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Climate Change: Copenhagen Conference

My Lords, it is difficult to engage with the Minister, since his answers to previous questions have made clear that he is not living in the real world at all, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to some extent pointed out. Nevertheless, does the Minister recall that last year I pointed out that his own department put the cost of the Climate Change Act to the British economy at anything up to £18 billion a year, year in, year out, and that there would be no conceivable benefit unless there was a global agreement of the same kind? Therefore, I asked him a year ago whether he would undertake, if there was no such agreement at Copenhagen, to repeal the Act, or at least to put it into suspense. He replied that the question did not arise because he was confident that there would be a wholly satisfactory agreement at Copenhagen. Since the Minister’s confidence, like everything else that he has said, has been proved to be wholly misplaced, will he now undertake—unlike the European Union, which has made this conditional—to put this wholly unconditional, hugely damaging and hugely costly burden on an economy which is not in the most robust condition anyway into suspense as a result of the total failure of Copenhagen to achieve what he was confident it would achieve? Clearly, no useful purpose can be served by carrying on with this at present.