---

Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, if Essex man dare to stand up against Essex girl—I admire the noble Baroness for overcoming her present difficulties—I am afraid that I am going to oppose this amendment. The real problem with local carbon budgets is that local authorities, which presumably would have to administer them, have no power to influence so much of what goes on in their own areas. The noble Baroness who proposed this amendment comes from a very urban area of Essex but I come from a rather more rural area. Not the least of the problems that would have to be included in local carbon budgets is that of what you do about agriculture. There is nothing we can do about this but agriculture is one of the highest carbon emitters in the country, so that is a difficulty. We have no control over our population’s motoring habits or the way people organise their lives, such as where they do their shopping. I have a lot of friends who go to do theirs 10 miles away, not because it is difficult—nowadays, it is very easy—but because it is cheaper for them to do so. There are so many factors that cross local authority boundaries, which mean that the local authorities would have no power to control what is actually going on in their districts. You could, of course, get around all those factors by raising a huge number of exceptions so that you would not consider this, that or the other factor. However, once that starts to be done it destroys the whole purpose of the exercise. While the principle of controlling emissions in all ways is good, it seems to me that the principle that you can begin to administer that locally is simply erroneous because the powers do not exist to make that possible. I am sorry to quarrel with my noble Essex friend, if I may call her that, but I am afraid that we have to face that brutal reality. I hope that we will not inflict this duty onto local authorities. They have enough difficulties with the problems that they already face. Adding this burden onto them, which they could not fulfil anyway, seems not to be a reasonable thing to do.