My Lords, I suggest that there is much here for the Government to think about seriously. We need a policy that is clearly consistent in its detail as well as in its broad thrust, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, has rightly suggested that this is an area in which consistency is not readily obvious. We are looking to make clear to everyone the internal consistency that I am sure there is.
My noble friend rightly said that the key issue, as we have been arguing right the way through, is certainty for the future. Surely, if we are going to meet the obligations laid before us under the Climate Change Act, we need to make it possible for people to proceed along a sensible path. We have carbon budgets that take us all the way to 2027—that is where we are—yet we appear to have none of the underpinning activity
to ensure that, side by side with that, the energy industry is able to meet the requirements of those carbon budgets. However, Parliament has passed those carbon budgets; they are part of the law of the land, as part of a structure that Parliament decided upon. We ought to make the point in this Committee that Parliament decided that as Parliament. It was not the Government who decided on the Climate Change Act but Parliament. Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Scottish nationalists, Welsh nationalists, Irish Protestants and Labour Members together said, “This is a non-party issue. We as Parliament want this to happen”. I am sure that my noble friend will know that in the House of Commons there were but five votes against that Act, including the two tellers.
I am not by any means saying that the noble Viscount has exactly the right answer to this, but I say to my noble friend that we have to recognise that unless we do something in this area, as in the previous amendment, we stand challenged in defending the claim that we are keeping to the law of the land. That is the issue for this Committee. Our job is to ensure that we obey the law of the land, and the law is very clear here. It has targets and budgets up to 2027, and I do not see how you can meet those if at the same time you are continuing and creating energy sources that are manifestly not in line with that. I hope my noble friend will be able to say at least that he will take this away and look at it again. Any other answer puts this Committee into the real difficulty of having to remind the House of Lords that we have responsibilities in terms of our legal needs to meet the decisions that Parliament as a whole has already come to.