Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness mentioned this, but in Committee I moved this amendment. It was rather later than my bedtime and that of most noble Lords, so it is reasonable that we come back to this issue. I do not want to say very much because I agree with pretty much everything that the noble Baroness said. The fact of the matter is that the targets in the Bill are not going to be delivered by legislation, by Governments, by and large, or, essentially, by individuals acting on their own through their own ethical considerations. They are going to be delivered by the main economic movers; namely, private companies acting to meet those targets within the framework that the legislation and the Government set. For those companies to change the way in which they behave in relation to carbon and carbon equivalents, they need to ensure that they have proper, verifiable measures of what the carbon and carbon equivalent is and that they are built into their central motivation for their management, their staff and their researchers so that the success of the company relates to a large degree to the way in which it minimises its carbon and carbon equivalent emissions. For that to happen, we need a proper system of accounting, supported by guidance and the accounting profession to ensure not simply that carbon is effectively traded on a verifiable and equitable basis but also to change the way in which companies behave, research is rewarded and managers receive promotion to highlight the company’s image and its public relations. Without that dramatic behavioural change in private enterprise, we will not achieve the targets set in the Bill. It will also have a knock-on effect, and I declare my interest as chair of the National Consumer Council. Unless those consumers who are driven by ethical and environmental considerations can see that a company is making serious efforts to drive down its carbon emissions, doing so better than competitor companies, making its contribution and changing the way it does business, there will not be a demand effect on companies to redouble their efforts so that the full leverage of competition begins to operate in a way that means that these carbon targets are most likely to be met. This amendment is therefore absolutely necessary. As the noble Baroness said, this amendment does not prescribe exactly what the Government should do but inserts an enabling clause to deliver legislation that is already on the statute book. However, it is an essential lever that we believe ought to be in the Bill. If he is not prepared to accept the amendment today, I hope that the Minister will take it back to his colleagues and will come back during the passage of the Bill with something that does deliver the whole of Whitehall because—if I can be indiscreet for a moment as I no longer hold the office that the Minister holds—there are recalcitrant elements in Whitehall and the noble Baroness pretty accurately identified them. However, with the overall political commitment to the Bill that has been set by the Prime Minister and the Government, that opposition within Whitehall has to be overcome, and this is one way of overcoming it with the support of British industry.