Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, in Committee I spoke from the Back Benches to my amendment on this interesting issue. I said that I welcomed the fact that Defra was funding a study into it and that the RSA and another think tank, the IPPR, were also doing studies into it. There is a lot of interest in whether some form of personal carbon allowance would be one of the mechanisms that could help us in the fight against climate change. I fully recognise that there will be difficult issues to be addressed, which is exactly why in-depth studies are being undertaken, but I do not agree with the picture painted by the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer of Leeds, which he has clearly transmitted to the noble Baroness, that it would be a nightmare. He is shaking his head because he agrees with me, I think, that it would not be a nightmare world, but that there are substantial difficulties to overcome. I do not want to go over all the arguments again this afternoon that I made in Committee in favour of at least looking seriously at personal carbon allowances and saying to the Government that there are communities, particularly transition towns, which are committed as communities to lowering their carbon usage. There are places that would really welcome being able to trial this when the current studies are complete. I am sure that there would be difficulties, but it is possible that this would actually be welcomed not by the people that the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, envisages—perhaps most of us in your Lordships’ House fly more than we should so we would be very badly off under personal carbon allowances—but by the very people who he said would have difficulty in coming to grips with them. I do not think that they would have difficulty, because if such allowances were introduced, it would need to be in a very simple form. It would be a very bad move to go through legislation such as this, which is aimed at enabling things to happen, with a red pen, removing all the things that the Bill would make possible. The Government are right in not bringing forward their own amendment specifically to exclude personal carbon allowances, but I fully accept that far more studies need to be undertaken before any pilots such as those that I mentioned are undertaken. I ask the House not to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, and delete what may be a useful tool in the future.