Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment No. 47B. We support the government amendments to the Commons Amendment No.48, just as we supported the original Amendment No. 48 introduced on Report in the other place. Anyone who has heard my colleagues’ contributions on this Front Bench—in the daisy chain of Bills: Planning, Energy and Housing and Regeneration, the latter now an Act I believe—and my contributions on climate change will know that we have long recognised that the benefits of going low carbon extend far beyond stabilising our climate. Going low carbon will also mean saving people money by making their homes and businesses more energy efficient. The amendment will improve the sustainability of existing public buildings and ensure that new buildings procured by the civil estate are in the upper quartile of energy performance. We believe that energy efficiency improvements are one of the keys to short term domestic emissions reduction, as well as having positive carbon abatement costs, which will create new jobs and generate new wealth for our economy. We are also mindful of the fact that home energy prices are at record highs and that many of Britain’s poorest families will be facing a tough winter ahead. While we cannot expect the measures detailed in these amendments to help people this coming winter, in the longer term, we can acknowledge the difference that they will make in helping those suffering fuel poverty. I am happy to support these important amendments. I return to my Amendment No. 47B on the issue of carbon reporting for businesses. While we on the opposition Benches acknowledge the distance moved by the Government on this issue, we feel that still more could be done. If any noble Lords saw the opinion piece in the Financial Times on Friday 16 November 2008, from James Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation Europe and Asia, they will have seen that many leading businesses clearly agree with the Conservative Party that the Government are not leading sufficiently strongly on this issue. This House will recall that it was here that the original mandatory carbon reporting requirements were put into this Bill, only to be removed in a Public Bill Committee in another place. After some considerable pressure, the Government clearly saw the error of their ways and settled on the stipulation that the Secretary of State must make regulations for certain companies by 6 April 2012. This certainly is an improvement, but the message coming to us from many large and progressive businesses is that they are already accounting for their carbon emissions and do not see why they should have to wait another four years before they should report. To quote James Murdoch's Financial Times article: "““The UK government is afraid this will be a burden, but many of the best companies already do it. They are finding cost savings and opportunities””." Mr Murdoch further notes that: "““Saying we can tackle climate change without public company disclosure is akin to thinking obesity””—" we are back to the champagne again— "““can be solved if people do not weigh themselves””." For this reason we have tabled an amendment to Commons Amendment No. 47, which would give the Secretary of State powers to choose not only the classification of companies which are to be included but the date from which such inclusion would commence, in advance of 6 April 2012. We accept that there must be discretion for the Secretary of State to choose which category of company should be included and when. However this means that, for example, all FTSE 350 companies could be regulated to report by January 2010. We think it wise that the largest of businesses, which already have significant environmental reporting responsibilities, should not have to move like some sort of Second World War Atlantic convoy, at the pace of the slowest ship. Instead, the biggest companies should be regulated to break ahead of the pack and allow the smaller and less regulated companies to enter the process at a later date. In today's economic environment it is imprudent for any business with responsibilities to its shareholders to continue to ignore the commercial risk of not accounting for the low cost of its carbon pollution, a cost which we now agree is here to stay. I finish by again quoting the chief executive of News Corp Ltd, who last Friday said: "““The government should go further in the vital area of company emissions measurement and reporting. The Climate Change Bill, which is now in the final stages of its passage through Parliament, is an opportunity to commit to making reporting of carbon emissions mandatory by 2010 at the very latest. There is no time to lose””." These Benches entirely agree with those sentiments. There is a lot of pressure out there and that is why we call upon the Government to consider Amendment No. 47B as a valuable and necessary enhancement to the Bill.