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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

My hon. Friend is on to a very good point. The Government have underperformed compared with what they said they would do. The comments by my hon. Friend and those on the Opposition Front Bench are apposite. The Government talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. They certainly do not produce the legislation. I fear, however, that my hon. Friend has been slightly deluded by the impact that he thinks that new clause 4 will have. The only burden or responsibility that the new clause places on the Secretary of State is that he should produce an energy measures report and, from time to time, produce a revised energy measures report. That leaves things totally to his discretion. The new clauses says that an"““‘energy measures report’ means a document containing information on local authority measures””." They are not Government measures; we always see that the Government do not want to bind themselves with the same constraints that they want to impose on everybody else. For example, the principles of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill do not extend to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, although it is probably one of the biggest functionaries imposing regulation. Similarly, this new clause does not impose any regulations on Government Departments, but it imposes them on local authorities. It does not just leave it to local authorities to exercise their discretion and use their own knowledge as to whether they think greenhouse gas emissions are a life-and-death issue for our planet, but second-guesses what they might say. It refers to measures that not only ““would”” but"““might in the opinion of the Secretary of State have any of the following effects””." Why should an elected local council have to agree with the Secretary of State’s opinion about something when it disagrees?