Schedule 4
Climate Change Bill [Lords]
2:15 pm
Phil Woolas (Minister of State (Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Oldham East and Saddleworth, Labour)
The schedule is designed to facilitate the carbon reduction commitment and applies to that. The difficulty is that this is legislation for a long time, so the hon. Lady is right to ask the question. We envisage that the new powers will support the introduction of the CRC, a cap-and-trace scheme, as I said, that will apply to large non-energy-intensive organisations in the public and private sectors. As I think I mentioned before, the powers may also be used to introduce a household energy supplier obligation to succeed the carbon emissions reduction target scheme, which ends in 2011. It is difficult, if not impossible, to specify at this stage how the powers may be used beyond that, as their purpose is to maintain flexibility in supporting activities that will enable us to meet the targets set out in the Bill.
The Bill sets out the framework for 2050, so we take the view that it is important that the powers to introduce further trading schemes exist, even if at this point it is not known how exactly they may be applied in the future. I hope that the procedural points that I made in answer to the hon. Lady’s question on the previous clause also apply here. In layperson’s terms, we do not know yet.