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Climate Change Bill [HL]

I was struck by the Minister’s response because it seemed to be a very good argument for not having any budgets at all. If the Government have control of less than 50 per cent of the carbon account, what will they do at the end of year 4¾? The Secretary of State will have to put up the price of oil or whatever, and it will not matter whether it is in year 4, year 3 or year 1. What came out of the discussion was that there must be some form of stepping stone so that we can see how the trend is going. There is no doubt that the evidence that we had in the committee was strongly in favour of that. Can the Minister confirm that the emissions results currently published by the Government already take account of hot and cold years so that it is possible to make a comparison? Given the trend and provided that there is transparency in all the figures, the variation between a warm year and a cool year is not so relevant now.