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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I once had a PhD student who did her thesis on small island states, but I do not have time to go into the full issue that the Minister raises. However, it is a different point about the overall starting point for reductions, not the share. The hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) was right to say that if the Government have accepted contraction and convergence, in the 60 per cent. figure, they must also accept it for any other figure that comes along. The Government have already accepted the principle and cannot go back on it. The second point is the connection between the 2° C figure and the 80 per cent. target. There is a logical connection between the two. If the Government accept —as a matter of policy rather than for legislative purposes—the 2° C target, they must also accept a target of 80 per cent. reduction or greater, because the probability is that we will not be able to hold world average temperature to a 2° C increase unless the reduction that is attributable to us under contraction and convergence is something like 80 per cent. The two issues are connected. Once the Government have accepted the 2° C figure as a matter of policy, they should accept the 80 per cent. figure, too. As hon. Members have said, the science has moved on. Many hon. Members will have seen the letter from another of my constituents, Sir Tom Blundell, which makes it absolutely clear what we are talking about and what action we should take. It is also true that there have been eight years of rising emissions between the RCEP report in 2000 and now. We have to make up for those eight years, as the emissions will be in the atmosphere for another century. Let me refer to another part of the Bill that has not been referred to much, although the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) mentioned it in part. There has been a change in the reporting provisions in the Bill, so the question of annual targets is rather different from what it was when we first discussed it. There is a five-year reporting period with an action plan, and a one-yearly indicative target reporting system whereby the committee makes a report and the Government respond to it. That is much better than when the Bill started, but it still needs to be strengthened. There needs to be some suggestion of an action plan that is possibly produced yearly but not necessarily each year. I would give the power to the committee to suggest to the Government that if they are so far off target for a particular year, they might consider bringing forward the date at which the action plan obligation comes into force. Another large issue is the question of the emissions for international aviation. Some 90 per cent. of the emissions from aviation in this country are caused by international aviation, while a very small proportion are caused by domestic aviation, which is included in the Bill. I point out to the Government that throughout the debate, from the consideration in the Joint Committee until now, the Government have said that it is too difficult to distinguish between the two, and there has been disagreement between the Department for Transport and DEFRA about how to do it. However, that cannot be the case, because the Government are already doing it: they answer parliamentary questions that ask them to distinguish between domestic and international emissions. It seems to me that the best thing for the Government to do would be to put the obligation in place now so that when they are required to go along that path in 2011-12 by the EU ETS, they will have to make a far smaller adjustment to their position than they would if they did nothing now and carried out the whole adjustment then. I have only one point to make on the international credits debate. A number of points have been made by hon. Members on both sides of the argument, but my view is still that the big advantage that is alleged to flow from international trade is that it means that the cheapest options can be taken first. No one is told what options have to be taken over the whole period, because in the end they all have to be taken. In the end, states such as Britain are allowed to take cheaper options from abroad early on. That does not mean that they will not have to take expensive options later. Usually, it is quite a good thing to do it that way, but it is not always. In this particular case, if we take ourselves down the line of being a high-carbon economy and allow ourselves to take cheap options from other countries, we will be stuck in that economy. When the time came to take the expensive options, they would be even more expensive. The final improvement to the Bill to which I want to refer is clause 80. I think that I am the only Member who took part in both the Standing Committee that considered the Companies Act 2006 and the Joint Committee on this Bill. I will not go through the various struggles about the operating and financial reviews and the attempt to get the Government back to the position from which they started. It seems essential that if we are to create a market for ethical investment and consumption, we should have the strongest possible reporting requirements on companies. That dimension has not yet been mentioned. It is a way in which individuals can take part in the fight against climate change in their own lives, by making choices in the market. In the end, it is for all of us—both politicians and individuals—to play our part, and that is how it can be done.