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Climate Change Bill [HL]

I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment for the reasons that I indicated when I spoke briefly in the previous discussion on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. It seems extremely important to spell out a strategy on how these matters are to be dealt with. I am pretty confident that the Minister, in response to the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will say, ““That is absolutely nothing to do with us in this House or with the Government; it is a matter that will be decided by the other place””. As for whether there will be a separate committee, I would have thought, given my experience of working, for example, on the European Union Committee’s sub-committee on foreign affairs and defence, that if a strategy paper were to be presented to Parliament, it would not be lost as a single item to be dealt with in a great batch. An appropriate House of Lords committee would almost certainly decide that it was exactly the kind of topic on which it should devote a day to cross-examining witnesses. Without going down the road of inventing parliamentary procedure, a matter which is not for us, my noble friend’s amendment would by its very nature produce exactly the kind of examination that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, wants.