Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, we on these Benches think that the amendment is not as good as it could be. We should be more plain speaking and include aviation and shipping, but we are beyond that debate now. It is important that we include in the Bill international movements of people and freight, however that is described or defined, and that this has to happen within a timescale. We need to make sure that there is a duty on the Secretary of State to introduce whatever system is decided upon rather than the matter being left open-ended until some point in the future. When I first read the amendment, I thought it contained more than the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, described. I thought it was far more revolutionary and contained something I could welcome even more: that within the UK carbon footprint we would include the carbon footprint of all imports and take off everything that we export. In that way, we would have a carbon footprint that related to UK consumption or gross national income. That would be a very advanced concept but it would get around the problems of outsourcing. The United Kingdom and much of Europe have met their Kyoto targets so far purely by delegating manufacturing to China and other parts of the Far East. The amendment is not aimed at that. I understand what the noble Lord is trying to get at with the amendment and it is better than the Bill as it stands. There are potential issues around it but, if it was passed, we could perhaps resolve them in the future.