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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I would like to add my welcome to the Bill. It will have an enormous impact on the way in which we order our economy and how the Government work. I am not sure that many people have assimilated that yet. In this place, we are often accused of short-termism; perhaps we are considering the first Bill about long-termism, and that is a good thing. However, if our constituents experience floods and water lapping around their living rooms and we say that perhaps a wind farm is the solution, we will be hit by the sort of short-term requirements that all politicians face when their constituents suffer a crisis. The battle has therefore only just begun, because our long-term vision has yet to be sold to the public, who currently face other difficulties. In that sense, it is the worst time to talk about a long-term vision. I hope that we will vigorously insist that the Bill is given the means to reach fruition and that we do not hold back on budgets. Nick Stern has doubled his assessment of how much we need to spend to tackle climate change to 2 per cent. We need to examine the figures and ask all Departments to reconsider the way in which they order their budgets when tackling climate change.