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Climate Change Bill [HL]

This goes to the heart of one of the problems in taking a series of amendments in isolation from the others. Amendments have been tabled that propose that the target should be 80 per cent. This amendment says that these must be actual reductions in the UK without allowing for net trading to improve that. Another amendment proposes that there must be a defined limit to the amount of trading there can be. If you put all those together, and if that was the position that we wanted to advocate to every other country in the world to get support in international agreements, I have to tell the Committee that we would not get international agreement on any of those things. If you take one proposal in isolation, that is not too bad, but if you add up the thrust of the amendments from the Liberal Democrat side, there would be a very high reduction from the UK and you could have very little net trading at all. Then you would get a very tough regime, which would mean effectively that every country would adopt a stand-alone position. I suggest that is not a position that lends itself to getting international agreement.