continue because there are still important matters to consider, I for one would not favour an artificial date to guillotine proceedings.
I am mindful that we need to expedite matters in Committee, but that needs to be balanced with a proper respect for the views of all Committee members. We have a number of learned and expert Members on both sides of the Committee—members of the Environmental Audit Committee, and hon. Members with a long-term interest in the subject. We have a former Secretary of State who was a key figure in the early stages of the Kyoto agreement. I hesitate to agree to an arbitrary cut-off date of 8 July.