Energy Bill [Lords]

It is totally simplistic to say that the Climate Change Act has led to that. It is a result of a whole series of decisions that the Government have had to make. As the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden will remember, Lord Stern’s report made the crucial point that the cost of not acting on climate change will be greater than the cost of acting. Just look at the floods that we have seen in the last couple of months! We are going to have a lot more of that—coming soon to a constituency near you! I am sorry to accuse the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) of sticking his head in the sand, but that is exactly what we are doing if we say that we do not need to act, that everything will be okay and that we should just carry on with business as usual. To be fair to the Secretary of State, who might not thank me for saying this, I do not think she believes that that is what we should do. She is on the right side of this argument. Of course we have to do it at the lowest cost we can, but let us not pretend that somehow this problem does not exist—we are seeing its effects all around the world, and if we do not act, we are going to have a lot more of them.