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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I will not support the Bill this evening. I have fundamental disagreements with parts of it. It requires the Government, and particularly their successors, to embark on a drastic restructuring of the British economy. No one knows the costs of that—certainly, the Government do not, and they do not have even the sketchiest idea how the Bill will be implemented. There is an air of unreality about a great deal of what I have heard this evening. I doubt whether most of it will happen. The Bill combines some of the characteristics of both the poll tax and the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, except on a much grander scale. Either it will be implemented, in which case, like the poll tax, it could be as economically unworkable as it would be politically suicidal, or it will not, in which case, like the Dangerous Dogs Act, it will turn out to be yet another exercise in gesture politics. The Bill rests on science, economics and the efficacy of the measures.