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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

The Prime Minister makes an important point—[Laughter.] I am sure that that Freudian slip has filled some hon. Members with great joy and others with great horror—[Interruption.] I see that it would be joy on the other side of the House. Given the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering about the fact that the Government are failing to stay on track to hit their targets, the Prime Minister might face the choice of either bringing a full and frank report before the House that made it clear that the Government had made little progress on reaching their targets—and, in fact, had hit fewer targets on the reduction of greenhouse gases than the Government led by Sir John Major—or producing a long and verbose report that skirted around the issues and made the steps that the Government had taken unclear. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, the Bill provides for a debate on the report. I welcome that, because it is always good to give the House the opportunity to debate such important issues. As he said, however, a vote after the debate would be unlikely because the Government would not want to put their policy on climate change to a challenge. Little concrete progress towards meeting targets would be made merely by bringing a report before the House.