Clause 12
Climate Change Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Gregory Barker (Shadow Minister, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 53, in clause 12, page 6, line 40, at end insert—
‘( ) Before determining each indicative annual range the Secretary of State must obtain, and take into account, the advice of the Committee on Climate Change.’.
Good morning, Mr. Cook. Clause 12 is important. Conservative Members in the other place did a splendid job in encouraging the Government to introduce indicative annual ranges. The inclusion of the ranges is a significant enhancement of the Bill. Friends of the Earth described the inclusion of the clause as
“one of the most important changes which the Government made to the Bill”,
because it adds political accountability. Members of the Committee will recall that when the Conservative party launched our climate change Bill in advance of the Queen’s Speech in 2007, the inclusion of annual targets was considered an essential part of the primary reason that any five-year carbon budget would stretch across more than one Parliament.
We rightly argued that we should not allow NIMTOism—the new acronym, meaning not in my term of office—to infect carbon budgets. The system is not sufficiently accountable, so a Government could sit through a full term without ever having to report to Parliament on their carbon reduction performance. It is conceivable that a future Government could then dump their failure on a successive Government, who would have to report on the budget in their first year in office, having had little time to do anything about meeting it.
We need no better example of why the annual ranges are necessary than the current Government’s performance on cutting emissions. Despite three manifesto commitments to reduce emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010, emissions have, in fact, increased since 1997, and the Government quietly dropped their 20 per cent. target to just more than 15 per cent. in 2006. That is what can happen without year-on-year accountability. The addition of indicative annual ranges under clause 12 is a significant enhancement of the Bill, and it is a testament to the sterling efforts of our colleagues from all parties in the other place.
Indeed, Lord Rooker spoke favourably of annual accountability when he said:
“annual transparency and accountability about progress towards meeting the budgets are crucial for all of us. Some indication of the Government’s expected trajectory for reductions over the budget period would help in providing them. It is important that there is no divide between any sides of the House on that.”
The Government further stated in the other place that
“setting out an indicative range for the net UK carbon account for each year of the budget period combined with greater clarity about the timescales of policies to take effect...will ensure that the Government of the day can be properly held to account for progress during each year of the budget period, not just at the end of the period.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2008; Vol. 699, c. 496-7.]
As we all agree on that substantive point, I hope that we can also agree that a range without definition is of little practical use to anyone.
For example, if a five-year budget period has a total budget of 500 million tonnes of carbon, it is hardly of any value to say that the indicative annual range will be between 1 million tonnes and 150 million tonnes per year, whereas it would be of real value if the indicative ranges were set out year by year along the lines of year 1, which must be between 115 and 125 million tonnes; year 2, which must be between 105 and 115 million tonnes; year 3, which must be between 95 and 105 million tonnes, and so on.
As the clause is worded, there is no obligation on the Secretary of State to provide such an instructive range. He or she could set the range so broadly as to be practically meaningless. That is why, in amendment No. 53, we are proposing that the Secretary of State seeks advice from the Committee on Climate Change before setting those annual ranges. The committee would approach the exercise with not only an expert but an apolitical and dispassionate eye. That should prevent any unnecessary politicisation of the annual range, which could otherwise be back-loaded, for example, so that much of the effort would fall into the final year of a budget, by which time the Government who had set the ranges might well be out of office.
I have further broad comments on the clause, but they relate to amendment No. 54.