Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I also support the amendment. It is true that there have been moral homilies to companies to report and, under the Companies Act, some requirement to report for some time, but work done jointly between the Environment Agency and some City institutions shows that reporting is very inconsistent, very difficult to track between companies and very difficult to track over time. Recent research during the past three years has shown that you sometimes need to be a bit of a detective to find company reporting on environmental parameters generally and on climate change and carbon emissions in particular. Some of them tuck it away in corporate social responsibility reports separate from their annual reports and read, one assumes, only by sad human beings such as me and, perhaps the Minister. Others cite it in their annual reports but in ways that vary from year to year, so that one cannot even track the progress of the same company on a consistent basis year on year. The Companies Act talked about the responsibility being laid on companies for reporting according to their degree of risk and the assessment that the company would make about what were the significant risks. During the passage of the Bill, we have heard just how significant climate change is as a risk not only to companies but to us as a country, to our economy, to social considerations and, indeed, to the whole globe. It is instructive that most of the work that the Environment Agency has done on company reporting has been done jointly with the insurance industry and with the investment management community within the City, which is very interested in being able to track what it now realises is a key risk that will influence how it feels about insuring companies and advising on investment in companies. There is a big community out there, all coming at this from different angles, which would like consistent, comparable, clear reporting. It would be useful if that helped us to avoid too many fights in future about the basis on which we are going to keep the books on carbon emissions. This is a bit of a diversion, but I cannot resist it. I was tickled by the search of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, of the BERR website. If we are into BERR-bashing, I must confess that when BERR recently published its statement of purpose and objectives, I put a quick word search into it looking for the word ““environment””. It came up three times and I thought, ““Yippee! This is really good: BERR saying ‘environment’ three times””. Alas, on each of the three occasions, it was talking about the business environment and there was no other mention of environmental issues. Of course, I could not possibly comment in terms of the amendment on whether that is a reason. This is a very apt amendment because it is proportionate. It makes the point that the requirements to report must not be too onerous; they must reflect the size and impact of the business. It is not a one-size-fits-all amendment; it is therefore worthy of support.