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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I entirely agree—and, as so often, the right hon. Gentleman anticipates something I was going to say a little later. We should in this Bill impose a reasonable limiting cap on the buying of carbon credits abroad to meet UK emission targets. Indeed, that was precisely one of the caveats that led a United Nations human development report issued in the last year to say:"““If the rest of the developed world followed the pathway envisaged in the United Kingdom's Climate Change Bill, dangerous climate change would be inevitable.””" That is a very sobering reminder. This is a good Bill, but it is certainly not ambitious enough. That sober conclusion is given additional force by the fact that the Climate Change Bill is only a part, and probably a small part, of the UK's overall strategy to combat climate change, and the rest of the strategy needs to be reviewed to see whether it is fit for purpose. I thought that some of it was now being brought into line. I thought that the Government accepted the amendment in another place providing powers for the Government to introduce mandatory reporting standards for carbon emissions by business. The need for that is overwhelming, as is shown by the carbon disclosure survey, which found last year that fewer than half of the FTSE 350 companies provided quantitative emissions data. Support for mandatory carbon reporting now comes from the CBI, the Aldersgate Group and a wide range of leading blue-chip companies and leading investors. Following my hon. Friend the Minister's rather equivocal comments on this at the end of his speech, I ask the Government to look again at the matter, and to endorse clause 80 and not to seek in any way to water it down, but in time to extend it. Further improvement is urgently needed in other aspects of the armoury of instruments to combat climate change. The Government must wean themselves off their continuing obsession with fossil fuels. It sometimes seems to me that the left hand in DEFRA does not know what the right hand in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is doing—or at any rate cannot stop it. It is extraordinary to respond to soaring oil and gas prices by—as we have seen in the past few weeks—trying to increase the supply of oil from the North sea where the prospects, in a state of continuing decline, must be virtually nugatory, and by making an increased commitment to nuclear, which is highly controversial in this House, and which, whatever one thinks about it, is not relevant as, quite apart from the other problems, it takes 10 to 15 years to build a nuclear reactor, rather than by taking the obvious long-term sustainable route: the fastest feasible expansion of renewables in this country. It is almost incredible that although we probably have more renewable capacity in this country than in any other in Europe, we are at bottom of the league in electricity regeneration from renewables—just 4 per cent. compared with 10 to 25 per cent. in Germany, France and Italy and 30 to 50 per cent. in Scandinavia. We now have an EU mandatory target to provide 15 per cent. of all our energy from renewables by 2020, which is bound to mean that we have to produce at least 40 per cent. of it from electricity generation, yet it seems to me that DBERR spends its time not trying to meet the target but dreaming up ways to get round it in Brussels. What we need from the Government—from all the Government—is a precise strategy on exactly how they are going to meet that 15 per cent. target.