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Climate Change Act 2008 (2020 Target, Credit Limit and Definitions) Order 2009

My Lords, it has been an absolutely splendid debate, and how grateful I am to the business managers for ensuring that these statutory instruments were debated in prime time rather than in the dinner break when the debate was originally scheduled. I sense that it was a little like a Second Reading debate, and I suspect that some of the arguments this afternoon were deployed during the passage of the Climate Change Act. I was a very late entrant—I dealt with Commons amendments—and I realise that I missed a great deal of splendid debate, a flavour of which we had this afternoon. These statutory instruments are important but they are consistent in the context of the Climate Change Act. I was intrigued by the intervention of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, who said that the decisions that the House is being asked to make by approving the orders and regulations are committing the Government and the country to action a long time ahead. He referred to Lloyd George’s Budget of 1911, and I was struck by the thought that one of the by-products of that Budget was the first stage of reform of your Lordships’ House. I wonder whether they thought then that we would still be debating matters to do with reform. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. If noble Lords do not accept the consensus, scientific position on climate change, what we are doing would seem to be unnecessary and expensive. If you accept the general consensus and believe that climate change is very likely and that unless we mitigate and adapt there will be catastrophic impacts on the world, the measures before us this afternoon are entirely reasonable. I suspect that we will not agree on that substantive point.