Mr.
Woolas: I thank the hon. Lady, who was reporting the
findings of the Select Committee, some of which go beyond clause 33. If
I may, Mr. Cook, I will respond accordingly, in the spirit
of the Select
Committee.
The
Chairman: If it is
pertinent.
Mr.
Woolas: Thank you, Mr.
Cook. As
the committee is a NDPB, the rules governing it are covered by those
governing NDPBs. That is why schedule 1, which relates to some of the
administrative matters pertaining to the committee, is not as
comprehensive as it might be. The committee draws its accountability
rules from NDPBs.
I refer to
the Government’s response to the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs Committee in the Command Paper published last October,
“Taking Forward the UK Climate Change Bill: The Government
Response to Pre-Legislative Scrutiny and Public Consultation”.
That is why the relationship between the committee, its advice and the
Government is as it was laid out in our debate on clauses 1 and 2. It
is advice that can be rejected, and that is how an NDPB operates. The
advice is public. The transparency that the Committee also recommended
is important in meeting some of its objections.
Lord Turner
appeared before the Select Committee in March. He
stated: “It
is the role of our Committee certainly to consider the range of
policies which are in place and the effectiveness of those policies
because without that we cannot recommend what is a credible budget.
There is no point in us simply saying we think the budget by 2020
should be X,Y and Z without being able to tell a story of a credible
path from here to
there.” I
hope that
helps. On
resources, I am certainly not the most experienced Minister, but I am
experienced enough to know that whatever is granted is never enough.
Please do not quote that out of context. However, Lord Turner, who
is the chairman of the Climate Change Committee, told the EFRA Committee
that he thought that the resources were adequate for the job in hand.
Of course, that will have to be
reviewed. The
size of the secretariat is important. Again, Lord Turner confirmed when
he gave evidence to the Select Committee in March that he was satisfied
with the arrangements. However, I am mindful that the size and shape of
the secretariat will need to be regularly reviewed as the work of the
committee
progresses. Further
to what I described as a beautiful tapestry, I draw the attention of
the Committee to the work of the UK climate impact programme, which
will have a significant bearing on the debate. If it creates surprises
and projections that cause us to readdress the science, I may need to
review the resources that are available to the committee. That is far
outside the remit of clause 33, but it might be
helpful. I
cannot go into detail on all the questions, but I am grateful to the
hon. Member for Vale of York for reporting for the Select Committee. We
have representation on the Public Bill Committee from both the main
Select Committees. That was a wise decision on the part of my hon.
Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden. I point out that DEFRA is
currently subject to 28 different Select Committee
inquiries. Question
put and agreed to.
Clause
33 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
34Advice
in connection with carbon
budgets
Joan
Ruddock: I beg to move amendment No. 12, in clause 34,
page 18, line 6, leave out subsection
(5).
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following:
Government
amendment No.
19 Government
amendment No.
20 Government
new clause 3—Advice of Committee on Climate Change on impact
report.
Joan
Ruddock: As has been noted, we believe an adaptation
sub-committee of the Climate Change Committee would have a useful role,
but we think that it should be a more technical one in line with the
rest of the work of the
committee. The
committee’s role on adaptation should be consistent with its
work on mitigation; that is, it should involve technical advice and
analysis, and scrutiny of progress. That means that it should provide
technical advice to the Government and the devolved Administrations on
the risk assessment, and progress reports to Parliament about the
Government’s adaptation
programme. The
other place agreed that the committee should not be a policy-making
body. Many sensitive decisions will have to be taken in order for us to
reduce our emissions and adapt to climate change. They properly should
be taken by elected representatives in Parliament and in the
Government. The committee will have a vital role in
providing impartial advice and scrutiny, but we do not think it
appropriate for an unelected body to make, or be seen to be making,
policies. The individual decisions that will directly affect families,
communities and businesses should be made by Parliament and the
Government. With
that in mind, Government amendments Nos. 12, 19 and 20
delete the current roles of the sub-committee, and Government new
clause 3 gives new functions to the main committee. The new clause sets
out the first new function that we are giving to the committee, which
is to give advice on the risk assessment required in clause 55. Expert
input to the risk assessment will help to strengthen the evidence base
that will underpin the Government’s adaptation programme.
Independent review will add to the transparency of the assessment and,
therefore, the basis upon which the programme is
built. The
committee’s role will be to provide expert advice on the
preparation of the risk assessment to ensure that it is as robust as
possible. That is wholly in line with the committee’s wider
role, which is highly technocratic and focused on specialist advice on
carbon budgets. With the committee advising on the risk assessment, we
do not see the need for specific provision to be made giving the
Environmental Audit Committee an additional role in this area. For that
reason, we tabled Government amendment No. 20, which would remove the
duty currently in the Bill requiring the Government to invite the EAC
to review the risk assessment. The EAC will still be free to look at
the adaptation work, or any other area of work, should it chose to do
so. Indeed, it has already considered adaptation as part of its work on
climate change and local and regional
government. For
the Government to ask a parliamentary Committee to consider a
particular piece of work would be an anomaly in the Bill because it
could be seen to interfere with the EAC’s independence. We
expect that the advice of the Committee on Climate Change, together
with the likelihood of further parliamentary scrutiny, will ensure that
the risk assessment is robust and transparent. We also hope that
adaptation will be considered—I am sure it will be—by a
wider range of parliamentary Committees, because clearly it is not
simply an environmental issue, but one that will cut across all aspects
of the economy and society. If we receive advice, we will be sure to
make use of it, which is why we tabled Government amendment No. 19,
which ensures that the Government must consider the advice of the
Committee on Climate Change before laying the national climate change
risk assessment before Parliament.
In
conclusion, the advice on the risk assessment from the adaptation
sub-committee will add value to the Government’s adaptation work
and complement the committee’s wider work. It would be
inappropriate for the Government to have to invite a parliamentary
Committee to review its work, as the decision on whether to review
should be a matter for that Committee
itself.
Gregory
Barker: This is a complex and intertwined group of
amendments, and it would be beneficial to seek clarification from the
Minister on a few points. As the Bill stands, the Committee on Climate
Change has reporting duties to Parliament on the Government’s
progress on adaptation and mitigation. However, the Government’s
amendments will remove the committee’s reporting duties on
progress towards adaptation, which means that there would be no
requirement on the
adaptation sub-committee to scrutinise Government performance and to
report to Parliament on its findings. If I have interpreted the
proposal correctly, I find it worrying, and would appreciate assurances
from the Minister that the role of the independent committee is not
being watered
down. Under
the amendments, the adaptation sub-committee will have a far more
nebulous role in adaptation scrutiny reporting, particularly when
compared with the clear scrutiny functions of the Committee on Climate
Change itself on
mitigation.
Joan
Ruddock: We will come on to the progress reporting
function in the next group of amendments, which is why I did not deal
with that
before.
Gregory
Barker: I accept the Minister’s point, so I shall
withhold further comments on that until we get to later amendments.
Will she explain why the Government have proposed what seems to be a
more muted role for the adaptation sub-committee, and how she envisages
the sub-committee adding value to the Government’s work, if it
does not have any powers or obligations on formal scrutiny and
reporting on the progress to the Government?
I was not
fully persuaded by the Minister’s explanation why, under
amendment No. 20, the Government want to remove the duty on the
Secretary of State to invite the House of Commons Environmental Audit
Committee to review every report on adaptation that is laid before
Parliament. I am sure the Committee will be interested in the views of
the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North before reaching a decision
about that. I hope she will give us the benefit of her thoughts and
those of her fellow Committee
members. 10.15
am
Joan
Walley: I have been tempted to intervene on the hon.
Gentleman, who is well versed in the work of the EAC. Select Committees
play an important role, and I should like him to comment on what the
Minister has said, because it put the work of Select Committees in a
wider context. The purpose of the EAC is to look at all Government
policies across the piece, but I am also aware that other Select
Committees have an interest in such matters and therefore consider that
there is much worth in the Government’s
amendments.
Gregory
Barker: That was a helpful intervention, and many people
who might have been worried by the wording of the amendments will take
comfort from it. The hon. Lady is known for her significant input into
the EAC and the valuable work that she and the Committee do. If she is
comfortable with the amendments, it makes me much more comfortable,
too. They are slightly complex, but not controversial, so I accept the
Minister’s reassurances about
them.
Martin
Horwood: I am not sure whether I am quite so reassured as
the hon. Gentleman, so I shall seek a little more
reassurance. The
group of amendments is slightly odd. It covers two different sections
of the Bill. Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 and new clause 3 relate to
impact and risk assessment, but only amendment No. 12 deals
specifically
with the adaptation sub-committee’s remit to provide expert
advice and, as I understand it, that is being deleted and not
reinserted into the Bill under any other
clause. When
referring to adaptation, we are talking not about hypothetical targets
in decades to come that are conveniently distant from the current
political debate, but about the action that is required now. I take the
Minister’s point that the adaptation sub-committee should not be
a policy-making body in the sense that it should take powers away from
Ministers or Parliament, but nothing in the clause suggests that. The
reference is to expert advice. That could be relevant to the flood risk
management budget and whether, in technical terms, the amount being
spent by the Government is sufficient to keep ahead of the impacts of
flood risk.
The committee
could cover health and whether the NHS has the right technical planning
in place to cope with new diseases that arise as a result of climate
change and that did not previously reach people in this country and
latitudes, or whether there is enough technical planning for heat waves
of the sort that hit the continent only a few years ago. It could
examine transport infrastructure and whether it can cope with not only
the right sort of snow, but the right flood water, the right heat and
the other possible impacts. They would be very technical
matters. With
such a report, the temptation for the relevant
Departments—which, again, will not be the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but the Department for Transport,
the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department
of Health—to be derailed into short-term political
considerations will be huge. Subsection (5), which amendment No. 12
would delete, is an important counterweight to that short-termism. It
will provide independent, expert advice based on scientific and
technical knowledge—not policy, as the Minister
suggested—and it is bizarre that the Government accept the need
for an adaptation sub-committee, yet run scared from seeking its
full-blooded
advice. Amendment
No. 20 would remove the provision in respect of the EAC. The EAC
considered the Bill and was quite happy to have the duty laid upon it,
so I do not see the logic for removing it. We can probably assume that
the EAC or its successor Committee would, almost automatically, want to
scrutinise such reports and measures, but proactively to take this
provision out of the Bill sends a rather strange signal that could be
misinterpreted.
Joan
Walley: As a member of the EAC, does the hon. Gentleman
agree with me that, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, the Committee
has that role in any case by virtue of its status in
Parliament?
Martin
Horwood: I accept what the hon. Lady says, but that is a
voluntary responsibility to be interpreted by the Committee. The
provision would be a more stringent condition that might, in the end,
have the same effect—I accept that—but I am more
concerned about the signal that its removal would send; it might be
interpreted wrongly as the Government’s seeking to wriggle out
of the glare of proper scrutiny. I do not see the need for it to be
removed in that way.
Joan
Ruddock: The comments made by the hon. Members for Bexhill
and Battle and for Cheltenham show that there is a degree of confusion.
It is clear that the Government are certainly not trying to avoid
scrutiny, because we have tabled new clause 3 this morning, which
says: “It
is the duty of the Committee on Climate Change to advise the Secretary
of State on the preparation of each of the Secretary of State’s
reports under section
55.” Of
course, that relates to the impact assessment. So it is clear that we
are giving new duties to the Climate Change Committee—along with
the work being done by the sub-committee—which will report to
the Government in advance of their presenting their risk assessments.
It is clear we are giving the Committee that role to give specific
technical advice, which it is experienced in preparing, in advance of
the Government’s producing their risk assessment
report.
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