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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

That would be extremely demanding, but the implications of the Government's impact assessment both for aviation and shipping and for industries more generally is that we must find more effective ways of reducing costs and carbon utilisation than they themselves think are available or would result from the measures in the Bill. Either that, or we must adopt the route proposed by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) and devote more effort to adaptation to climate change rather than mitigation, which would remove the burden—the almost impossible task—of bringing aviation and shipping into the scheme. It would also mean that, if global warming continues but turns out not to be predominantly the result of human activity, we would still be able to help the people in poor countries who would suffer from it, whereas we would not help them if we relied only on mitigation efforts. The implications of the clauses before us are extremely serious. We are potentially asking our constituents to bear a burden of £10,000 for every household, should we increase it. We are potentially producing benefits that may be only half the costs that we are incurring. We have been using a method to assess future costs and benefits that has been surreptitiously abandoned by the Government, but they have told us nothing about it. These issues ought to be discussed more fully before the Bill becomes law, and it is a sad day when Parliament refuses to face up to these hard facts.