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Scotland Act 1998 (Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2008

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the application of the order but I found it a little hard to follow. Certainly what he has said has helped me, but it was slightly complicated. The measure seems to focus largely on energy efficiency but to come under the integrated pollution prevention and control directive. I notice, too, that the order’s application is directed at a community obligation—presumably it is the EU community—and that it states that the powers may be exercised concurrently by a Minister of the Crown. Again, if these activities involve Community obligations which apply at UK level and the Scottish Administration are found not to be fulfilling all the requirements, does the wording mean that if a Minister of the Crown wished to exercise powers he would have to go back to the Scottish Executive for something similar to a Sewel motion—the noble Lord, Lord Sewel is in his place—before proceeding? It is a question of how much power is devolved under this order and what the attitude of the Scottish Executive will be. Can the Minister give a further indication of where the measures are likely to apply? He said this was to do with emissions from factory chimneys and so on. Is that the only area in which the measures would apply? Are emissions from factory chimneys concerned with energy efficiency? I would have thought that pollution measures were less concerned with worries about energy and more to do with the pollutants escaping through chimneys. If the measure is to do with achieving energy efficiency, what will the effect be on the obligations put on energy supply companies and local authorities to finance energy efficiency measures in the domestic market? Will this mean that different criteria will be set up? Will this create more complications and separate obligations for companies operating north and south of the border? Is the aim of the order to assist the effectiveness of the Scottish Administration in producing adequate compliance with the Climate Change Bill even though the Scottish Executive have full powers over anything to do with that? Again, the UK is tied under an EU obligation and obviously we should do anything that can be done to assist the Scottish Executive to fulfil their part of it, even though they are solely responsible for how much they wish to fulfil. Is there any urgency in this measure and, if so, what? If the order is to do with energy efficiency, it seems a little strange to put this through now, when we are in the early stages of the Energy Bill in this House. Even though at present there is not much in the Bill that the order might affect, there is a strong lobby asking for the Energy Bill to include a feed-in tariff for independent generators. On a domestic scale, this could be seen as a form of energy efficiency. Perhaps the measure is solely directed at factory-level emissions, but it would be helpful to have a little more clarification.