My Lords, I take a very different view from my noble friend Lord Deben. I thought that his last comments were quite inaccurate. He said that we will get jobs here because of the amendment but the wind farms that proliferate in Scotland do not bring any jobs here, as they are all made overseas. I have talked to the companies that say that they need this amendment in order to invest here. They are all worried about investment, but not because they are worried about whether this amendment will go through; they are worried about whether Britain will remain part of the EU or not. That is where they will invest. They are not worried about whether they will invest in a tiny little island on the north-west coast of Europe; they will invest in Europe, and if we are not part of Europe we can have as many amendments as your Lordships like, but the investment will not come here. I think that my noble friend Lord Deben was quite wrong and misleading to the House to stress that last point in the way that he did.
It was also confusing—as the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, was confusing—to talk about climate change as though it was something new. My ancestors sailed to Newfoundland and the new world long before Columbus got there. They had settlements in Greenland. Between that time and now the Tiber has frozen over,
and if the historians are correct, the Nile has frozen over. Climate change has happened. If one wants to talk generally about climate change, yes, we all agree that it is happening, has happened and will happen in the future. The specific argument is about what percentage of that climate change is related to the carbon emissions of the past 200 years or so, which is a different and much more specific argument.
Before I address Amendment 1, I will chide the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, who, sadly, is no longer in his place. It is very unfair to the House to put down a starred amendment on the first day of Report. It is a bad way to treat the House, and a bad way for the amendment to be treated. None of us is discussing it; none of us has been able to look at it and give it the attention it is due. Considering that the House reassembled at least three weeks ago, it is quite unnecessary to have a starred amendment for the first day of Report.
I turn specifically to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. I agree with him that shale gas is not a panacea, for two reasons. As I said in Committee and in earlier debates on energy in this House, the cost of extraction of shale gas will be considerably more than most people realise. In this country it will be very hard to be allowed to extract gas. There are all those who say, “We mustn’t burn coal and gas—but you can’t do anything that will make it better. If shale gas makes it better we’re going to block the roads and stop the development and research”. That will make it increasingly hard to try to develop shale gas to its potential—to what it could do, regardless of the costs of its investment.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, criticised the Government for putting nuclear energy into the hands of two foreign companies. Who is to blame for that? In the 1950s we were the world leaders in nuclear energy and had a huge advantage. We could have a number of small nuclear reactors all around the country, very low carbon—or, rather, with no carbon emissions at all—and this amendment would not be necessary. We have thrown away the lead we had in nuclear energy, which was a huge mistake. Even in 2003 the Labour White Paper, quite rightly condemned as a disaster by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, last Thursday, ruled out any option of nuclear. We have shot ourselves in the foot on one of the greatest resources we have, to decarbonise this world.
I disagree, therefore, with my noble friend Lord Deben on this amendment. What we are now talking about is whether the decarbonisation target comes in in 2014 or in 2016 because it will be part of the fifth carbon budget. That is now written into the legislation. What are the consequences if we go ahead by ourselves? Again, I disagree with my noble friend Lord Deben on this. It will affect Europe because there will be continued carbon leakage. There is no doubt, regarding investment, that if people and companies look at this country and see that the rules are tighter here than in the rest of Europe, they will move their resources and production elsewhere.
I think it was my noble friend Lord Ridley who mentioned the amount of leakage there has already been. It is important in Europe that we act as one and that we have the same targets. When Sub-Committee
D looked at energy and produced its report No Country is an Energy Island: Securing Investment for the EU’s Future, it was clear that one of the problems in Europe is that each country is doing its own thing. Here is a chance, on the question of energy, to get a more European approach to stop the carbon leakage.
That carbon leakage, on an international scale, is costing the EU dear. It is one of the great drawbacks to getting any growth back into Europe. Businesses in America are thriving. They are taking business that emigrated to the Far East back into the US because of the cheapness of shale gas. There are downsides in going ahead by ourselves. If there is carbon leakage, it is going to affect our international competitiveness. We need every bit of help we can get for our businesses.
When we looked, in Sub-Committee D, at the question of energy, it was quite clear that there is what is termed a trilemma. The trilemma is the green issues—how to decarbonise as quickly and as safely as possible— security of supply, and affordability. Getting that balance right is an almost impossible target, not just for this Government but for any Government.
The evidence to date proves to me that that scenario is out of kilter. There has been too much emphasis on the green issues, not enough on security of supply and affordability. That is another reason why I think we should wait for 2016. I do not see the justification for moving forward now as this can be done in a much more rational and less costly way in two years’ time.