My Lords, in speaking to the amendments tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, I will not go over what I have previously said. I feel strongly that this aspect of the Bill has not had the degree of scrutiny that it deserves. Our Committee has gone through it in far greater detail than was achieved in the Commons, where only a cursory debate was had. With the number of noble Lords who have spoken, we clearly have expressed concern that the Government have not quite got it right in their current formulation.
One of the problems is that this is primary legislation with an equation, numbers and dates written into it. That makes it an incredibly inflexible tool that would need more primary legislation to change. I do not believe that the levels here were the product of a great deal of consideration, analysis and thought; I believe that they came out of a hurried meeting between two departments with different views, and to have them enshrined in primary legislation seems reckless. I encourage the Government to think carefully before pushing for these matters to stay unamended in primary legislation. Perhaps it would be better for them to be dealt with in regulation.
Given the wide-ranging powers that the Government have given themselves on everything else with very little detail, it is odd that this rather unhelpful set of prescriptions is in primary legislation. There are lots of things here to be taken back and thought about. I will speak more on the coal issue when we come to those amendments as there are considerable issues about unabated coal in the future, but there is definitely merit in taking this away.