My Lords, I have to inform the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments has received notification from the Ministry of Justice informing him that Lord Black of Crossharbour has been convicted of four offences at the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, and that the custodial sentence imposed by the court took effect yesterday.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

What guidance is given regarding safety advice provided in lifts, in particular as to their capacity in terms of weight and number of people carried?

My Lords, lifts installed in the UK are required to have an easily visible plate in the car clearly showing the safe operating load of the lift in kilograms and the maximum number of passengers that may be carried.

My Lord, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Given that half of the House of Lords’ bridge team, a rather sedentary number, was caught in the Lord Speaker’s lift for some 25 minutes before Christmas—I thank Black Rod for his solicitude on that matter—and given that the average weight of men and women has risen by some 10 per cent over the past 20 years, is my noble friend satisfied that the advice given in lifts is accurate and easily digested by those who use them? Is he concerned, as I am, that the data gathered by the fire and rescue services do not extend to the reasons why lifts break down, sometimes because they are overloaded?

My Lords, there is a robust regime covering the installation, operation, maintenance and inspection of lifts and regulations cover the installation of lifts. The regulations state that each car must bear an easily visible plate clearly showing the rated load in kilograms. The standards assume that each passenger has a mass of 75 kg and provide tables for working out the rated load based on floor area. The concept is that the lift can just accommodate the number of people of standard size that it is designed for. It should only be possible for it to be used by fewer people of larger stature. I am sorry to hear of the discomfiture of my noble friend and the bridge team, but there should be arrangements in place under the maintenance and inspection regime for failures to be logged and reported and for the HSE to be involved if appropriate.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that I am surprised by his mean figure of 75 kg? The National Diet and Nutrition Survey: adults aged 19-64 years, which was published in 2004, gave the average weight of a man as 87 kg and of a woman as 69 kg. Is he aware that when I surveyed five lifts in your Lordships’ House this morning, I discovered that when the maximum recommended number was made up of male Peers, not one of the lifts would fit into the weight standards that the Minister has enumerated? What does he intend to do across the country, because although I surveyed lifts in your Lordships’ House this problem exists across the country?

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his diligence in reviewing the lifts around the House. I have slightly different figures for average weights. According to the Department of Health, in 2006 the average male weighed 83.6 kg and the average female 69.9 kg. Therefore the average for adults was 76.7 kg, which is not that far away from 75 kg, which has been around for a long while. The constraint on this is not so much the assumed average of 75 kg, but the floor area provided within a lift so that if people are heavier or stouter, it should accommodate fewer people. The standard has been around for a long time and has not yet been reviewed. It applies not only to lifts but to other machinery. The floor area is the key safeguard, but there are also provisions so that if lifts are overloaded there should be mechanisms to prevent catastrophe by halting their journeys.

My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that, sometimes, some of the advice given by the lady’s voice in some of your Lordships’ lifts is surprising? A few weeks ago, I took the lift just beyond the Bishops’ Robing Room. I pressed the button, and the voice said, in a rather intimidating way, “This lift is overloaded”. I was the only one in it. I had not realised that I had gained so excessively in weight. Could the noble Lord very kindly advise me what to do about it?

Well, my Lords, I suppose that I would advise the noble Lord to have some travelling companions to see what happens next time around. I stress, although it is a matter for the House authorities and not the Government, that the lifts in your Lordships' House are routinely inspected and that there have been very few reports of failures. Clearly, if what the noble Lord describes is happening routinely, that should be looked into and reported to the House authorities.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is no such thing as an average weight and that we will never find one? If we look for a dozen figures among our House, we will go even further away from it. Weight and number of people is confusing, so will the Government look at some other random way of telling us when there are too many of us in there?

My Lords, I disagree with the concept that there is no such thing as an average weight, because it must arithmetically be capable of being computed. This standard derives from a European standard—although I hesitate to mention that because it might just engender some further questioning. It has been around for a long time and, as a practical matter, does not generally seem to be a cause of great confusion or problem.

My Lords, does my noble friend recognise that if a party of Ukrainian weightlifters was visiting the House of Lords for the purposes of discussing sports policy, it might not conform to the average of 75 kg that he mentioned?

My Lords, I accept that, but the point is that it is very unlikely, unless they were extremely friendly, that they would all be able to get into the lift together. That is the purpose of having restrictions on the floor area.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether they plan to introduce a code of conduct for local government officers.

My Lords, the Government are committed to considering the introduction of a statutory model code of conduct for local government employees. In taking that forward, we wish to be able to take into account any lessons learnt from the first year’s operation of the revised model code for local councillors, which came into effect in May 2007.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. Does she accept that the introduction of directly elected mayors has fundamentally altered the role of council officers, who are now answerable to a single individual and not to the council as a whole? Does she agree that the lessons that are now emerging from London suggest that a code of conduct for officers is now becoming urgent?

My Lords, as I have said, we will certainly look at the lessons that have come out of the councillors’ code. We will consult over the summer, and we hope to produce something appropriate for employees in the autumn. In the mean time, the GLA is governed by the ethical framework that applies to all local authorities—by both voluntary codes for its employees and a statutory code for its councillors.

My Lords, if we are to have one of these codes for local government employees, will the Minister give the House an assurance that it will apply to all local government employees? I understand that the Welsh, who have stolen a march on the Government in this matter, have managed to exclude both teachers and firemen from their code of practice.

My Lords, I can certainly give an assurance that it will cover all local authorities and local authority employees. I expect that it may in part be incorporated in the contracts of employment, which employees hold and which makes them different from councillors themselves. It will be interesting to look at the seven principles of public life, which are set out in most of the voluntary codes, and to see the extent to which we can make them exemplify, as the councillors’ code does, what exactly we mean by independence and selflessness in government.

My Lords, is there not the slightest danger that the introduction of this code will require legislation similar to the Civil Service Bill?

My Lords, that is not the case at all. It is something that we can do, as I understand it, under the Local Government Act 2000, so the legislative framework is already in place.

My Lords, has not the introduction of elected mayors, of the cabinet system of local government, and of the executive, overview and scrutiny split inevitably led to top local government officials becoming much more politicised than they were, because inevitably they are now working to the council leadership rather than to the council as a whole? Is this not an undesirable trend?

My Lords, I do not recognise that picture, because the point about our local government officials is the historical integrity and seriousness of purpose with which they serve not only local government but the local area as a whole. It is interesting; we have 80,000 local councillors but a very small number of cases are brought to the Standards Board for England every year. That says a great deal.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

How much public funding is being made available to the Arts Council during the current financial year, and how much is planned for the next two financial years.

My Lords, the Government have a proud record of providing substantial support to the arts. Subject to parliamentary approval, we expect Arts Council England revenue grant in aid to be £421 million this year, rising to £429 million in 2008-09 and £443.5 million in 2009-10. Arts Council England lottery income is projected to be £146 million this year, £137 million in 2008-09, and £115 million in 2009-10. Grant-in-aid funding for Arts Council England will rise to £467 million by 2010-11—an increase of 3.3 per cent above inflation over three years, or an extra £50 million above inflation by 2010.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Is he satisfied that the substantial funds are being spent wisely? Is he aware, for example, that in the regional theatre world there is great dismay at recent decisions by Arts Council England to the effect that many regional theatres may have to close?

My Lords, it is always a matter of concern when theatres, particularly the regional ones, have to close, but the noble Lord will appreciate that Arts Council England is responsible for its own decisions. The Government’s grant in aid is to provide it with the resources for those decisions. Arts Council England is of course concerned to reward and increase the opportunities for the innovative. Therefore there will be change, and some recipients of previous years’ funding will lose their support in order that others, who are being innovative, get increased support.

My Lords, the recent settlement received by the Arts Council generally has been well received. However, due to raids on the lottery, the truth is that there is a huge shortfall across the sector as a whole, which is having a knock-on effect. The Government have promised a cultural festival to run in parallel with the Olympic Games, but a report published last week reveals that diversion of funds from the lottery has jeopardised the existence of the very groups which will deliver this Cultural Olympiad. What is the status of the funding and organisation of the Cultural Olympiad?

My Lords, the Cultural Olympiad is an important dimension of the work in progress for 2012. The noble Baroness is right that a plethora of institutions will provide that across the country. We are concerned that arts funding is maintained, which is why the Government have increased their level of arts funding. The Olympic Games make a demand on the lottery of a spectacularly significant kind. However, I bring to the House’s attention the fact that the Olympic Games will cost only 19 per cent of the National Lottery’s disbursements. Therefore, we should not exaggerate its impact on other sectors.

My Lords, does the BBC get any contributions towards running the Proms every year? Will the Minister confirm that the promenade concerts are a great national institution, which is enjoyed not by thousands of people and not by tens of thousands of people but by hundreds of thousands of people of all sorts every year? Will he further confirm that it is the Government’s view that the concerts are not for just the middle classes, but that they are enjoyed by a very wide portion of society, not only in this country but from all over the world?

My Lords, the Proms are, of course, a national institution from which a very large number of people worldwide derive huge enjoyment. It is a BBC event and the costs and support for the concerts are borne by the BBC, in addition to the contribution received from those who pay at the door. The Proms are nothing to do with the Government and are probably none the worse for that.

My Lords, how does the funding of the arts compare with the Governments funding of the rehabilitation of servicemen wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq?

I must say that that is a tough comparator, my Lords. I do not know the funding for our service personnel who are wounded in Afghanistan, but I know that there is a clear obligation on government and the Ministry of Defence to ensure that they get the best possible care. They are not in competition with an arts budget, which involves an entirely separate department. The arts have proper demand on our consideration, too.

asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Following the end of the consultation period, what are their latest plans for the third runway at Heathrow.

My Lords, the Government’s support for a third runway at Heathrow, as set out in the 2003 aviation White Paper, remains dependent on our being confident that the strict local environmental conditions around the airport can be met. The Adding Capacity at Heathrow Airport consultation, which ended on 27 February, presented our analysis on meeting those tests. We are now analysing the responses. Decisions on the consultation are expected later this year.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer. Is he aware of the joint submission made to the Competition Commission by the Civil Aviation Authority and NATS? It states:

“Were all [BAA’s] southeastern airport development plans to come to fruition, CAA and NATS are of the view that there would not be sufficient airspace to accommodate the scale of predicted growth on the basis of current and predicted technology”.

Does he agree that there is not much point in building more facilities such as runways if the planes do not have any space in the air to fly to them?

My Lords, if we were to accept that analysis, we would not have undertaken a consultation. The consultation is relevant and we will come to a decision in due course.

My Lords, I hope that the Government will not flinch over plans for a third runway. We are in the 21st century and the rest of the world is getting on with a massive airport-building programme. Heathrow is the hub of our southern economy and, indeed, a major part of our overall economy. If we were massively to get on with base-load CO₂-free electricity, which we could do by going nuclear quickly, we would offset so much carbon that we could keep flying with great joy.

My Lords, that was a wide-ranging observation. I agree entirely that Heathrow is vital to its local and our national economy, which is why we have to carefully develop our strategy with regard to the third runway.

My Lords, I declare an interest as the campaign director of Future Heathrow. Is my noble friend aware of the seriousness of the situation now? Jet Airways, a rapidly growing Indian airline set up in this country, has announced—it is the first announcement of this type that I have ever heard—that it is now pulling out of Britain because there is no runway space available at Heathrow. If this continues, the circumstances, particularly for the Thames valley and west London, will be catastrophic. Organisations such as the Sunday Times and the Independent that are campaigning for the closure of Heathrow need to explain where the jobs are coming from. They might also stop doing irresponsible things such as giving details of how to get on to the roof of the Houses of Parliament and how to join organisations that want to do so. This is too important for Britain and too important for the Thames valley and west London.

My Lords, I agree completely with my noble friend so far as employment is concerned. Some 200,000 jobs are dependent on the aviation sector in the United Kingdom. It is true that Heathrow is already operating at 98.5 per cent capacity, which is higher than the levels of our European rivals in Paris, Schiphol and Frankfurt. This is a critical issue and one that is vital to the south-eastern economy. We have to take those points carefully into consideration.

My Lords, I have been campaigning against the expansion of Heathrow Airport since 1974—not terribly successfully so far, I must say. Does the Minister realise that the opposition to a third runway at Heathrow is of a totally different order from that to previous expansions? Will he give this House an undertaking that we have the full results of the consultation that the Government have carried out so that we know exactly what the view of the people of London is on this monstrous development?

My Lords, we have made it clear that of course we will ensure that the full results of the consultation are made public when Ministers make their decision. We take these matters seriously, but we also believe that the future of Heathrow Airport is critical to the economy of the south-east.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that any alternative site to Heathrow would inevitably involve a massive delay and the removal of most airlines from the airport to the advantage of airports on the Continent? What possible advantage is there in coming to the conclusion that Heathrow ought to be closed?

My Lords, I cannot see any advantage in arguing that Heathrow ought to be closed. Since 1990, when Heathrow was second in the pecking order of international airports in Europe, we have slipped down to fifth position. Paris now has four runways, while Schiphol has five, and we have lost some 47 routes since that year. Obviously this decision is vital to our economy.

My Lords, how much is the future of London airport dependent on the Olympic Games being held here in the near future?

My Lords, the Olympic Games decision has already been made. It is vital that the upgrade of Heathrow is seen through to a successful conclusion so that people coming to the United Kingdom for the 2012 Olympics arrive here at an airport that is comfortable and easy to understand.

My Lords, notwithstanding the rather disobliging remarks of my noble friend Lord Soley about the Independent, perhaps I may draw the Minister’s attention to an editorial in that newspaper last weekend, which stated:

“In the opinion of many scientists, we can either have international aviation growth on the present rate or we can have a stable global climate. We cannot have both … The Government should be blocking Heathrow from building a new runway on international environmental grounds”.

Is not the Government’s persistence in sticking to their current view on airport expansion making them look increasingly like the proverbial flightless bird?

My Lords, I do not agree. We can achieve growth in aviation and have stability in the quality of our environment. It is on that premise that we advanced our consultation exercise. We believe that we can match the environmental expectations to which we all hold.

My Lords, can the Minister give an undertaking that serious consideration will be given to the building of a big new airport in the Thames estuary? This would enable stacking over the North Sea and would stop flights coming in and going out over London. Furthermore, the estuary would be a much safer place to have an airport than Heathrow, which is slap in the middle of where people live and not a safe place to have an airport.

My Lords, I note with interest the noble Earl’s support for an airport off the coast of Kent or Essex, whichever choice you take on this. That would be a massive undertaking; the infrastructure costs alone would be somewhere in the region of £33 billion. I hesitate to think how long it would take to construct and the damage that would be done to our economy in waiting. It is interesting that, according to the Times today, Boris Johnson was uncontactable when challenged by Conservative MPs around Essex and Kent who were somewhat dismayed by his support for such a proposition.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the case for increased employment opportunities is not open and shut but has to be balanced against the effects on pollution and the destruction of homes and the environment? I declare an interest in that I chair my local residents’ association, which is in the vicinity. We should not assume that the case has been proven that London could not expand its economy without expanding Heathrow.

My Lords, I understand the dilemma that the issues surrounding Heathrow Airport present to many people. However, I think that we can satisfy the high environmental standards that we have set out for ourselves and reap the benefits in investment and in strengthening our economy by ensuring that we have a sensible approach to further and continued investment in the aviation industry.

My Lords, how many airports in Europe are to the east of the cities that they serve?

My Lords, I cannot quite answer the noble Lord on that, but I shall write and tell him.

My Lords, is not one of the major reasons why people want to expand airport provision in the south-east the amount of internal air traffic in this country? Would it not be better for the huge investment that is proposed for new runways and terminals in the south-east to be put into new high-speed railway lines to other parts of this country? That would be far more beneficial both economically and environmentally.

My Lords, that is an interesting question. Of course the Government want to stimulate and develop the rail industry. We have had a 40 per cent increase in the number of passengers using the network over the past decade. The number of internal short-haul flights to Heathrow has fallen quite dramatically over the past few years because people are moving to the rail network as an alternative.

My Lords, in terms of passenger satisfaction, how does London Heathrow compare to other airports, such as Amsterdam Schiphol and Charles de Gaulle?

My Lords, I know that strong views have been expressed in your Lordships’ House about the quality of the experience at Heathrow, but it is fair to say that major improvements are now coming on stream. Terminal 3 has been properly completed, Terminal 5 is to be opened in March this year, the refurbishment of Terminal 4 will be completed in 2009 and Heathrow East will open in time for the Olympics in 2012. There is an improving story so far as the quality of experience at Heathrow is concerned.

My Lords, is it not true that the 47 routes that hitherto flew from Heathrow to other parts of the planet have now gone to continental airports, that the flights continue and that there has been no effect whatsoever on climate change? If we continue to have an unbalanced examination of the problems that we face here, we will end up with a decline in Heathrow. All we will see is a growth in Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt with no effect on climate change.

My Lords, that is a real and present danger. It has to be understood that Paris is working at 75 per cent capacity; I think that Schiphol and Frankfurt work at a similar level. We do not have capacity at Heathrow, which is why the third runway is extremely important. We have to look at the whole issue of emissions, not just within the aviation sector but across the whole of industry. That is why the Emissions Trading Scheme is so important and why we lay great stress on ensuring that we have an effective Europe-wide scheme.

My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now further considered on Report.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

Clause 10 [Matters to be taken into account in connection with carbon budgets]:

moved Amendment No. 47:

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. I declare an interest as a vice-president of Tearfund, the international relief agency. I have also travelled to other parts of the world with Christian Aid. We have to recognise that there is a huge disparity in carbon emissions across the world. In the UK, it is estimated that each person emits just under 10 tonnes of carbon per year. In Bangladesh, the figure is 0.24 tonnes and in Ethiopia it is 0.067 tonnes. Apparently, the Earth can sustain just under one tonne per person of carbon going into the atmosphere. It seems to me and many involved in the field of international development that we need a much more equitable distribution of carbon emissions. International co-operation to alleviate poverty in Africa, for example, which is highly commendable, is undermined if we do not address issues of climate change. What is the point of helping Africa with aid, trade and debt relief if, with the other hand, we change the climate and ruin its harvest through the emission of extra carbon? The position of Her Majesty's Government’s with this Bill would be enhanced even further if we were able to include the amendment, which these Benches support.

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. I suspect that the Minister will not accept it, but I hope that he will speak to the climate change committee. When we consider buying credits from other countries, it is important that we do not do so in a way that will be cheap for big business in this country but expensive for those in other countries in terms of development. That should be set out in certain guidance. We often talk about the amount of pollution that China pumps out into the atmosphere, but we would do well to remember that most of the Chinese population lives on about $1 a day. It is easy for us to say that we should get rid of all carbon credits overseas, but perhaps we should look at the more expensive option of doing it in this country, especially if it is going to affect those in developing countries.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing back this issue, but I draw the attention of the House to subsection (3) of Clause 10, with which the amendment deals. It states:

“Nothing in this section is to be read as restricting the matters that the Secretary of State or the Committee on Climate Change may take into account”.

We are sympathetic to the intention behind the amendment but we do not think that advising on the level of the budget is meaningful. The Committee on Climate Change advises on the level of the budget only, not on the means of bringing it about or the policies needed. The amendment would have to be targeted on what the committee is for, which would not be meaningful.

The Government have taken a lead on tackling poverty reduction in recent years and continue to do so. The amount of foreign aid to developing countries has been redoubled. By 2010, the Government will have trebled the aid budget in real terms since 1997. We are also on course to deliver the UN gold standard of 0.7 per cent of gross national income to be spent on overseas development assistance by 2013. Along with other issues relating to international finance agreed at Gleneagles that I could list, our commitment to dealing with international poverty reduction cannot be questioned—that is not to say that it will not be questioned, as the amendment seeks to imply.

The committee can take into account issues such as scientific knowledge about climate change. It is not bound by the clause itself. Although there is a list, the clause quite clearly states that the committee is able to consider any matter that it thinks appropriate, as can the Secretary of State. Now that the shadow committee is established and we know the membership of the committee, we should leave this issue, along with others that we will be debating, to members of the committee for the time being. It is right for us to offer our advice, as everyone else will, but they have considerable expertise in analysing a wide range of impacts in relation to climate change. It would not be fair to give them a role that does not fit in with their remit—the invention and implementation of policies to meet the budget targets. The effect that the noble Baroness is seeking could be held to be implied already in the Bill, should the committee wish it. People will be watching this issue. Therefore, I do not believe that we should accept the amendment and I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw it.

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their comments and the Minister for his reply. This issue above all issues cannot be geographically ring-fenced. I would be more reassured if the Committee on Climate Change had experts in this specific area among its members. Whatever the UK brings forward will indeed have an impact on developing countries. We are likely to return to this issue later in the Bill, but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 48 not moved.]

moved Amendments Nos. 49 and 50:

moved Amendment No. 51A:

My Lords, in speaking to these amendments to which my name is added, I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on this issue. As was said at the previous stage, although the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, whose name is printed on the Bill’s front page in respect of the human rights convention, shares Cabinet responsibility for Defra with the Secretary of State and therefore takes a lead on this issue, there is a slight problem regarding the various areas in which other departments have a say.

According to government figures in 2005, the share of carbon dioxide emissions from energy industries was 37.4 per cent, which is the responsibility of BERR—then the DTI—and from road transport it was 21.6 per cent, which is the Department for Transport. From other industries it was 17.8 per cent, although a vast proportion of that was from agriculture under Defra, and residential emissions were at 14.9 per cent, under the DCLG and Defra. There are other areas, such as the MoD, which will produce quite a few carbon emissions of their own. Is it really acceptable to believe that, if there is to be a turf war between departments, the Prime Minister will accept whatever is put forward by the Secretary of State for Defra?

In the amendment, we are not asking to overturn the whole remit of collective Cabinet responsibility, but we are asking the Prime Minister to lay the report before the House of Commons, which is quite a different thing. That would give a degree of satisfaction that the Prime Minister was happy with each of the departments’ recommendations and with what they were doing to meet their own commitments, not that there are differences between the different departments. That is quite important, and I believe that it will resonate very well with the country.

I was lobbied about this by a number of different people. One person who e-mailed me was particularly apt when they asked, “If the Prime Minister is not prepared to do this on climate change, what is the point of a Prime Minister?”. I thought that was a rather nice rhetorical question. However, we have all clearly seen this issue going up the political spectrum quite dramatically. We have just had an amendment on how this affects other departments through the Department for International Development. To say that it is going to affect each and every one of us is an understatement. I have been to a number of recent meetings where people have tried to express what a cut of 60 per cent means. It means that you are not going to be taking flights overseas on a regular basis. You are not going to be doing a lot of the things that we now take for granted, which will be difficult. It will be up to the Prime Minister to take the lead and to express to the country why we have to take those difficult positions and the basis for them. On that basis, I very much hope that the Government accept the amendment.

My Lords, the noble Lord who opened the debate and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, failed to understand the inevitability of other Ministers being involved. No one can deny that this is a hugely important issue; climate change inevitably assumes that role. But it is misconceived to think that other Ministers cannot be involved. They are regularly involved. It is many years since I was a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, but I recall very few occasions when I could make a decision, or the Secretary of State could do so, on his own. Inevitably, other Ministers have to be involved. That being the case, there can often be fierce disputes at Cabinet level; I think that the noble Baroness would agree that inevitably disputes arise between Ministers. They often do. They are finally resolved in favour of a solution that may or may not commend itself to this House; but they are resolved.

Because of that, it is quite wrong to present a situation whereby the Prime Minister had automatically to be involved in the dispute in question. Because we have had collective responsibility in the Cabinet for many, many years, the Prime Minister inevitably—although I should not use that word again—has had to be involved in every issue that comes before the Cabinet. The noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Redesdale, are wrong in supposing that the Prime Minister can stand back. He or she does not do that. It is wrong to imagine a situation in which the Prime Minister can abdicate responsibility. It does not happen like that.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Committee on Climate Change and I hasten to add that I am not necessarily expressing an opinion shared by my colleagues. I am broadly in favour of the amendment, and not only for the reasons that have been advanced; I hear the counter-arguments that there are many situations in which responsibility is distributed among departments. Here is something that is extraordinarily important. However, given the kaleidoscopic speed at which departments are reorganised, reshuffled and reapportioned, while it may be true that we can assign primary responsibility to Defra—we are looking at a Bill that deals with the next 50 years—it may be that in the not-too-distant future it would be better to have one department that is all about climate change. It is more likely that responsibilities will be yet more scattered than at present. For all of the reasons that have been mentioned about the present and for those reasons about the future, I am in favour of the amendment.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord May, has expressed a very important view. This is probably one of the most crucial amendments that we will look at on Report. So far, noble Lords have discussed it as if devolution did not exist. We keep doing that. We must remember that things have changed and that although we talk about cross-departmental decision-making, a number of the departments concerned have been devolved. Several of the departments which have had to agree to the measure are in Scotland, where the decisions will have to come through the First Minister, who with others will have to agree the target.

We will come to that issue in Amendment No. 233, when my noble friend the Duke of Montrose and I will make a suggestion about how such agreement might be arrived at. If the Prime Minister was the person who had to report to Parliament, many of these problems would be reduced, because he is the Prime Minister of Scotland. The remit of the Secretary of State for Defra does not run in Scotland, where there is a separate department. A confusion is being concocted in the Bill, which means that it simply will not work. The Government should listen hard to this; I do not know if this amendment is the solution, but there must be one. It seems to me that, on the face of it, if the Prime Minister was the person who put the ideas forward in the House of Commons, with the agreement of the Secretary of State for Scotland in Cabinet, Defra and so on, that would help the matter, at least in terms of presentation.

I hope that the Government will listen to this, but when I mentioned this problem in another context to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, his answer showed that the Government simply had not thought about it at all. He simply said, “That’s devolution for you”. That is not an answer. This is a real problem and the Government should think very hard about it. I support the amendment.

My Lords, I support the amendment for the reasons that I set out in some detail in Committee. I am not suggesting that my noble friend is insensitive but on this occasion I hope that he will be able to be more sensitive to the calls that have been made in the House. I want to concentrate on other amendments, as my noble friend knows.

My Lords, I supported this amendment in Committee, and it was also one of the issues to which the Joint Committee drew attention. It is important not only from the UK’s point of view but in relation to prime ministerial standing and backing of this issue. If the Prime Minister is to put all his weight behind this and discuss it in international fora, it will be far better if his name is on the vital bits of paper that go before Parliament.

I also support what my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour has just said. It is very important that we do not forget the other parts of the UK besides England. If you want to get Scotland on board on this matter, it is important to have the involvement not of the Secretary of State but of the Prime Minister.

My Lords, I have some sympathy with what has been said. We have to look at how we can achieve a coherent government message and mandate running through the delivery of the Bill. Whether that implies writing the Prime Minister into this legislation in a rather, although not completely, novel way, I have yet to be utterly convinced. However, it is incumbent on the Government to come back to this House at some stage during the passage of the Bill to explain how, if the Prime Minister is not to be written in, we can have a coherent and mandatory cross-government position for the delivery of the Bill. If my noble friend, whom I think I saw entering the House half way through the last Question, needs an example, then the Bill and its objectives are entirely contrary to the commitment to aviation expansion, as was reflected in the answers to the House during the fourth Question. Therefore, we need some coherence here. This may not be the way to do it, although it is one way of doing it. However, I hope that the Minister will at least contemplate this matter and come back with his suggestion at a later stage.

My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend. If the Prime Minister is not responsible for this task, it is not at all clear that the Secretary of State for the Environment, or whatever the department will be called at the time, necessarily should be, quite apart from the very powerful points made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord May. It is obvious that climate change involves the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Potentially huge costs are involved in anything to do with climate change, and they concern the Secretary of State for Transport, or whatever that department will be called at the time, and various other departments as well. It is not clear that the Secretary of State at Defra is the natural leader; because of the financial implications, it could just as easily be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Therefore, the Government should seriously consider the point about the Prime Minister, not only because he is the ultimate spokesman for the Government and ultimately responsible for their policy but because this is not an issue that falls naturally into any one department. It crosses departments to a much greater degree than almost any other issue that is likely to come before Parliament.

My Lords, I support the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that if the Government are not minded to accept the amendment, it is incumbent on them to come forward with proposals which would enable them collectively to take decisions. In my view, it is easy to set targets, but when delivering them involves very painful decisions that lie right across government, the chances of making progress through an individual Minister are minimal. I have not held ministerial office but I have sat at the side of many a Minister over many years and I know the realities. You cannot deliver other than with the Prime Minister’s support and some inter-departmental machinery. Therefore, I say to the House that the Bill is a dead duck in terms of delivery, as opposed to setting targets, unless there is something along the lines of the amendment or some very powerful alternative.

My Lords, in no way do I resile from the amendment moved by my noble friend or from the observations of my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour about devolution. In reference to my noble friend on the Front Bench, the relevant fact is that the Prime Minister is part of this amendment. On a technical issue, when the Minister responds will he confirm that the reason why we got rid of Ministers in departments and had Secretaries of State instead was to conduct the drafting of Bills so that Secretaries of State were totally interchangeable and any Secretary of State could exercise a Secretary of State’s responsibilities? In the same way, long ago, when we had capital punishment, the request for a royal pardon had to be delivered by the legal advisers of the person who had been convicted to a Secretary of State. During the Summer Recess there was always a duty Secretary of State in London who could receive such a request, as time would be important. That was at a time when there was a Secretary of State for Air and a Secretary of State for War who did not serve in the Cabinet.

My Lords, I point out that there is a precedent for this. It is in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said at an earlier stage that the Prime Minister did not have duties in this regard. The Act says:

“The Prime Minister shall lay before each House of Parliament a copy of every annual report made by the Interception of Communications Commissioner”—

under various subsections and so on. So the Prime Minister is not writing the report or taking the full resources of the commissioner into Downing Street to comply with that, but he is responsible for laying the report before Parliament. He has that role, so there is a precedent.

My Lords, I do not wish to disagree with my noble friend Lord Brooke, but I support the amendment. In earlier debates on the Bill we spoke about our anxiety that it has not attracted the great thrust of the public behind it, a public who realise how important it is in the current situation. That is an additional reason why the Prime Minister should be the specified person to take this forward. I accept the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, that if the Minister cannot return with a satisfactory answer at this stage, perhaps we may return to it at a later stage. This is extremely important and if it is to resonate with members of the general public, it will have much greater effect if the Prime Minister is designated rather than any Secretary of State.

I have got to do my best. I want to disabuse noble Lords. I do not have the answer in front of me but when I used the phrase in Committee “accident of history” I was referring to the fact that the Prime Minister had a role in making certain appointments as a result of accidents of history. That was the point I was making. I did not go on to delineate the appointments, but I am reminded of that having read, like most who have just spoken, the Friends of the Earth brief. That was the context in which I was speaking.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brooke, is quite right in what he says. Until 2005, of course, there was still a Minister of Agriculture; there was no Secretary of State. I know that was a problem from 1997 to 1999 for certain jobs that Jack Cunningham did or could not do because of the terminology. Secretaries of State are now interchangeable and that is the reason for that drafting.

The noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said that he had not held ministerial office but that he had sat at the side of Ministers. Every time he speaks I am reminded of the phrase in Gerald Kaufman’s book, How to be a Minister, published in 1982, when he was at the Department of Trade and Industry. Amid the Post Office issue, he would send for this character, Mr Dearing, who would arrive with all his bountiful advice which was first class. Nevertheless, I move on to the dodgy part of the debate, which is trying to answer this.

One issue that has been raised was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. I do not think that she was complaining about the fact that the media have not covered our debates, although that has been a common theme for one or two noble Lords. It is possible to take to an extreme the sentence in the briefing that noble Lords have received. It said:

“It is a fact of life that the actions of the Prime Minister are more likely to be covered by the media than the actions of a Secretary of State. These amendments are therefore likely to lead to a better informed public and so a stronger ‘court’”.

I am a mere Minister of State. It so happens that—as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said about names on paper—mine is the only name that will ever appear on the Bill. I was surprised about this a fortnight ago, simply because I had forgotten that when the Bill arrives in the other place it will not have the list of the great and the good—12 of them—on the back, which would normally be headed by the Prime Minister, because the Bill will be brought in from the Lords. Therefore the period before the Bill becomes an Act is the only time my name will be there. That shows that names on paper are worth nothing.

Oh!

My Lords, I am making a genuine point. What counts is the substance of the Bill and the operation of government.

I have obviously failed to get an issue across in Committee. Do not get me wrong; I am not knocking it. A lot of points have been raised to which there has been an inadequate response. On the point of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing—and, in some ways, the point of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat—we will probably have to look again at how the machinery of government deals with climate change legislation over, say, the next couple of decades; one cannot look as far ahead as 50 years. Because the Secretary of State is interchangeable and will come and go, the machinery of government is bound to change. Departments are bound to change, as they have done even in the past few months. There must be a degree of confidence for the public—and business, because of the decisions being made—that there is a system in Whitehall for dealing with this; a system other than putting “Prime Minister” in the Bill.

Tackling climate change will require actions by future Governments and future business. We must do that in a way which does not damage us. However, there are good reasons why it is not appropriate for the duties in the Bill to be placed on the Prime Minister. I will come to the precedents. I never claimed that there were no precedents at all. There were roles for the Prime Minister, and some mentioned here today and in the brief could be held not to be on the same scale as the Climate Change Bill and matters of national security which the Prime Minister deals with on an individual basis.

The issue of the Secretary of State is very important, because of what the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, said. The Interpretation Act 1978 makes it clear that “the Secretary of State” means one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State. That is the advantage for legislation in terms of the machinery of government. They can all act and, therefore, it may be the Secretary of State for Defra, but it could be other Secretaries of State. The Bill, as it is now, is agreed by the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Administration. So, on the argument raised with me about the devolved Administrations, they agree with the Bill as drafted. As far as I know, they have not come forward during the passage of the Bill with any argument to substantially change how this part of the Bill is drafted on the basis of discussions in your Lordships’ House.

My Lords, that is what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said last time. I am sure that it is true; I am not sure whether the agreement was before the last elections in Scotland or not, but it has been agreed by the Scots Ministers. The question is how it will operate once it comes into action. How is agreement going to be got between the Scots Parliament and whichever department does this? That is nothing to do with the fact that the Bill has been agreed; we know that. My noble friend Lord Caithness put his finger on it: he said that if Scotland is to be carried with this, it is the politics of the matter. If the Scots Parliament with Scottish Ministers say they will do this and to a bigger extent than England, then England will do less, they will say, or they will refuse to do something, in which case England and the rest of the United Kingdom will have to do more. It is just a source of trouble. We are talking about the process of putting the Bill into action, not the Bill itself.

My Lords, all those issues apply to current legislation and are nothing to do with climate change. Since devolution, they apply across the piece where there are issues relating to the devolved Administration and the Government at Westminster. The Bill was introduced following the gracious Speech last year, and the Scottish Executive was elected, I think, in the summer of last year. As far as I know, the current Administration have agreed the Bill. I am not putting words in their mouth in that sense. One or two noble Lords have touched on the issue of collective responsibility. The Government work together. My experience in the past 11 years is that no major decision gets promulgated—I sometimes think it is no minor decision—unless No. 10 has agreed it. That is the way the machinery of government operates. The idea that the Prime Minister is divorced from these issues of Statements and reports to Parliament on a range of issues across government is nonsense. The fact that his name does not appear in the legislation relating to other departments and activities does not mean that he is not involved in what is going on and is not discussing things with Ministers during the decision-making process well before decisions are made. He is.

My Lords, is not the measure of the value of an amendment moved in this House whether, if it were to be approved, it would be reversible in the House of Commons when a Bill went there from the House of Lords? Does my noble friend not accept that if this amendment was carried it could, with difficulty, be reversed in the House of Commons?

My Lords, the answer may be yes, but I am doing my best to make sure that it is not carried in this place. We would like to have Royal Assent before the summer so that the climate change committee can get on with its work. The time this Bill spends in your Lordships’ House is fine as we wish to send it to the other place with as few problems in it as possible. That may be a problem—I do not know—but the decision is for your Lordships’ House, not for me or the Government. I want to assure the House that mechanisms exist in the machinery of government to ensure that people across government, including the Prime Minister, are involved in these decisions. The Cabinet takes responsibility for the Government’s climate change policies and objectives. It is done at the central level and that permeates throughout government to junior Ministers and civil servants who serve the Government. A sub-committee dedicated to the environment and energy issues is chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, made the point that financial issues could come to the fore for many years of this policy initiative—and the members of the committee include the Secretaries of State responsible for the environment, energy, transport, communities and local government. The committee has the Prime Minister’s authority to take collective decisions in this area, and if members of that committee cannot agree—as noble Lords who have been in government will know well—it will go to Cabinet and into the machinery at the centre of government.

I am not putting this up to knock it down, but nobody is claiming that the Prime Minister can take on meaningful duties and responsibilities on a daily basis for every policy across government. That is not the issue being raised. The point is that he delegates to Secretaries of State. Secretaries of State can come and go at the behest of the Prime Minister. That is a fundamental part of how the Government function. I fall back only slightly on the fact that No. 10 is not a large department; No. 10 has the facility to use the departments of state if it so wishes; so I will not use the argument that I used in Committee, because I was not happy about it at the time.

The precedents that have been raised are important. Some may remember that I was still in the other place at the time of the passage of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. I remember some of the debates in the other place, both in the House and in party meetings. The Prime Minister has a role in that legislation—there is no doubt about that—but he does not write the reports himself. There is an argument for not having the same model here. There are three important and independent bodies with national security roles that carry out supervisory functions, including writing reports. Those reports are laid before Parliament by the Prime Minister. They are those of the Interception Commissioner, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner and the Intelligence Services Commissioner. All related ministerial powers and functions are exercised personally at the Secretary of State level, as people well know, especially in this place, which is full of former Home Secretaries and Foreign Secretaries.

The reason that the reports are laid before Parliament by the Prime Minister is that he has traditionally taken an overarching responsibility for national security, the No. 1 issue for the people of this country. They look to the Government to keep them secure. That is national security in its traditional, narrowly defined sense, and the Prime Minister has a role. The term “national security” might be more broadly used in certain circumstances to include defence and foreign affairs, but that is not the case in legislation. That is the point: we are making legislation.

The courts have generally taken a narrow view, applying the term to fast-moving, specific situations that affect the nation as a whole. For example, banking is not viewed as an issue relating to national security; but an individual, large-scale forgery with potential to undermine confidence in banknotes could represent a threat to national security. So there are variations. Another pragmatic way in which the narrower term can be tested against the policy is whether the Security Service will be the lead organisation in dealing with it. If not, it is not generally regarded as an issue of national security.

Although we acknowledge that climate change is a serious, long-term global threat—no one is arguing against that; it goes right across government and will affect how we will work and live as individuals in this country; it is incredibly important—it is difficult to see how it could be defined as national security in the legislative sense where the Prime Minister gets involved, as in the examples that I have given. The effects of climate change are unlikely to result in a sudden risk to the security of the entire nation. We can have severe weather events, but they have not resulted in catastrophe in that sense, and it is difficult to attribute individual events to climate change.

People have mentioned that Defra is a relatively small department compared to some of the large departments of state. The implication is that it does not make sense to have the Defra Secretary of State in the lead. It may not always be like that, but allocating responsibility for sectoral emissions to certain Whitehall departments is very complex, as those who have worked in Whitehall know. We simply do not recognise the idea that Defra is therefore responsible for only a small part of our efforts to tackle climate change. We have responsibility for a large number of policy measures for reducing emissions. For instance, the department leads policy on the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, which caps about half of the United Kingdom's emissions and will shortly include aviation emissions. Defra leads on climate change agreements; the new carbon reduction commitment for business, with lower emissions intensity; and the carbon emission reduction target for energy suppliers, which will replace the energy efficiency commitment from 2008. There is direct responsibility for Defra, but no one is arguing that one department does it all. I am piloting the Bill through the House as the Defra Minister acting on behalf of my ministerial colleagues, but I am also doing it on behalf of the Government. All the other departments are signed up to the Bill. When I have been able to respond to some of the debates that have clearly gone beyond Defra, answers have come back not only from the Treasury but from other departments as well. This is a government Bill and a government-wide view. There is no reason why the Prime Minister should be written into the legislation in the way that has been suggested, and the precedents that have been given do not hold up the case. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will not press the amendment to a vote.

My Lords, I thank the Minister and all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I assure him that he is too modest in his surprise at being the only name on the Bill. He has broad shoulders, and I assure him that he will be remembered not only for the historic parliamentary amendment but for the introduction of this historic Bill. He is also honest. When he referred to the dodgy part, I think he spoke the truth about his argument. Noble Lords’ widespread support for the amendments during this full and useful debate shows that there is a feeling that this limited but key role should be in the hands of the Prime Minister. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.

moved Amendments Nos. 53 and 54:

moved Amendment No. 55A:

moved Amendment No. 57:

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I can cut to the quick here. Following debates that we have had both inside and outside the House, we can be sure that climate change will be regularly debated in Parliament over the coming years. The Government alone, of course, do not dictate the scheduling of business in the House of Lords. I am forever telling people that the Government do not run the Lords. However, following consideration, I can confirm that we on these Benches will be very sympathetic to requests through the usual channels for debates on climate change. As always, this will have to be subject to the usual channels finding the right balance with all the other business coming before the House. I hope that that indicates that we have moved somewhat from our position in Committee and that we want to be as positive about this as possible. I appreciate the commitment that the noble Lord has given on behalf of his party.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response, in the light of which I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 58 to 63 not moved.]

moved Amendment No. 64:

My Lords, Australia has changed dramatically in the past few days, with the election of the new Labor Government, and all three major candidates in the American presidential election, McCain, Clinton and Obama, support international action. Why should we do anything that jeopardises the favourable movement that has already occurred?

My Lords, like the noble Lord, I welcome the change in attitude of the Australian Government. I welcome also the commitments of the various American presidential candidates to move towards emission control systems. However, including aviation emissions in the Bill from day one would in no way prejudice that.

Perhaps I may illustrate why that is the case in Europe. We hope that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme will apply to aviation in 2011-12. In the agreements announced by the Commission last month, the aviation sector is not distributed entirely among member states; the international airline industry is treated almost as a 28th member state of the EU in terms of emissions. Therefore, however that solution is worked out in Europe, it does not help us to solve this issue for the Bill in this country.

The UK already notifies international organisations of shadow figures for international aviation emissions based on bunkering. That may not be perfect—no system is—but, at some point, we have to make a choice. I see no merit in making a choice in 2012 as opposed to making a choice now. A decision taken then will be no more perfect than one taken now. In the mean time, we have an industry that is vital to the world’s economy but which also has a vital part to play in reducing emissions and the threat to the climate. I beg to move.

My Lords, if the amendment is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment No. 65.

My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, but we need to think carefully about what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, in part because this is a deeply emotional subject, which is wrapped up with the intense debate about the possible expansion of Heathrow.

The complaint of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is that aviation’s emissions are growing by 5 per cent. We are talking about a growth of 5 per cent in 2 per cent of global emissions at the present time. If my arithmetic is correct, that is 0.1 per cent. I suspect that a growth of 0.1 per cent in global terms from all emissions is rather less than we achieve from, for instance, our road transport industry. I hold no brief for the transport industries in making that point.

Third-world countries in particular are heavily dependent on income from perishables, which only they can produce economically and with few carbon emissions. If we were to try to produce those goods here, unless we used waste heat from power stations, we would be using fossil fuel to heat greenhouses. Third-world countries are also dependent on the tourist industry. Those industries are transport-based. If we want to equalise some of the gross inequalities in the global economy, we cannot do so without a heavy transport commitment. That is my first point. In the context of aviation, we are talking about a very small sum indeed in relation to the total global problem.

Secondly, in the case of aviation and, to a large degree, shipping, no alternative fuel is available. Technology can take us completely out of fossil fuels for road transport. That may seem like a daydream, but the technology already exists, provided that we change the way in which we source our energy. The technologies exist to make that possible as well. I have grave doubts about closing down a large and significant aspect of the global transport system, or making it more difficult or more expensive, when we need it in order to do a great deal of good in the world. We can change everything else, and that is where we should be focusing our efforts.

My Lords, the amendment is not about the future of aviation, but whether an attempt should be made in the next three or four years before the EU Emissions Trading Scheme includes aviation to measure and take account of the emissions from aviation caused by or belonging to this country. That is narrowly what this is about. It is not about whether aviation should or should not be included in emissions trading or should or should not be capped. That is a red herring for the purposes of this debate. The narrow question raised by the amendment is whether it is possible, meaningful and useful to include in the Committee on Climate Change’s first five-year target for carbon emissions aviation emissions that in some sense belong to the UK. I will address simply that point.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, acknowledged when he gave an example of how he would include aviation that it is exceptionally difficult—indeed, meaningless and I would say impossible—to designate emissions from international aviation as belonging to the UK as opposed to Europe, for example, and it would be extremely dangerous to do so. In due course, the Committee on Climate Change and the Government will have to decide how meaningfully to include aviation emissions in the UK targets—not to aim to limit them. As I understand it, there is no disagreement among any of the parties in this House, or on the Cross Benches or in Europe, that international aviation needs to come under controls and that that would best be done with international agreements starting with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Therefore, if the Bill is to be amended to insist that the Committee on Climate Change produces some meaningful targets for international aviation for the UK, we have to be convinced that it is possible for it to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that we produce figures now based on bunkering what fuel is put on to aeroplanes. He knows as well as I do that that does not in any meaningful sense represent the emissions arising from international aviation from flights into and out of the UK.

I respectfully suggest that the amendments would put the climate change committee, and the Government in responding to it, in a hopeless position. They could not come up with a meaningful figure that would be operational in any sense and on which action could be taken. As I said in Committee, putting sectors and emissions into targets must imply that somewhere along the line you are capable of taking actions to meet those targets. Noble Lords on all Benches know that aviation emissions need to be tackled but they are best tackled across the whole of Europe through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. As a country we will never take action outside the EU Emissions Trading Scheme because, quite apart from anything else, that would be illegal; you could not do it. You would not be allowed to do it. Airlines would simply go to the European Court of Justice. Therefore, I respectfully suggest that to expect the committee in its very first year to produce figures that are both meaningless and completely incapable of being acted on is not a sensible way to proceed.

My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend. This amendment is somewhat illusory. We cannot possibly resolve this issue on our own, nor can Europe. Europe can certainly take ameliorative action, and is doing so, with the support of most of the European airlines and of the unions, particularly my own, the British Airline Pilots Association. But to think that we can isolate ourselves and take ameliorative action on our own is pie in the sky; it will not happen. By their very nature international aviation and shipping—shipping is far more difficult to resolve in this regard than aviation—are susceptible only to an international solution. As I say, aviation is much more likely to achieve this action than shipping.

I am enormously encouraged by the fact that the new Australian Government have resolved to embrace an international solution. As I said in an intervention, all the major candidates in America also support that view. So we are left with the difficulty of India and China in particular. At present, they resist the conclusion that there ought to be an international solution but they are much more likely to come on board if America chooses to do so. Therefore, we are much closer to a positive situation than we have ever been. I am not saying that it will be easy to arrive at a solution but there can be no doubt that we are much closer to one than we have ever been before.

This amendment is unrealistic and the Liberal Democrats are being unrealistic in proposing it. The noble Lord shakes his head. That is not the first time he has done so. The Liberal Democrats are being not only unrealistic but unworldly.

My Lords, I believe that the Liberal Democrats have made the error of pursuing the agenda that was put to them by environmental groups outside, in particular Friends of the Earth, by concentrating on the targets that the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, expressed some concern about before, when he talked about the need to concentrate on delivery arrangements as against simply targets. We might recall from the other day that it was the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who moved an amendment on the 60/80 issue. Again today he is moving an amendment on aviation, and he seems to be flagging up those issues that appeal outside but which do not deal with the core of the Bill, which is the mechanism by which we are going to secure changes to budgets and the arrangements for the future, which again is the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing.

I worry that the Liberal Democrats in the other House might fall into the same trap unless they are alerted to the fact that there is a danger in going down this route. There may well be good politics in this, and there may be many a leaflet that can be circulated by Liberal activists around the country, which will inevitably happen, which will accuse the Government of not responding to the debate in the way that the environmental groups demand or require. The leaflets are not really going to deal with the central issue in this debate, which is the mechanism for delivery. We are now confronted, as my noble friend on the Front Bench will know, with amendments that we will debate later—including my Amendments Nos. 175 and 176 and a number of amendments tabled by the Conservative Front Bench which I completely support—that deal with mechanisms. It is interesting to note that it is almost the Liberal Democrat Benches in isolation—I am not being political, I am just mentioning—

Oh!

My Lords, it is hard to explain. I am isolating a group of Members of this House who seem to be flagging up what people outside have erected as the central areas for consideration in the debate, but which in my view are not the central areas. The argument about 60/80 will be dealt with by the climate change committee. The argument over aviation will be dealt with in 2012 under the European arrangements, and it will obviously be dealt with in the climate change committee. The noble Lord is defusing the need for the committee to feel that it has responsibility for these important areas. I appeal to the noble Lord, even at this late stage of the Bill, to perhaps reconsider the whole strategy that the Liberal Democrats are adopting in these debates.

My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that we should not debate this in Parliament or raise these issues but that we should leave them to a committee and just take on board its views? Surely the purpose of this debate is to question that. I do not want to be political about this in any way, shape or form, but we on these Benches think that that is the case.

My Lords, it is not that the issues should not be debated; of course they should be debated. But we saw the other day that the noble Lord’s Benches are prepared to divide on these issues, which means that they do not only want the debate, they want enshrined in the Bill these targets, which some of us really believe are the function and responsibility of the committee.

My Lords—

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, because I wanted to respond to that point. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will appreciate that when my noble friend Lord Teverson and I sat on the Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill and heard all the evidence, we did not do so as Liberal Democrats but as members of that committee. Although we are now here on these Benches in a political form, all the evidence that we heard on the target that he has mentioned, with which we have already dealt, was that it should be 80 per cent. When we heard evidence on, for example, aviation, one of the things that most surprised me was how open the aviation industry was to some of these things.

Far from being political, we are reacting to the evidence that we heard. Apart from that, I would fully concur with my noble friend that these issues are parliamentary and we really cannot shrug our shoulders and say that we are not going to decide on any of them and will leave it all to the climate change committee, whose creation I, too, thoroughly support.

My Lords, the distinction between the position taken by the noble Baroness and myself and, perhaps, my noble friends, is that when decisions are taken on these issues, I believe that they should come out in the words and phrases used by the scientists, not the politicians. In 20 years’ time, I do not want someone on television saying, “Well, I’m sorry, we were not interested in that recommendation; it was just a decision taken by Parliament—a bunch of amateurs”. I want people in 20 years’ time to say, “We have to accept decisions taken 20 years ago in the climate change committee, because they were based on science”. In my view the committee should take the decisions, but the Bill currently refers to advice. “They were based on advice taken as a result of scientific work and research done by the Committee on Climate Change”. The noble Baroness wants politicians to take the decisions; I want the scientists to recommend or, indeed, decide. That is the distinction.

My Lords, there is only one acid test as to whether or not the amendment is appropriate: is it going to make international aviation accountable? Will it make the EU Emissions Trading Scheme happen quicker, or will it make it more complicated to achieve? I do not think that anyone doubts—the aviation industry recognises this—that international air travel has to be brought into account. However, as the Minister reminded us in Committee, it is not helpful to have unilateral action, which in some ways confuses the issue and does not in any way help us to quantify the amount that has to be attributed in the UK account to international air travel.

The issue that ultimately has to be addressed is how to change personal lifestyles. Most of those who travel internationally, particularly on long haul, have to recognise that perhaps 25 per cent of their carbon footprint will be attributed to international aviation. That is a stark difference from 2 per cent, which is the overall figure, because so few people travel internationally. So if you asked the simple question, “Does this Liberal Democrat amendment advance and help the cause of having not just effective EU emission trading schemes sooner rather than later but action by other international agencies, which work at an even slower speed on these issues?”, the answer emphatically is that it will not. Therefore the amendment is not going to help us. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, says that we are here to debate these issues. Actually, we are here to improve the Bill, and that is quite different.

My Lords, if it will be of some comfort to the Liberal Democrats, we, too, believe that the emissions referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, must be included somehow. We have no qualms about the intention underlying the Liberal Democrat amendments. However, on reflection, there may be a better way of going about it. Thus, we will speak on our way of addressing the problem—placing a duty to regulate, based on international trade and transport—in the next group of amendments.

My Lords, I realise that we will cover some similar material on the next group of amendments. Therefore, I shall not prejudge Amendment No. 65. Indeed, if Amendment No. 64 is carried, we will not have the opportunity to debate Amendment No. 65. Nevertheless, there are issues that are covered by both groups. One of our best debates in Committee was on this issue. It lasted for a couple of hours. It was probably the longest debate we had on any of these issues. My noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton, as the transport spokesman in this House, arranged a subsequent meeting so that noble Lords could discuss the issue. That turned out to be useful.

The Government agree completely that these are important issues—no one is arguing otherwise—and it is essential that the right decisions are taken based on a proper analysis and the best evidence base. That is why, in response to our previous debate, the Government have now brought forward Amendments Nos. 118 to 120, which would give both Parliament and the Committee on Climate Change a greater role in decisions.

I recognise that this group of amendments treats international aviation and shipping emissions differently, as the noble Lord said. I agree that the question of shipping emissions is particularly complex, and it is therefore very likely that we will need to approach international aviation and shipping differently under the Bill. However, I reassure your Lordships that the Bill as it stands does just that. It allows us, if necessary, to include either international aviation or international shipping emissions in our targets ahead of the other.

I shall take the issue of international aviation first. As I set out in Committee, the Government’s view is that the best way to deal with international aviation emissions is through action at international level. We are working hard, in the International Civil Aviation Organisation and through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Bali action plan, to find a global solution, and we are already taking action in Europe. We strongly welcome the recent unanimous political agreement to include aviation emissions in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Although the details are not yet finalised, including aviation within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme will mean that aviation emissions from 2012 are capped, that this cap is set at the average of 2004-06 levels, and that any growth in emissions above this cap all the way to 2020 will need to be compensated by emission reductions elsewhere within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The current proposal is that this will apply not just to all flights between the 27 member states but also to all flights which arrive in or leave the EU. On that basis, the scheme will save 183 million tonnes of carbon dioxide—roughly equivalent to the CO₂ emissions for the Netherlands in 2004. This is a significant step forward, and I am sure that noble Lords agree that whatever we do under the Bill has to be consistent with the wider European and international framework.

As I think has been recognised during our previous debates on these issues, there are real practical difficulties here. That is why we think that we need expert advice from the independent Committee on Climate Change before we take decisions. I do not want to be overly critical of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, but when he introduced the amendment I did not hear him mention the mechanism for addressing these practical difficulties.

As I said, this is a difficult and complex issue, and that is why we think that the Committee on Climate Change should address it. We will ask the committee, as part of its first task, to advise us straightaway on the impact of including these emissions in our 2050 target. It is also why, once the EU Emissions Trading Scheme rules are agreed, we will ask the committee for its detailed advice on a methodology for including international aviation emissions in our targets. We need to know whether there is a methodology which works and which is compatible with both the EU ETS rules and the wider international context, and what the impact of adopting it would be. Again, these are not straightforward questions, and that is why we believe the best approach is to wait for the committee’s advice.

That is also why the Government have tabled Amendment No. 120, which we will come to later. This amendment provides that, before making regulations to include international aviation or international shipping emissions, the Secretary of State must seek, and take account of, advice from the Committee on Climate Change. We think that this is the best way forward. If we were to include international aviation emissions in our targets immediately, as proposed by Amendment No. 117, how would that work in practice? For example, how would the UK’s share of international aviation emissions be identified? Would it be on the basis of the fuel sold within the UK? If so, what would be the risk of perverse impacts, such as planes filling up elsewhere and flying here with a heavier fuel load, which could increase emissions, or transfer traffic simply diverting from Heathrow to Amsterdam or Paris, with no environmental benefits whatever? These are practical issues. If we go unilaterally, it is no good us complaining if other countries take commercial advantage of us, as would be the case.

How would this fit with aviation’s inclusion in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, which we expect to start in 2012, and which will probably allocate emissions on a different basis? Would we have two systems running alongside each other? Or would we need to change systems almost as soon as we started? This is not really the best approach to regulation on such an important issue. In addition, what would be the implications for the international negotiations if the UK decided unilaterally on a particular way of dividing emissions between countries? How would we avoid undermining our efforts to reach a global deal on this, bearing in mind that we all agree a global deal is required? Across the negotiating table we would be challenged that we had already done it: “You have chosen your own way; why are you here trying to do a deal with us?”. It does not make practical sense.

These are important, practical, questions. I do not say that the Government have all the answers, but we ought to pose questions that were not posed in the moving of the amendments, and then ask the Committee on Climate Change to agree to provide advice on this before we decide whether to include these emissions. We therefore do not think that the approach taken in the amendment is the right one.

The Liberal Democrat amendments would require the Secretary of State to define international shipping emissions within three years of Royal Assent. On the other hand, the amendments that we shall come to on this issue set a deadline of action under Clause 25, although I recognise that they take a different approach. However, our concern with the deadlines in these amendments, or indeed any arbitrary deadline, is precisely that—that they are arbitrary. We ought to look at the matter in the round. The Government have made it clear that they are determined to find a comprehensive solution in these sectors and we are pressing internationally to do so. That is the forum in which we have to get the decisions taken. Why create an artificial constraint? That would be the effect of approving these amendments.

Negotiations in these areas are incredibly sensitive and the possibility of reaching agreement sometimes hangs by a thread. It will make the negotiations which frequently take place—I am pleased to say I am not too involved in them, but I get involved—on the common agricultural policy among 27 countries look like peace on earth. These will be incredibly sensitive and we will be causing ourselves major problems if we put these amendments in the Bill and tie our hands. We must retain flexibility. To include the emissions in the European and international contexts is right and we are working hard to come to that kind of agreement on an international basis. Therefore, I sincerely hope that the noble Lord does not press this amendment.

My Lords, the reason we focused both in the Joint Committee and here today on aviation rather than on shipping is twofold: it is partly because shipping is much more complicated for attribution than the already complicated aviation sector, and partly, and largely implicitly, because aviation was thought to be a more important source as well as a more rapidly growing one. Work in the past couple of weeks has reappraised that and suggests what many have long suspected: that shipping may be twice the volume. Recognising that these are the early stages of a journey in five-year steps to 2050, is the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, satisfied that the Bill, as we are framing it, has flexibility so that we can deal with these things as and when both the international system and the greater knowledge and wisdom about how to include them make it possible?

I think the answer to the noble Lord is yes. I saw the report of the work to which he has referred a couple of weeks ago. I think in Committee I gave some information about shipping which makes it almost impossible for us to do the measurements at present. We cannot get an agreed methodology. The historic figures for UK shipping, based on the amount of fuel sold within the UK, demonstrate no discernible trend, which makes it very difficult for us to forecast future emissions as there is no evidence on which to base the forecast.

My Lords, I reinforce what the Minister said about shipping. The International Maritime Organisation, which is responsible for all regulations regarding international shipping, has been urgently looking into the question of ship emissions. I spoke to the secretary-general last week, who told me that the work has been delayed for precisely the reason the Minster has just given: the complication of international shipping.

I also remind the noble Lord, Lord May, that, although shipping may on the face of it be responsible for large amounts of emissions, he should remember that the vast bulk of international trade goes by sea. In fact, shipping per tonne mile is way more efficient than both lorries and aviation.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for going through this again. We have had an excellent debate, but I should respond to one or two comments.

I was particularly surprised at the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. Strangely enough, we tabled these amendments because we believe in them. As my noble friend Lady Miller said—I do not want to spend too much time on targets—it was the Government who put a target in the Bill, not us. All the evidence is that they have the wrong target in the Bill, so we thought that it might be a good idea if we put what is likely to be the best target in the Bill. That seems remarkably straightforward to me.

Strangely enough, we believe that aviation is an important industry. It is also growing and has significant carbon emissions. We therefore have a number of choices. Do we—as I got the impression that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, suggested—ignore it and get on with the rest that we can absolutely define? That is not the right thing to do, because this is an important sector. Do we, as the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, said, say that including aviation will not do anything about the future and we should therefore not do so? Well, if that is true for aviation, it is true for every other sector covered by the Bill. Aviation is no different.

Perhaps the only two reasons requiring more explanation are, first, whether we can measure it and, secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, said, whether it affects the EU ETS and international trading. On the first, the EU ETS will not help us in our national definitions. It will not allocate UK aviation emissions. When we get to 2012, this problem will not be solved. It will not be any easier. Therefore, on the basis that it is better to act now than in the future when the problem of climate change becomes worse, the answer is surely to act now rather than five years later. Why procrastinate?

My Lords, does the noble Lord accept that operations abroad would benefit if unilateral action were taken in the way that he suggests?

My Lords, that question shows the misunderstanding of the amendment. It is about measurement. If we started an emissions trading scheme that applied to UK aviation only, I would back the noble Lord in rejecting it. As he said, all the Bill does is provide a mechanism. That mechanism is measurement; the Bill does not include any element of policy or implementation of policy. Measuring these emissions has zero effect on what happens, as in every other sector of the economy. Measuring is followed by government policy. It is clear that we might as well include it now as later. The mechanism for measurement will be no more straightforward or easy in the future than it is now. The EU is not going to provide us with a method of calculating UK international aviation emissions. It does not do that. International aviation emissions are separately treated outside member states in the post-2012 regime put forward by the Commission and endorsed by the Council of Ministers.

Aviation is important. Let us get on with it now. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, cannot follow our approach. He made strong speeches at Second Reading, but I understand that he wants to approach this matter in a different way. I think this is fundamental to the Bill; otherwise we leave out a sector that needs to be in from the beginning. I recognise that the Government had the sector in the Bill from the beginning but that it would come in at a later date. We do not believe that is good enough. We need to act now. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

moved Amendment No. 65:

My Lords, we on these Benches think that the amendment is not as good as it could be. We should be more plain speaking and include aviation and shipping, but we are beyond that debate now.

It is important that we include in the Bill international movements of people and freight, however that is described or defined, and that this has to happen within a timescale. We need to make sure that there is a duty on the Secretary of State to introduce whatever system is decided upon rather than the matter being left open-ended until some point in the future.

When I first read the amendment, I thought it contained more than the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, described. I thought it was far more revolutionary and contained something I could welcome even more: that within the UK carbon footprint we would include the carbon footprint of all imports and take off everything that we export. In that way, we would have a carbon footprint that related to UK consumption or gross national income. That would be a very advanced concept but it would get around the problems of outsourcing. The United Kingdom and much of Europe have met their Kyoto targets so far purely by delegating manufacturing to China and other parts of the Far East.

The amendment is not aimed at that. I understand what the noble Lord is trying to get at with the amendment and it is better than the Bill as it stands. There are potential issues around it but, if it was passed, we could perhaps resolve them in the future.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said “if shipping becomes heavily regulated”; I can assure him that shipping is already heavily regulated and becomes more so by the week. What I cannot understand about the amendment is that international aviation and shipping includes the movement of passengers by sea and air, so I cannot see any great difference between this and the previous amendment.

The problem with Europe, which has been mentioned, is that shipping is very much an international business. Any moves made locally in local areas are bound to complicate the international situation. I have worked on and off for many years for the Port of Los Angeles in California. Los Angeles and its neighbouring port, Long Beach, are in the vanguard of trying to cut down emissions connected with the ports and all traffic movements in and out of them.

As I said in Committee, they have started a system whereby ships plug into shore power when they are in port. This is fine where shore power is provided mainly by nuclear or hydroelectric sources. Obviously, if the power is provided by coal-fired power stations it does not help very much. They also recently tried to bring in a local regulation whereby ships have to reduce their sulphur emissions within 15 miles of the port. That regulation was thrown out on appeal, with a higher court saying that that was the responsibility of the Federal Government and that local people should not be doing this kind of thing.

That brings me back to what I was saying about shipping being an international business. As I said on the earlier amendment, the International Maritime Organisation is looking with some urgency at this problem. There is no one-size-fits-all as regards shipping and this is causing the problem.

On emissions within Europe, we already have two areas where ships have to cut down the sulphur content in their engines—one in the Baltic and a new one which has just come into operation in the North Sea and the English Channel. So already things are happening. It would be a great mistake, as the Minister said earlier, for shipping to be brought in now before some kind of international agreement can be reached.

My Lords, the question is whether the amendments make it harder to negotiate the international agreements that we all recognise will be needed, whether for aviation, shipping or, indeed, the international movement of goods and passengers.

I rather like the amendment because it sets a realistic timescale—the Secretary of State is required to regulate within five years—and we are assured by the previous speaker that the International Maritime Organisation is tackling this issue with urgency. I would assume, if that is the case, that five years is not going to present a problem. In other words, something ultimately will be resolved in five years. Do not hold your breath, my Lords; I suspect that I may be proved optimistic in that. Again with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, we know that the target is 2012 and it seems that the timescale of five years is appropriate.

I like the amendment because it recognises that we are seeking to allow passengers—indeed, in many ways, to encourage passengers—to travel, but by the least carbon-emitting method. Taking an overall audit comparing maritime, air, rail and road and putting in place policies which encourage the least emitting form of transport seems a desirable objective which the Secretary of State should address in the medium term.

The Minister spoke very convincingly and, as we knew he would, with some passion on the previous amendment about the need to ensure that we did not put in place measures which would put us at a disadvantage with our competitors. I do not think that that criticism can be held against these amendments and I will be very interested to know whether or not the Minister feels that to be the case. I find myself in a great deal of agreement with my noble friend who moved the amendment.

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for moving the amendment. As I am following on from my noble friend Lord Selborne, in some ways there is little more to add. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Greenway. We have had many debates in the Chamber on what to do about international shipping and I suspect that when the marine Bill comes along this issue will be raised again very fully.

The amendment does not tie the Government as tightly as the previous one. We have time, a five-year period, in which to look at it and to see what can be developed internationally. When we have the Climate Change Bill before us, it is a great shame that we do not take the opportunity to use it for the betterment of everyone concerned. On a previous amendment, I said that we should not forget that our Government and our country are taking a great lead on climate change, and not to have something similar to the amendment proposed by my noble friend would be regrettable.

I appreciate that the question of how one regulates it is difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, said in regard to the import and export of goods, shipping often moves through several different phases; it is not only a one-stop journey but will involve other ports of call on the way. Getting around that will be quite a challenge.

The amendment is certainly worth considering. The Minister clearly was not happy to accept the previous amendment, but if he is not able to take on board some of the proposals within the amendment, I hope that when he comes to reply he will give good reasons why not. I felt that his reply to the previous amendment was, “We do not really like it and therefore we are not going to take it on board”. This amendment is slightly more generous and more flexible than the other one and I hope that he will justify more fully why he cannot accept it—if, indeed, he cannot—but obviously our hope is that he will.

My Lords, the arguments against inclusion seem to confuse two completely different issues. The first is whether aviation and shipping should be included in the carbon account. The second is whether we are ready to include aviation and shipping in a system of penalties and incentives such as the ETS. Because the answer to the second is no, we say that we cannot include the emissions in the account. I really do not understand the logic of that. The emissions are the emissions, and that should mean everything that is emitted. There will be a number of categories of emissions that initially will not be strongly controlled or will not be controlled at all, and this is just another of them.

It is not difficult to estimate what the emissions are for aviation and shipping, although it may not be exactly the same metric that we come to use when we get to the ETS. My argument is that we should put them into the account while the work goes on to find a method of controlling them. In the mean time, we will rely, in the case of aviation, on recasting air passenger duty as best we can so that it reflects CO₂ emissions, not simply the number of people, as is already being planned. I would separate out completely what is in the account and the method by which we then seek to control the emissions in question.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, has just said much more gracefully and forcefully what I would have wished to say. I also think the amendment nods gently, and with an appropriately drawn timescale, in the direction in which we ought to be going. I hope that it will be passed.

My Lords, there seems to be a wide measure of consensus in favour of this measure and of moving gently in the right direction, as the previous speaker has just said. I wish to say only that my noble friend Lady Byford is supporting it, and I thank my noble friend Lord Taylor for moving it and for the way he described what we are trying to achieve. I hope that if he divides the House, this way will be the alternative to that proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in his previous amendment, which was not passed.

My Lords, as I understand the amendment, in substance it has two elements to it. One is that it reframes aviation and shipping in terms of passengers and goods and services; and the other is that it inserts the word “must” instead of “may”. I hope I have got that right.

The first of those is an interesting proposition to put before your Lordships. The question is whether that distinction between the movement of people and the movement of goods and services makes more sense than the distinction between the means by which the movement takes place, whether by air or by sea—or, internally, by rail. I will listen with great interest to what the Minister says about that.

With regard to aviation, on many occasions an aircraft will carry both goods and people. International aviation agreements are emerging in Europe, but it would be difficult to have one system of measuring or taking account of the movement of goods by air and another for measuring travel by land to ensure that the emissions are the same, which I understand to be the objective of the noble Lord’s amendment. Either there has to be a system that counts only emissions from air travel—they are calculated on the amount of fuel used and are the same whether goods or people are being carried—or you try to find a way of distinguishing between carrying goods and services and carrying people. I am not making the point very easily. There is an attempt to say that the issue is not of aviation or of shipping, but of moving people or moving goods and services. I am not sure, in practical terms, whether that is a workable process.

I will not comment too much on “must” or “may”, other than to make a general comment about this particular clause and the desire in the Bill—which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, most forcefully expressed in his frustration as he wound up on the previous vote—to say, no doubt in the face of pressures, that we as an individual country must take responsibility for every emission, even if some emissions are best dealt with in an international environment, as within Europe. The clause as it stands gives a great deal of credence to that view. I suggest that it is entirely possible that we could well distinguish between those emissions that we are best at dealing with as a country and those emissions that are best dealt with in international agreements. The latter group should be dealt with in that environment, and we should not pretend that we can say that these are British emissions as opposed to French or German emissions—not least because the emitters will be free to trade in any case, and the actual emissions will be quite beyond our control in international agreements.

The saving grace for me in the clause is that it says those necessary orders “may” be made. I have just a slight concern, although I may have misinterpreted this, that saying “must” means that we must say what the UK emissions are. I shall give the kind of examples that have already been given. If I and my family decide to go to India and do not fly direct from London to Delhi but go via Amsterdam, what are the UK emissions? If a Chinese or American visitor decides that they will be put off by passenger duty and will go to or from their country via Dubai, Paris or Frankfurt, what are the UK emissions? There are real problems here, and the clause does not do a great deal to deter the idea that we should perhaps distinguish between emissions. I suspect that the climate change committee will distinguish between those emissions that fall within an international agreement and those that do not. For that reason, I hope that when the Minister responds to this he is able to cope on the may/must issue. I will be interested to see what his answer to that point is.

My Lords this has been a useful debate. As has been said, there are two amendments here which would make key changes to the Bill. The first, which has been concentrated on to a large extent, would replace the concept of international aviation and shipping emissions with emissions from international passenger travel and imports or exports of goods.It would also put a time limit of five years on the Secretary of State’s ability to exclude the emissions from our targets or require him to come down to Parliament after five years if they had not been included.

I appreciate the spirit of the noble Lord’s amendment. It has just been commented on in the Lobby—votes are useful for having a chat with people—that the amendment is very clever; it is trying to address the practical problems we looked at in Committee. We accept that. For the most part, the amendment grapples with precisely the same issues that I understand the Government grappled with when drafting the clause in the first place. I agree that one possible way of including the emissions in the Bill is through the categorisation described in the amendment; that is, passenger travel or freight.

I assure the House that Clause 25 is drafted sufficiently widely that, should we decide that the amendment is the most appropriate way forward—I have indicated that it has a lot going for it—it would be perfectly possible to define the emissions in the way that the noble Lord suggested. However, there could be practical problems—we will find this all the way through not just the Bill but also the way in which we operate the policies—in relation to transport carrying both passengers and freight; for example, a boat with passengers and freight. The amendment might also risk international rail transport via Eurotunnel being included in measures to combat emissions from shipping and aviation industries on the grounds that Eurotunnel also carries international passengers and freight.

My notes go to greater length, but I do not see the need to go further into them because I am offering practical arguments. Contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, said, I do not do so because I do not like the amendment; I am trying to give practical reasons why we cannot accept it, as I did in the case of Amendment No. 64. I do not want to nitpick this amendment because, as I have said, the noble Lord’s formulation, which we believe can be covered by the Bill as drafted, may—to use an analogy used in another context earlier today—provide a lifeboat for the way in which we come to a solution.

Amendment No. 116 would set a time limit for including the emissions in our targets, or require the Secretary of State to explain to Parliament why they had not been included. I again sympathise with the noble Lord’s intention. As has been indicated in the speeches made, the House shares the desire to tackle emissions from the sectors concerned as quickly and comprehensively as possible. I believe that there is also a strong measure of agreement that they are best tackled internationally; I do not think that anyone is arguing for completely unilateral measures. However, we come back to the same question as to the best way to reflect the points in the Bill in the first place.

I make it clear that we have no problem with the idea of parliamentary scrutiny on the issue; indeed, the Government’s own amendments would strengthen Parliament’s role. The Bill already provides considerable scope for further parliamentary debate on the issues; for instance, in the context of the Government’s orders setting carbon budgets, or amending the level of the 2050 target, which must be passed by affirmative resolution.

However, as we have already discussed, the problem with setting any arbitrary deadline, which is what the five years proposed by the amendment is, is precisely that: it is purely arbitrary. We need to have a better reason for having a deadline that might cause us problems. We do not want to suggest to our partners in the international negotiations that we are being driven by an artificial domestic deadline rather than a desire to achieve the right global solution, as that could cause a problem for our credibility in negotiations. To avoid that risk, we are looking, as we indicated in response to the previous amendment, to maintain as much flexibility as possible to include these emissions when the context is right.

However, I assure the House that we will not delay. When it is possible to move forward, we will do so. For instance, with international aviation emissions, we have already said that once the European Union emissions trading rules have been finalised, we will ask the Committee on Climate Change for its advice on the methodology. The timing for this will depend on progress at EU level, but we hope that the emissions trading rules will be finalised during this calendar year. We do not wish to pre-empt the committee’s advice, but we would expect to be in a position to decide whether to include international aviation emissions in our targets ahead of the second carbon budget under the Bill, which runs from 2013 to 2017. The situation with respect to international shipping emissions is more complex, as we have already discussed, but I hope that my answer provides noble Lords with some reassurance.

We have always said that we want this to be a genuinely transparent process. I can confirm that the Government would be happy to provide regular information to Parliament on progress in the European and international discussions on international aviation and shipping. This should provide greater transparency. I hope that this would reassure both your Lordships and Members of the other place that they would be kept fully and regularly up to date on the international negotiations as they develop. I hope that the assurances that I have provided about our commitment to take action on these emissions will persuade the noble Lord not to press his amendment.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. He has left me feeling that, if only I had time, I could almost convince him to accept the amendments. I think that he can see what we are seeking to do, and I think that he recognises that the Government’s proposals in the Bill cramp the resolution of the problem. Although he said that it is perfectly possible to introduce a system which reflects the terms of the amendments on the basis of the wording that is already in the Bill, I suspect that he can see that the mechanism that we propose has a number of advantages. It is designed to address an area of omission. As the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, pointed out, the omission is that nothing will be on the carbon account until something comes up under the Bill.

The amendment is designed to address not just aviation and shipping; it is designed to include the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar as part and parcel of the United Kingdom’s carbon account. It is designed to do so in a way that clearly recognises the different routes that goods and people take in coming to and going from this country.

It is most important to emphasise that the amendment depends on international agreement no more than the Bill itself. In presenting the Bill, the Minister did not say, “Well, this Bill is dependent upon other countries agreeing to do the same thing”. He quite rightly came to the House and said, “This is taking a lead on these issues. This is actually presenting a new way of dealing with a problem which is international in scope, but in which we can play our part”. I therefore say to your Lordships that it is quite right to try to work with the amendment, in the belief that it will make for better legislation and might encourage the development of international agreement.

My Lords, I feel as though I need to say this because the noble Lord has obviously cut the ground from under me, although I do not want it to be agreed that he has. While the Government are boasting about giving a lead by introducing the Bill unilaterally, without having had international negotiation—as long as one does not count the devolved Administrations—it does not mean that, when we go to the detail of the Bill, requiring international co-operation to get the right methodologies is not the right way to do it. We can be unilateral in giving the lead in introducing the Bill and the concept of the way in which we are trying to deal with climate change, but we need to operate with our international partners on the minutiae of the methodology.

My Lords, I agree with the Minister. It would be far more desirable when we come to the second element of what we are trying to do, which is to find control mechanisms, to have international agreement to implement them. But as the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, pointed out—and he was supported by the noble Lord, Lord May—there are two separate issues. Do you include the carbon polluting elements of the British economy in our carbon accounts or not? If we can find a mechanism that does so in a much more comprehensive way, I think that noble Lords should support such a mechanism. That would not penalise the UK economy, but would lead to mechanisms to encourage the least polluting methods of goods movement and people movement.

I now turn to the second part of what is an important point to emphasise. I have valued the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, to debates throughout the Bill. He got to the heart of the issue and could see the advantages of this way of looking at things. But he too was worried about the “may” and “must” element within this group of amendments. One needs a stick as well as a carrot. Legislation that actually says “must” is a stick, but it is designed to drive the issue. If the issue is not driven there is no incentive for the Government to recognise the seriousness of the issue and they can defer decisions.

On this side of the House, we readily recognise that international negotiations, in the nature of things, mean that sometimes it may not be the right moment. The reason why we have chosen five years is that that takes us into the second budget period. Subsection (5)(b) of Amendment No. 116 states that the Secretary of State must,

“lay before … Parliament a report explaining why the regulations have not been laid within”,

a five-year period. We recognise that there may be circumstances where it is not in the national interest to lay these regulations, but we are obliging the Secretary of State not to take the option “may”, but “must” reason with Parliament about why regulations have not been laid. That is a reasonable balance between pressure within the Bill to come to an agreement on regulations and the Secretary of State's discretion that this may not be the right and proper time to do so.

The amendments would substantially improve the Bill and would be a mechanism that Governments in future would value. For that reason, I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

moved Amendments Nos. 67 and 68:

moved Amendment No. 69A:

My Lords, this amendment adds welcome precision to the annual reporting mechanism. It places a duty on the Secretary of State to outline the net UK emissions of targeted greenhouse gases with respect to the 1990 baseline as well as specifying a baseline amount for those greenhouse gases that are not directly targeted under the Bill as it stands. This is certainly a welcome concession.

We are thankful that the Government have recognised the need to have more robust reports and welcome the amendment. It is obviously important to have the emissions reported against the framework of a baseline year. That is how our yearly progress is ultimately to be measured. When we speak of the reporting mechanisms and how we are to understand our progress, we in this House understand the importance of the figures. However, the numbers that are being reported are not always intelligible to the general public. It is important that the reports have regard to the baseline year so that popular understanding of how progress is measured can be fostered to the fullest extent.

It is also very welcome to see the Government’s move to include the non-targeted greenhouse gases. We understand that all greenhouse gases contribute to climate change to a varying degree. As technology develops, other gases could begin to take a more central role. Thus, understanding the true scope of greenhouse gas emissions, even if they are not being targeted at the moment, will be a useful tool in assessing our progress and our room for improvement in the future. We suspect that in 20 or 30 years’ time, other gases will become more important. Having a robust method of reporting on non-targeted gases will allow us to understand the relationships between our efforts to reduce emissions and the reduction of these gases.

We have a few concerns, and I hope that the Minister will address them. The amendment specifies that non-targeted greenhouse gases will be reported according to a baseline that the Secretary of State considers appropriate. What are the standards of appropriateness? What regard will the Secretary of State have to international agreements? Will he be obliged to follow the lead of international treaties? Why is that not part of the amendment? Does he expect the setting of the baseline date to be done in consultation with the Committee on Climate Change? Would the Minister be willing to give assurances that the Secretary of State will consult the Committee on Climate Change regarding the baseline year for non-targeted greenhouse gases? Importantly, what is the timeframe for establishing the baseline year?

My Lords, we on these Benches also welcome the amendment in general terms, and I would make many similar comments to those of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor—although I will not repeat them—about choosing the baseline year and keeping it in an international context. We would like to see more targeted greenhouse gases, but we will come on to that later.

It is important that all greenhouse gases, by international convention, are measured against a 1990 baseline, and that is recognised in the amendment. But there should be a hierarchy of preferences for new gases so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said, it is the same as international convention. It is much more straightforward if we are able to keep to 1990. Clearly, that will not be possible where records do not exist for that gas at the time, but there should always be a preference to keep the baseline year at 1990 in order to ensure that the whole process is not confused. Even now, we often forget that when we talk about targets and reductions we are referring to 1990 and not to the year in which this Bill is likely to be passed.

My Lords, I am grateful for the support for the amendment. To answer the specific questions, the government amendment covers both greenhouse gases that are included in our targets and gases that are not included. For the greenhouse gases that are included in the targets, Clause 20 sets out a process for defining the base year. We will come to government amendments on this clause shortly, which will strengthen the independent scrutiny of how these powers are used. The second part of Amendment No. 69A relates only to greenhouse gases that are not included in our targets. We are talking only about reporting emissions, not how we count them towards the targets. We think that it is important that the Government should report to Parliament on the emissions of greenhouse gases even if they are not included in our targets, which will ensure the maximum transparency. The amendment ensures that Parliament will get information on emissions in the most recent year and emissions in the baseline year to make comparing the two straightforward.

We have to be realistic about this. This was once hinted at in Committee. Let us suppose that we identify a new greenhouse gas, the by-product of some industrial process that we have not got on the radar at the moment, in 2030. There might not be any information on emissions of that gas as far back as 1990, so a different baseline would be appropriate. Clause 73(3) allows us to include other gases in the Bill and in our reports under the Bill only if there is an EU or international agreement that it is a greenhouse gas. The point is that it is about the safeguards; there will be appropriate safeguards. It is important that we are happy to consider these points. The specific question that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, asked me is not covered in my notes, but to me it beggars belief that the Secretary of State would not consult the climate change committee.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

moved Amendment No. 70:

My Lords, I beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 31 January be approved.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, today we are debating the order that brings into effect two unitary authorities for Cheshire. I am well aware that this decision has raised considerable passion in this House and that is reflected on the Order Paper. We all have an interest in the future governance of Cheshire and, with this in mind and with the indulgence of the House, I hope that I can explain why we have already addressed many of the concerns raised by noble Lords in their amendments to the Motion. It has been a difficult decision, but nevertheless it is a decision which we believe provides the right governance for the people of Cheshire moving forward.

I will deal with this comprehensively, because it is important for the House to know how we have gone through this process and why we have reached the decisions that we have. I will therefore set out the general approach that we have adopted to unitary restructuring and the precise approach that we have taken in assessing this proposal and judging that it meets the criteria. I will also deal with the issues raised in the report by the Merits Committee. I emphasise before I do so that the JCSI, which has a key role in scrutinising legal instruments, has given the order a clean bill of health. I know that many noble Lords have emotional and political ties with Cheshire. Their concerns mirror the fact that we are also very well aware that, with every reorganisation, there comes a degree of local and sometimes historic disagreement, which can be a very unhappy experience for many people.

While the Government set out the case for unitary authorities in the original White Paper, pointing to the confusion and weakness that is inherent in two-tier working when services and responsibilities are split, the choice of the way forward has been entirely a matter for the local authorities themselves. That is precisely what has made this restructuring process different from previous processes. What we have done is to simply invite those principal councils in England that wished to do so to put their own proposals for new unitary structures or enhanced two-tier working to overcome those challenges. Indeed, the option to put forward an enhanced two-tier solution for Cheshire was one of the options open to the councils. In the event, that did not prove achievable. The search for a unitary solution, as noble Lords will know better than I, goes back many years, with many councils believing for some time that a unitary solution was the only way forward. All seven principal councils had an opportunity to come forward with a joint bid for a unitary structure that they could all endorse. Likewise, in the event, this did not prove possible.

In the end, this is a unique situation reflecting the complexity of local government relations in Cheshire, and the geography and political make-up determined that we received three different proposals from the councils in Cheshire. In our judgment, only two of those met the criteria that we set out in our invitation—the proposal for a single unitary put forward by the county council and the proposal made originally made by Chester City Council and then subsequently endorsed and joined by the borough councils of Ellesmere Port and Neston, Macclesfield and Vale Royal for a two-unitary Cheshire.

It is important that I explain the criteria that these two proposals needed to meet and how we made our choice between them. The criteria set out in the invitation were devised to reflect the aim of restructuring, which was to put in place local governance which would best enable an area to achieve economic, social and environmental success. Therefore we set out three criteria which specified what restructuring should deliver. These criteria therefore focused on strategic leadership, genuine opportunities for neighbourhood flexibility and empowerment, and the delivery of value for money and efficiency of public services. That was a judgment about the future—about likely outcomes if the proposal were to be implemented.

However, when assessing a proposal for unitary local government, it is important to consider not only what the proposal would achieve once implemented, but what the change to the new structure would involve. Briefly, would it be worth the candle? Would it have sufficient support locally for the new unitary structure to be a success in delivering quality local services and in enhancing opportunity and prosperity? Therefore, our invitation also set out two criteria that if the change were to be made, it must be a change that would not set up new councils that were designed to fail; and that has meant, first, that those advocating change should show that it was affordable, and secondly that it would have the support of people who would ensure pragmatically that their partnership and commitment would ensure better services, better strategies for the entire community. That is precisely why we chose the form of words that there should be a,

“broad cross section of partners and stakeholders”.

As with the other criteria, the judgments were prospective. In the case of Cheshire, we received two diametrically opposing proposals—one for two unitary authorities, which this draft order seeks to implement, and another for a single unitary authority. We made clear in our consultation paper published on 6 June 2007 that we chose the two-unitary option because we genuinely believe that it would deliver to a greater extent the long-term outcomes that we are seeking. It is important to stress from the outset that this is not a choice on which one delivers greater savings or which one has greater public support. It is about which one can better deliver long-term outcomes in a very challenging environment.

I understand that some noble Lords disagree with our judgment and we have tried wherever possible to listen to, respect and respond to those concerns, but the fact is that opinion remains divided, just as it does on the ground in Cheshire, on the relative merits of the two proposals. I understand the sincere feeling among some noble Lords and the case for delay that we will hear this evening can be argued either because some noble Lords feel that delay would be a better outcome or that they still hold to a preference for a single-unitary option. Both positions are honourable but neither will serve the interests of local authorities now being formed in Cheshire—and neither is open to us today.

I shall go through the criteria. Noble Lords here may say that this proposal is neither affordable nor sensible, and the amendment to be moved by my noble friend Lord Grantchester reflects those concerns. We do not share those perspectives because, for a proposal to meet the affordability criterion, the transitional costs must be expected to be more than offset by the savings that the proposal is estimated to generate and this is expected to be achieved within five years. I shall explain how we arrived at the judgment, which we did not come to alone.

The financial cases for each proposal were subjected to rigorous scrutiny by independent financial experts—ex-local authority chief finance officers—employed by the department through CIPFA and IPF. In the case of Cheshire, as part of our careful examination of the affordability criterion, we identified certain risks to the financial case put forward for the two-unitary bid and requested in August that the proposers of that bid submit further financial information on the viability of their business case. Our financial advisers independently analysed the business case in light of this further information. They undertook their own modelling, making their own assessments, and they concluded that it was right to categorise the proposal as high-risk, but within the safe context that the proposal met the affordability criterion.

The advisers concluded that the levels of savings envisaged in the proposals were not unreasonable and that the business case, even after significant additional risk provisions, still produced ongoing savings of some £16 million a year, which are at the high end of the sort of savings that we have seen in the unitary proposals that have been successful so far. We considered this risk-adjusted figure and a risk-adjusted estimation of the transition costs very carefully, and they are the figures on which we based our decision. They differ from the original bids because they are lower, but they support the conclusion that the proposal is affordable; transition costs are repaid within 3.7 years—well within the five years that we set out as part of the criterion.

Let me conclude on this point by answering a particular criticism that has been levelled at the Government in this House and the other place that we have not released publicly the assessment of our independent financial experts. We decided not to release this report—not just in relation to Cheshire but in relation to all the areas where similar requests have been made—because we consider that it falls under the exemptions in Section 35(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which relates to the formulation or development of government policy, and Section 35(1)(b) relating to ministerial communications. We consider that the public interest weighs against its disclosure, in particular because of the need to preserve the thinking space around Ministers when reaching decisions, to maintain the convention of the collective responsibility of Ministers.

I turn to the issue of support, which is very important and is the subject of the amendments to be moved by noble Lord, Lord Wade, and by my noble friend Lord Harrison. Let me be clear about what the definition of,

“broad cross section of support”,

actually means, as set out in the original invitation. It is, essentially, about whether the new unitary authority genuinely meets its objectives and will work for local people. Again—and this is different from any reorganisation that has taken place in the past—we were conscious of the strain and stress in any change. We knew that the proposals would have to be tested against whether they would work, because they had the support of those, including partners outside local government itself, like the health or police services who would have to make them work.

That is not the same as popular support and that is deliberately the case. We did not make this a test of public opinion; that is, whether we had a majority of public support. We did not base support on whether there was a majority of stakeholders, a majority of local citizens or a majority of some other group of interested persons who supported or approved the unitary proposal. In our original invitation we explicitly recognised that any proposal might not carry consensus from or within all sectors, and that is why we said that no single council or body, or group of councils or bodies, could have a veto. We left it to the local authorities to solicit opinion locally in the way they thought effective in order to demonstrate how the proposal would stand up against the support criteria. The responses we have received to the stakeholder consultation as a result reflect divided opinion, divided politics and divided loyalties.

The two-unitary proposal was originally made by Chester City Council, and subsequently endorsed and joined by the borough councils of Ellesmere Port and Neston, Macclesfield and Vale Royal. Predictably, there was strong opposition from the county council on the basis of its unitary proposal, and from the remaining two districts, the borough councils of Crewe and Nantwich and Congleton. I can tell the House that Congleton’s claim for judicial review was dismissed by the High Court on all grounds in September. Today, we have learned that the appeal has been dismissed unanimously by the Court of Appeal, which has also refused leave to appeal. We welcome this judgment. We urge Congleton, before it seeks to take its claim further, to think very carefully about what course of action is now truly in the interests of their council taxpayers and local communities.

As I said, local polls conducted by the affected councils had varying but predictable results. A poll commissioned by the proposing districts showed a preference for the two-unitary proposal over the single-unitary proposal—23 per cent compared with 16 per cent—whereas a telephone survey conducted by the county council demonstrated 46 per cent of support for a single unitary compared with 22 per cent for the two-unitary proposal. Hostile district councils—for example, Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council—conducted specific polls where the results were also predictably hostile. However, polls were only one of the factors that we took into account in assessing the range and depth of support for a proposal.

Stakeholder support was also predictably variable, with opinion being divided. Although there was a consensus from the majority of respondents in support of unitary local government in principle, it is fair to say that a majority of representations received from public sector stakeholders expressed a preference for the county’s single unitary proposal.

However, as I said, this has not been about a search for a majority. The two-unitary proposal has support from four out of the six district councils and some public sector stakeholders, such as East Cheshire NHS Trust and West Cheshire PCT, and some business and third-sector support, as well as some support from town and parish councils. On that basis we felt, and continue to feel, entitled to conclude that the proposal has sufficient support for it to be able to work.

We believe that support will be bolstered by the fact that the new unitary authorities propose to put in place new local area arrangements which build on established and successful practice in the Chester area. Those will ensure, with the new duty to involve under last year’s local government Act, that local people are represented locally, that they have local influence and that they will be connected in new ways to the new local authority. That is a very important part of what makes these new unitaries “new”.

Our judgment also turned on how closely the new authorities would match the existing economic footprint within Cheshire and therefore whether they or the alternative single unitary would be better able to take advantage of new opportunities and build on the economic realities. Again, we accept that there are differing views about this. The county council commissioned an independent report by the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures, which sought to challenge the notion that east and west Cheshire are component parts of the neighbouring Manchester and Liverpool city regions. The proposing district councils, on the other hand, claimed that the findings in the report lacked hard evidence and that in any event the data in the report could be interpreted as supporting the east-west split. They used travel-to-work journey data to argue that the east and west were self-contained economic units.

We carefully considered all the information submitted to us, and the views represented a range of different positions. We have read the report very carefully and are persuaded that the data in the SURF report was equivocal and that the travel-to-work journey data support the argument that the east and west are self-contained economic units. Furthermore, we believe that the reality now, and in the future, is that the economic drivers of Liverpool and Manchester—and, to a lesser extent, Deeside—will continue to dominate the region and offer greater advantages in the future. As it better matches this economic reality, the two-unitary option offers the possibility of a more focused approach to economic development to take advantage of that. We believe that the single unitary system would not offer those sorts of advantages.

We are also convinced that these new authorities, through effective place-shaping, will be able to channel economic prosperity and influence outcomes throughout their communities, including those to the south that would perhaps consider themselves marginalised from this economic reality. We are convinced that the new neighbourhood and area committee arrangements will genuinely connect people with their local neighbourhood and new councils.

I turn to the issue of deliverability and shall reflect on the Merits Committee report. The committee said that it understood the Government’s wish to achieve an early resolution of uncertainties but suggested that,

“this be weighed carefully against allowing more time to prepare for the establishment of the new authorities”.

We have weighed and considered that carefully. We accept that implementation will be challenging. This is a complex undertaking and there are risks. However, we are confident. We have strong leadership, proper planning and the right level of input and co-operation from all the existing local authorities and stakeholders to ensure that these risks do not materialise.

Strong evidence was presented to the Merits Committee that local government in Cheshire will provide, and is providing with increasing energy and commitment, the necessary leadership. The debate in another place provided further evidence of that. As I said, compelling evidence was presented to the Merits Committee that new councils in Cheshire are co-operating positively and practically to begin the delivery and transition process. Much of the preparatory work is already well advanced.

rose to move, as an amendment to the Motion, at end to insert “but this House calls on Her Majesty’s Government not to proceed with the draft order until the residents of Cheshire have been fully and properly consulted and have been able to express a view on the division of their county.”

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for the rather lengthy explanation that she gave us of how the Government came to this decision. I listened to it with great care. I thought that, if she had come to a different conclusion, she would have said something very similar.

I have lived in Cheshire all my life. My family has lived and farmed in Cheshire for a couple of hundred years at least and I was a county councillor in Cheshire in 1973 when we went through a reorganisation. My family business is in Chester and I have many interests in businesses and organisations—charitable and social—throughout the county. I know it extremely well. I decided to bring forward this amendment and to question the Government’s decision because of the weight of influence that has been brought to bear on me from various parties who are very dissatisfied with the decision made by the Government.

I do not agree that the evidence received indicated a strong view in Cheshire for the two unitary authority solution. Throughout Cheshire, the view is entirely the opposite. There is no strong feeling against the idea of unitary authorities—I personally approve of unitary authorities because they are more efficient, more competent and can more sensibly deliver a range of services to the citizens—but I strongly believe that any change should have the one purpose of producing a better arrangement for the delivery of services to the citizens, to the ratepayers, to the businesses, to those who use all the services of a county council, to the elderly, to those who need social benefits, to education and to schools. Those should be of the best possible order and be delivered by an organisation that is as efficient and as well run as an organisation can be.

The Minister made no comment of any criticism—I do not think that anyone can—of the existing structure within Cheshire County Council, which has run the county extremely efficiently and already delivers some 80 per cent of the services now received by the citizens of Cheshire, covering the whole range of activities for which the council is now responsible.

I am sure that the Minister will agree with me that, over the period of this Government and previous Governments, the responsibilities of councils have increased enormously. I have no problem with that. Local delivery of services is no bad thing. At the same time, however, one must imagine that the greater emphasis on local delivery of services will increase rather than decrease; indeed, history indicates that that will happen. Therefore, for the future we need an organisation that is best fit to deliver those extra services; we need an organisation that attracts the most able leaders in the county, an organisation that attracts the most efficient and capable officers in the county and one that unifies all the activities of the county rather than destroys them.

The noble Baroness referred to those matters that she wishes to create. I am more concerned about what will be destroyed. An organisation to which all the people in Cheshire look as their central body will be destroyed and split into two. One interesting thing that has happened in those areas on the periphery of Cheshire that have been sloughed off into other areas or into their own unitary authorities is that they still think of themselves as Cheshire; they want to be part of Cheshire. It is a long-term, historic county, to which those in it have a great deal of loyalty.

I do not disagree with the noble Baroness when she makes the point that certain groups and certain authorities want to maintain their independence and want to be the new leaders. “They would, wouldn’t they?”, as has been said in the past. That is their role, but that does not mean that that is the best solution. The best solution is one that overrides the local issues, rivalries and prejudices and looks at what is the best long-term decision—I emphasise long-term decision. At the end of her remarks, the noble Baroness said that, if we do not agree this soon, there will be further delay, which will cause disruption. Frankly, I am not worried about a little delay now, provided that we come to the best decision for the people of Cheshire in the future.

The Minister talked about the economic future of the county and how it might be more satisfactory if the county were divided into two units that had their economic allegiance in different areas. I completely refute that scenario. Cheshire is an important economy on its own. Some 70 per cent of the economic employees in the county work in the county; they do not move elsewhere. Some of the finest companies in the UK are in Cheshire. I do not have to tell the House that it is one of the most productive rural counties in the country. It produces great leadership at all levels and has made an enormous contribution to the economy of the north-west. It is extremely important that it maintains a powerful voice in the north-west. By splitting it, we will not add to that opportunity. I do not accept the Minister’s suggestion that the two divisions owe allegiance to other peripheral areas—the two major cities of Liverpool and Manchester—and I do not accept that that will happen in the future. The two major cities of Merseyside and Manchester have their own economies; they are thriving and effective areas, but so is Cheshire.

The noble Baroness is working against what the majority of people in Cheshire want. Her proposal is not wanted by the business community of Cheshire; it is strongly resisted by the rural community in Cheshire and by its very active food production industry; and it does not have the support of all the citizens of Cheshire. I believe that, if we are to go forward as the Government propose, creating a new structure well into the future with the inevitable disruption that will occur, that will not be the best solution. I appreciate her point that sub-committees have been established and are working towards that end—again, “They would, wouldn’t they?”, as that is their role. I have no doubt that they will try their best to make whatever they have work.

Neither have we found out what the financial implications are. The Minister made the point that it is not right for her to give certain information, but if people are to make the right decisions they need to understand the financial implications of these changes. History tells us that, every time we make decisions on the financial costs of local government change, those costs always end up at least twice as much as anyone ever anticipated. I am as certain as I can be that that will happen in this case. The implication of all the little things that the Minister has not mentioned or does not appear to have taken into consideration is that they will cause considerable problems. There are issues that are now dealt with by the county on a centralised basis, which everyone will find extremely difficult to divide into an east and a west.

I return to my original proposal that there must be a much better understanding of the financial implications, which must be transparent and open to everyone. On that basis the people of Cheshire can be asked for their views. Surely if we are to make changes of this kind they need to be of such a quality and such a level that all those affected by them are behind them and can support them. So far, that has not happened.

The noble Baroness makes the point that this is a difficult decision. Well, these are difficult decisions, because she is inundated with all kinds of pressure from all kinds of sources. But leadership must make those decisions away from the pressures, looking at the long-term picture of what is in the best interests of the county of Cheshire and its people. We should look again at the real requirements of our county. I beg to move.

Moved, as an amendment to the Motion, at end to insert “but this House calls on Her Majesty’s Government not to proceed with the draft order until the residents of Cheshire have been fully and properly consulted and have been able to express a view on the division of their county.”—(Lord Wade of Chorlton.)

rose to move, as an amendment to the amendment in the name of Lord Wade of Chorlton, at end to insert “and Parliament has had the opportunity to debate their opinions.”

The noble Lord said: My Lords, let me introduce you to the ancient, proud and historic location of the county of Cheshire and let me introduce you to the strange world of Alice in Wonderland, the creation of one of Cheshire’s finest sons, Lewis Carroll. For tonight the Government plan to take us into Alice’s Wonderland, to wipe the smile off the face of the Cheshire cat and to create two artificial entities of west and east Cheshire: two entities that have no friends, no heart, no history and no bottom, solidity or definition; two entities entirely devoid of that which gives communities and individuals character, place, definition and support. Tonight we forge two entities entirely bereft of location, location, location.

I speak to my own amendment and support that of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, to try to avoid the break-up of this ancient, historic county of Cheshire, itself designated four star and still rising in its ability to respond to the people of Cheshire. Cheshire boasts of its chief executives in speaking of the quality of the people who have served this ancient county, even just over the past 30 years: Sir John Boynton was asked to help the Government out on the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe issue; Robin Wendt went on to work on care provision nationally; Colin Cheeseman is now a member of the Parkinson’s Disease Society; Sir Michael Pitt recently reported on behalf of government on flooding; and Jeremy Taylor. That is the quality that the noble Lord, Lord Wade, was referring to—the kind of quality that will be lost if Cheshire is lost.

I strongly support the principle of unitary authorities. In a new incarnation, Cheshire can rise again as a single unitary. It has the capacity to absorb the 15 per cent of services currently given by the six district councils, because it supplies 80 to 85 per cent of existing work. It is ideally placed to oversee the transition, one of the follies of which is that there is no succeeding authority in existence to allow the collapsing of seven authorities into two. Of course, Cheshire can retain and, in its new incarnation, extend its reputation and its name as a county of bottom and worth—a Rolls-Royce of a county, with a big engine, running smoothly, proudly and effectively at its heart, and a real place.

My amendment to that of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, is designed not only to test the views of the people of Cheshire, but also to debate the matter in Parliament. I shall clarify the case for a single unitary but also plead for a delay, not as a delaying tactic but to ensure, if it is indeed the desire of this House and the other place to have two unitaries, that they are brought in successfully.

The Minister’s siren voice is saying, as we have heard tonight, that delay will postpone elections, that Chester City Council badly needs County Hall now in order to decant its people and that general mayhem will ensue. But the House of Lords is nothing if not the place to flag up dangers to the other House when it perceives them to be real. Indeed, the delay is not of our making. It is imperative, even if you think that the two unitaries are required. It is better to arrive at the best decision than the fastest decision.

The delay is at the door of the Government and the district councils. The Government have hesitated three times in thinking about reorganisation in Cheshire since 2004. Only in July 2007, they dealt with five other unitaries with a clear verdict. However, this time, in looking at Cheshire, they said that what was proposed by the district councils and what was proposed by Cheshire County Council were both viable. They said that the five criteria were clearly passed by Cheshire County Council. Indeed, their problem was with the district councils. So poor and unconvincing were the district councils’ financial returns that the Government asked them to go away and redo the figures. They did not ask Cheshire County Council to do so, because it passed with flying colours.

The Government reopened the matter and invited comments and then, abruptly, on 18 December last year—the last day of term in your Lordships’ House and the other place—they confirmed that they were minded to favour two unitaries over the single unitary. It is not on, with a Parliament that exists to scrutinise the Executive, for the Government to announce such a thing on the last day of term, shortly before Christmas when everyone went away.

It was not only I who was surprised and it was not only Cheshire that was surprised that this decision was made in the dark days before Christmas. The Treasury was surprised, too. When I came back to your Lordships’ House, I opened a letter on 19 January from Andy Burnham at the Treasury, which said that the Government had not decided what to do with Cheshire, that the matter was out for consultation and that we were still going to go through the motions of examining the two possible solutions. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister; when I brought this to her attention, she tried to clear the mess up. However, it was unsatisfactory. If there is delay, it has been brought about by my own dear Government.

However, the district councils’ confusion did not help. The Government made great play of the proposals being from within Cheshire, originally sponsored, of course, by Chester City Council. It was claimed last week in the Commons debate that all six district councils supported the proposals. This is palpably false: Crewe and Nantwich has never supported them; Congleton has never supported them—indeed, we hear of the judicial review that has been requested; and the original sponsor, Chester, no longer supports them, following its change of administration in the town hall. Ellesmere Port and Neston supported them, but tells me that it supported an entirely different proposal, which was to split the county into three unitaries so that it would be Ellesmere Port and Neston plus Chester, although without Vale Royal. It did not see the idea of Vale Royal being part of a unitary, but now it will be part of that unitary. Vale Royal is in turmoil. It supported the proposal on the chair’s casting vote, which resulted in the resignation of a senior councillor who was upset. That leaves Macclesfield. Of course, Cheshire County Council has to be added to the six district councils. It has always been sceptical and, despite the hard work done by its officers and members, attempts to get some co-ordination with the district councils have failed.

Large percentages are against the proposal. If we measure by the number of councils, their spending power and population, we have to conclude that a large majority are against. What about the Government’s criterion of popular and stakeholder—I prefer the phrase “interested party” to “stakeholder”, but I have to use it—support? Crewe and Nantwich financed a countywide IPSOS Mori survey and, within Crewe and Nantwich, a local postal ballot in June 2007, which was approved by IPSOS Mori and scrutinised by external auditors. The countywide telephone survey demonstrated only 23 per cent support for the two unitaries. Some 30,000 postal ballot papers were returned and produced a figure of 5 per cent—one in 20—in favour of the two unitaries. In June 2007, BMG produced a preference survey for Cheshire County Council in which only one in four was in favour of the two unitaries. Since then support has slipped and opposition has mounted.

In last week’s Commons debate, Minister Healey talked about the necessity of providing a broad cross-section of support in Cheshire for these proposals to have two unitaries. Let us look at the broad cross-section of support. Let me name those who broadly support it. Mr Healey quoted AstraZeneca; Cheshire Building Society; East Cheshire NHS Trust; Western Cheshire Primary Care Trust; West Cheshire College; the Highways Agency; and Age Concern East Cheshire. That is it. Contrast that with the opponents: Cheshire Police Authority; Cheshire Fire Authority, of which I shall speak more; the Probation Service; Cheshire Association of Governing Bodies; Cheshire Association of Secondary Headteachers; Cheshire Association of Special School Headteachers; Cheshire Association of Primary Headteachers; Age Concern Cheshire; Merseyside and Cheshire Ambulance Trust; Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT; Cheshire Association of Local Councils; Cheshire Federation of Women’s Institutes; Cheshire Federation of Young Farmers Clubs; Reaseheath College; Age Concern; Cheshire Landscape Trust—I declare an interest; Manchester Airport plc; Cheshire Crimebeat; and the National Trust. I am not sure of the position of the chess club in Chester, but that does not represent a broad cross-section.

Minister Healey also invoked the parish councils. He said that six out of 20 parishes were in favour of the two unitaries. The truth of the matter is, as the DCLG’s paper demonstrated, that of the 53 parishes that replied, 48 were against. The failure to publish the DCLG responses has provoked more concern about the responses of the people of Cheshire to these proposals. We know that there were 906 responses, but the Government have published or allowed us to see only 233. Even the 233 responses from people and institutions in Cheshire show that only 5 per cent—one in 20—are for the proposed two unitaries.

Your Lordships’ esteemed Merits Committee has pronounced on this. It sought only to pronounce on the response. There has already been talk about that this evening. When your Lordships comment on something, the most moderate of language is used. This is a compendium of those who are against the proposals, and it is a source book for those who wish to see why that is the case. This is the conclusion of our Merits Committee:

“We recognise that creating two new authorities to run some of the most complex services, such as child protection and adult care, must pose particular challenges. We understand the Government’s wish to achieve an early resolution of the uncertainties caused by re-organisation, but suggest that this should be weighed carefully against allowing more preparation time for the new authorities to be established, bearing in mind the complexities that have been identified”.

Other noble Lords will speak to that, but children’s and adult’s services are complex issues, with which the members and officers of district councils are unfamiliar. The Minister said tonight that the Merits Committee gave some sort of green light, but I think it is far from that and as deep an amber and as near to red as could be found.

I shall amplify two areas of particular concern that have already been labelled as those that oppose the two-unitaries solution. One is the fire authority. The chief fire officer has been in contact with me because he is worried that the concerns about running a proper fire service in Cheshire have not been recognised by the Government. The fire authority writes that,

“the Fire Authority will be heavily impacted by the changes to the council structures in Cheshire, both from a partnership perspective, and constitutionally … Although earlier Government guidance suggested that arrangements for reconstituting the Fire Authority would be dealt with separately, we feel that it is both inconsiderate and naive of the Government for the Order to be issued without explicitly recognising the impact on organisations which draw their Members from affected Authorities, such as ourselves and the police authority.

Moreover, the inability to spell out what impact the transitional arrangements will have on the Fire Authority and at what point changes will be made to our constitutional arrangements, is likely to damage the objective of establishing strong arrangements for empowering local communities”.

What are the criteria that have been put forward by the Government? Like the new and existing councils, the fire authority will have to ensure continuity of services, despite potential changes to over half the existing membership.

Let me now turn to the schools sector. I very much regret that despite many requests Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, has not met those of us from Cheshire who would have liked to have put him right about these issues. I quote from a letter of 26 February from the All Cheshire Schools’ Heads and Governors Association, which is a very comprehensive group of people. It says that it worries about this hasty transition are the priority of education for the new authority; the new authorities’ financial positions and individual school budgets—they are not known; changes to centrally provided services; and the influence and authority of the directors of children’s and adult’s services. It also says,

“These concerns, are, we believe, causing some schools to lose their focus on raising standards and divert their energies to combating perceived threats. A few of our schools are even considering what we consider precipitate and perhaps inappropriate courses of action to combat those perceived threats. It would therefore be most helpful if the DCSF, as the only currently existing body”—

because there is no succeeding body—

“with ongoing responsibility and authority could provide the reassurances that we seek. But the government must understand that if the finances of the two unitary councils are weak from the outset—and they will be—then the new authorities will inevitably struggle to provide the same services as at present”.

Finally, it states:

“The organisational uncertainty, policy hiatus and central education leadership team changes precipitated by LGR, not to mention an exceptionally challenging timetable for implementation are, however, jeopardising educational standards”.

We are here to listen and we are here to act on that advice.

We heard from the Minister and from Minister Healey that everything is going hunky-dory in the preparation committees, the implementation committees. That, too, is wrong. The leader of Crewe and Nantwich Council states to me:

“Faced with a fait accompli and with the three authorities”—

those proposed in east Cheshire—

“being responsible public bodies, there is an inevitability about wanting to make the best of a dog's dinner. However, he”—

the Minister—

“is utterly wrong that good progress is being made. There is not even yet an agreed implementation plan. He is right that the process is challenging. In all other areas, county councils are absorbing districts and there is a continuity of authority approach. In Cheshire there is no continuing authority and the county council functions need to be disaggregated. There is no precedent for this and yet there is an expectation of working to the same timescales as other new unitary councils. The timescale will be achieved, but not in a smooth fashion and not without great cost, upheaval and distress”.

Interestingly, in her opening address, my noble friend said that there are examples from the past—Berkshire, for instance, in 1974. But when Berkshire was split, it went down to the five existing district councils. Therefore, they had a fair start. Mention of Avon and Humberside is astonishing. They were unloved from the beginning and when there was the opportunity to get rid of them, people were pleased to do so.

We are talking about the county of Cheshire, which has been here for a thousand years. Cheshire County Council is a Rolls-Royce county. It has men and women with huge experience of public service. When it is asked to do something, it attempts to do it. I hear from the county council that officers and councillors are coming in from the district councils who know not what they are taking on, in terms of the sizable services, the implications for children and adult services, or anything else.

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if I draw his attention to the Companion. Paragraph 4.44 states:

“In debates where there are no formal time limits, members opening or winding up, from either side, are expected to keep within 20 minutes. Other speakers are expected to keep within 15 minutes”.

I fear that the noble Lord has now been speaking for 23 minutes and a number of us who are in support of him will find ourselves less so than when he started.

My Lords, I apologise, but in mitigation, I hope that the point that I made right at the beginning will be understood: that we have simply not had the opportunity to put our point of view. Despite other Members of this House having applied repeatedly to the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Education and others, we have not been entertained or given a chance to speak up. I apologise to others and I will try to bring my report to a close, but I hope that the House will understand that there is that strong feeling.

Let me just mention some other areas. If we are to conclude as we are, we will have difficulties with education and children's services. We will have to disaggregate current functions such as highways, libraries, waste, trading standards and tourism. There is even the problem at Tatton Park of increasing bureaucracy and costs.

Let me conclude with some mention of strategic leadership. When I was concerned with Cheshire County Council in the north-west, it was imperative that Cheshire County Council spoke with one voice. Otherwise, we in the north-west lost the gravitational power of Liverpool, of Manchester and of Lancashire. As the noble Lord, Lord Wade of Chorlton, mentioned the report from Salford University, which routs the proposition that somehow Cheshire in the west and Cheshire in the east gravitate towards Liverpool and Manchester, whereas in fact they have a unique, strong and thriving economy within themselves, I will not repeat that.

In conclusion, in my amendment I have sought to add to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Wade of Chorlton, that it ought to be discussed here as well as taking the views of the people of Cheshire. I am prepared to withdraw my amendment, and I remind my noble friend that this is not a fatal amendment, but an amendment from the heart of the people of Cheshire, who do not want their county disaggregated, but who want more time than the 20 minutes accorded tonight to say, “Think again”, even if it is only to think again about how we produce two unitary authorities. That opportunity should be taken, and be taken tonight. I beg to move.

Moved, as an amendment to the amendment in the name of Lord Wade of Chorlton, at end to insert “and Parliament has had the opportunity to debate their opinions.”—(Lord Harrison.)

My Lords, when the Victorian county boundaries were settled, those responsible tried to follow natural boundaries as far as possible. In the case of Cheshire, that was the River Tame, the River Mersey, the Derbyshire hills and the Welsh border in particular. The church followed that, so the Diocese of Chester, when it was formed in its modern size, followed the Victorian county of Cheshire.

In 1974, there was radical change, with about a third of the diocese, in population terms, moving into the new metropolitan counties of Merseyside and Greater Manchester. Subsequently, there was the formation of Holton and Warrington unitary authorities, spanning either side of the Mersey. So modern Cheshire is about half what it was until 1974. The past 30 years have seen further evolution in the former areas of Cheshire, with the demise of the metropolitan county structure and the emergence of the unitary authorities of the Wirral, Tameside, Stockport and Trafford, which impinge in various ways on the old county.

My diocese now comprises the current county of Cheshire plus the various areas which have been affected by that series of reorganisations. My ministry has been across all those areas for the past 11 years and I have learnt to love, respect and serve them equally. One conclusion that I have drawn is that, when it comes to local government, it must be local and relate to local realities, beliefs, practices, traditions and aspirations. People do not want a sense of local government being imposed roughshod against the will of local people.

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment on the Order Paper. It is true to say that debate over local government reorganisation in Cheshire has raged between the local authorities for more than a year. The decision has gone to replays and extra time, and many are now of the view that we must get behind the Government’s decision. However, this is not the preferred option of Cheshire residents generally and I support all the comments made by my noble friend Lord Harrison and the noble Lord, Lord Wade. Indeed, we three Cheshire Peers have been agreed together, as with the business community and the majority of stakeholder responses, in supporting the county council’s proposal for a single unitary authority. Throughout the debate I have been very encouraged by the Minister. She has listened and has taken forward several reports and submissions that I have introduced to her and to her colleagues in another place. It is very disappointing that all three Cheshire Peers have struggled to get audiences with Ministers on their case.

The Government have judged the two submissions for unitary authorities on five criteria; namely, affordability, strategic leadership, stakeholder support, empowering local people and communities, and the quality of public services. The submission for a single unitary authority wins on every one, and in the most comprehensive fashion on the affordability criteria.

The affordability case put forward in the submission for two unitary authorities has been the subject of several challenges. Throughout the review process, the county has expressed deep reservations about the financial robustness of the two-unitary option. Indeed, there has been a constant shifting of the figures. The final figures submitted on 1 October 2007 have served only to intensify this concern. The transition costs have increased from £16.6 million to £23.7 million, with the ongoing savings reducing from £30 million to £23.5 million. The Government are less than confident on those figures and have admitted that the objective of creating two new unitary authorities cannot be achieved within the cost and savings envelope set out in the original proposal. The Government called in the IPF. This is highlighted in the Explanatory Memorandum to the order, which imposes new expectations of costs and savings on the shadow authorities. This has been done on the basis of advice received from the IPF, which has not been made public.

The county council was assured of transparency in the assessment process and the conclusion that can be drawn is that the Government have perhaps less confidence in the IPF report than they claim. The new figures change the whole basis of the implementation process. They call into question any conclusions of Deloitte, which was appointed to carry out a risk assessment on behalf of the district councils.

Surely, the ratepayers of Cheshire should be able to assess the assumptions, the assessments and the working figures of the IPF report which it used to reach its conclusion. This is the basis on which I put forward my amendment in the absence of this report being made fully available. It is now clear however that no matter whether we look at the independent review from Local Government Futures—the assessment done on behalf of the county—or the assessments done by the department, the impact of this reorganisation will be costly. The county will be divided into two. Both unitaries will be faced with direct economic problems and they will both lose money.

The Local Government Futures review investigated the potential impact of any local government reorganisation in April 2009 on the allocation of the formula grant within the county. Under the current needs-based national methodology, the report concluded that the west Cheshire unitary would be entitled to £82.7 million for formula grant and the east £54.1 million. However, the proposed two-unitary model allocates only £76.4 million to the west and £60.4 million to the east. This local agreement deprives the west of £6.3 million of formula grant per annum for each of the next three years—the equivalent of almost 2.5 per cent on council tax. Effectively, this funding has been permanently lost in the form of a financial subsidy to the east, as in three years’ time the national grant distribution formula will be applied to the two unitaries using their locally agreed allocation as the base. The latest information from the Department for Communities and Local Government would seem to confirm the intention to recalculate the formula grant in this way.

It is unrealistic to assume that one authority will agree to provide a substantial financial subsidy to the other; it could be in breach of an authority’s fiduciary duties to its council tax payers. For the new unitary in the west, there would be genuine concern that the richer east, as defined through the objective needs-based formula, is being subsidised to the tune of more than £6 million per annum on a permanent basis. It is difficult to see how this would be acceptable to the council tax payers of Cheshire West and Chester, who would be paying this subsidy through higher council taxes and/or reduced services. For the new unitary in the east, the concern would be the unenforceable nature of this local agreement. Clearly, if the national formula is used instead, this would result in the east losing out by £6 million compared to the current submission by the districts. That would only add to concerns over the financial viability of the districts’ submission for the east.

It is vital that a full, independent financial assessment is undertaken when the county council’s view points to a frightening scenario. Reserves are overstated and would be insufficient to meet the cash flow requirements of reorganisation. The two new unitaries would in effect be expected to run out of money in the first year of operation. Far from achieving the required five-year payback, the proposed solution would now cost some £103 million and, therefore, fails to meet the affordability criteria. Both new authorities will begin life with inadequate finances to sustain existing service levels and are highly dependent on quick transformation. The objectives of the reorganisation and of the order are unlikely to be achieved.

My Lords, not for the first time, Members of your Lordships' House, including myself, have received a lot of letters and telephone calls from individuals and organisations who feel that their voice has not been heard and that they have not been given the opportunity to express their views. I am delighted to have the opportunity to give voice to some of those views, as have other noble Lords.

Those individuals and organisations believe that this is a carve-up which has been steamrollered through another place and which the Government intend to steamroller through to implementation and would steamroller it through your Lordships’ House had they not found such a lot of opposition tonight. I agree with them. They also believe that the Government’s refusal to reveal the financial basis of the decision is also a cover-up, with which I also agree.

I oppose the order and I support the amendments for four reasons. First, some of the assumptions are flawed. I shall give three from a letter to the chief executive of Cheshire County Council, which states:

“Cheshire would be too big for a unitary county council. There was a natural line dividing east from west … cities provided the best form of local government”,

for Cheshire. Those assumptions are completely flawed. First, there are 12 counties and unitaries that are bigger than Cheshire on any criteria that one might like to look at. Are they to be split as well? Secondly, on the natural dividing line, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester has made it clear that there is no such natural dividing line. As a long-time resident of Cheshire, I very much agree with that. Thirdly, the idea that the cities of Liverpool and Manchester provide the focus for local government for rural Cheshire is completely ludicrous. The needs of a shire county are very different from those of a city.

My second reason is that I believe that there is the tiniest amount of public support and organisational support for this proposal. It is delusional of the Government to think that there is “sufficient support”. There is not. I shall not go through all the figures quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, but they speak for themselves. It is nonsense to say that we want to consult local people and then not ask them properly, and certainly not listen to them. In another place the Minister listed seven organisations which support the proposals we are debating tonight, but the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and I have a list of 19 organisations that are against it.

My third reason is one that noble Lords would expect from me. I am very concerned about schools and children’s services. Many noble Lords will have received letters from every single head of organisation in Cheshire and every single one expressed severe concerns. I have also heard from the Cheshire branch of the NUT. I shall give just two reasons out of the many cited. At present, we have a director of children’s services who has overall responsibility for the implementation of the very ambitious Every Child Matters agenda. Now it is proposed that we have one director of children’s and adult’s services. That is simply not good enough; the agenda is too big and the magnitude of the task too great for one person, and I fear that children’s services will suffer. The second reason given is school budgets. This Government sensibly announce school budgets three years ahead so that schools have stability and can plan properly. Because we have no continuing authorities under these proposals, schools will not be able to do that.

Finally, the timescale is completely mad. We have here an unprecedented reorganisation, the third for Cheshire in 15 years. I do wish Governments would leave Cheshire alone to get on with it. Cheshire provides a very high quality education, and always has. I used to be a member of a school governing body in Cheshire, so I know that from my personal experience. To suggest that you can go through a change such as this one, a change that is totally unprecedented, in the same timescale as some of the other reorganisations that have been proposed is quite barmy.

My Lords, I rise simply to express my full support for Amendment No. 1. The arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wade of Chorlton, in support of his amendment are compelling and I do not think it is either necessary or helpful for me to repeat them. Whether in the end the decision is adhered to and the Government’s proposal is accepted, the arguments in favour of a fuller and further inquiry, as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, seem to be incontrovertible. If they are not incontrovertible, at least there is a strongly arguable case for what the noble Lord has proposed. I strongly support him. If his amendment is accepted, it would follow that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, also has great strength and merit. I would support it as well.

I hope that occasionally in this House brevity can be forgiven, but I do not think it would help to repeat anything said by the noble Lord, Lord Wade.

My Lords, I have listened to the debate with great interest and three questions have come to mind. The first is the question of the release of any independent financial assessment. Another was touched on by the right reverend Prelate: will these proposals meet the needs of local people, especially the rural population? The third is that, unless I misheard her, I thought the Minister said that some of the data were equivocal. If all those questions arise, it seems to me that the Government should think again, particularly with respect to the second question about the needs of local people. Moreover, the equivocal nature of the data is an important aspect. I do not wish to extend the debate with my comments but I strongly support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Wade.

My Lords, I will not be supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, or the additional amendments tabled by my noble friends. I do not know Cheshire well enough to be in any position to speak, and it would be impertinent of me to talk about boundaries and the particular alignment of districts, the political history, and the changes of political control which have produced alternative voices on reorganisation issues. But perhaps I may make a few comments about the process as I understand it from the papers I have studied and the careful attention I have paid to the debate tonight.

I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and my noble Lord Harrison on their instinctive feel for the history of the historic county of Cheshire, but I understand that the county of Cheshire is not being split into two. That somehow assumes that only the county is a local authority, and that it is being divvied up in some way. In fact, under this order, seven councils are to become two councils. Moreover, the notion that Cheshire has been an unchanging historic entity over the centuries does not conform to my understanding. Changes have already taken place in the historic county of Cheshire, in 1974 and again in the mid-1990s with the Banham review, when I believe my noble friend Lord Hoyle successfully won the case for Warrington being given independent unitary status. These things change over time as populations and business pressures change, and as needs alter.

I understand that there was always the option of no change at all. My honourable friend in the other place, Mr Healey, extended an invitation to local authorities, saying that it was up to them whether they responded to seeking the unitary structures that, like the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I support. I believe the county council initially proposed a unitary council and that as a result, some of the alternative proposals for two or three unitaries, were brought up—

My Lords—

My Lords, my noble friend made a very long speech and I hope that I will not be trespassing on the House if I try to pursue my argument. I do not want noble Lords to be kept for too long.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Wade, I agree with the sympathies for a unitary authority, but Cheshire has not been untouched over the years. I think it is therefore reasonable to look at whether the proposed changes will offer the best value for the citizens of Cheshire. Recent research has been circulated by boundary committees in other local authorities which tries to connect the size of a local authority with its performance. It is based on best value performance indicators, comprehensive performance assessment value-for-money indicators and so on. Obviously the results are ambiguous, with some going one way and some the other, but it is clear from the report that in general, once a population goes beyond 450,000 to 480,000 there are real diseconomies of scale in some services. The two proposed unitaries would be for populations of around 320,000 and 360,000 respectively and are therefore the optimum size, based on recent published research. Cheshire, with a population of some 650,000, goes well beyond the optimum.

I take the point made by the noble Baroness that many unitary authorities are larger than Cheshire. However, this is not just about numbers. It also concerns geographical spread. In that sense we cannot compare a county with a densely populated, compact city. There is a real problem, if you have solely a unitary county, of whether at the end of it you have anything that could be called “local” government.

The research also shows that the cost/benefit savings between two-unitary option and the single-unitary option are about the same. It is clear, as my noble friend has explained on previous occasions when we have considered orders of this kind, that this is not about head-counting, but seeing whether there is sufficient support on a well-informed basis, including the business community, for the changes proposed to make them workable. The fact that considerable evidence in the other place showed that the existing authorities are beginning to work well together to deliver these objectives seems to suggest that my noble friend’s more pragmatic approach is a more valid one.

Finally, we have heard from the courts today. The judicial review and the appeal process both support the Government, so the courts are saying that there is no reason for delay. I suggest to your Lordships that further delay and possible further doubts about how the future may go will serve only to dislocate a process to the disadvantage of services and staff, of the citizens of Cheshire, and of the resulting follow-on authorities. I hope that noble Lords will agree with that approach and not seek further to delay the order tonight.

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, reminded us that this is as much about geographical spread as optimal numbers. However, it is also about the realities of people’s loyalties; their understanding of where they belong and with whom they identify.

The noble Baroness also said that this was not a split into two, but that is not the perception of those who live in Cheshire, which I do not. But I have listened with great respect to those Peers from Cheshire who have spoken and, certainly from the correspondence that I have received, I am very clear that people see their county being dismembered for research which may or may not be valid but which certainly does not take into account the reality, as people see it, on the ground.

In her opening statement the Minister made it clear that the forces which are leading the Government to choose the two unitary authorities revolve around affinity to the large cities of Liverpool and Manchester, to the west and to the east respectively. As the right reverend Prelate said, the people of Cheshire do not see themselves as outlying citizens of city areas. If I lived in Cheshire, which my family did at one time—my mother’s family—and still do, I would be outraged at the idea that the county should be seen as something merely to support the vibrant economies, which certainly they are, of Liverpool and Manchester. It is a disgrace that Cheshire can be designated to the outlying areas of these two great cities.

I agree that brevity is very important on this occasion. I wish to make it very clear, if I have not already, that I very much support my noble friend Lord Wade.

My Lords, I start by apologising to the Minister for missing the first couple of minutes of her introduction—she seemed to slip her leash a little early—but I got the gist of what she was saying in the remainder of her speech.

It has been 40 years since I lived in Cheshire. I do not claim to be a Cheshire person but, after listening to the debate and the contributions from around the House, I find it difficult to make many points of contact with anyone who has been speaking about anything. I was concerned whether I should say anything at all because I disagree with everyone. The person with whom I came nearest to finding points of contact was the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, who introduced a degree of reality into the debate and an understanding of the background of local democracy and what it is all about. I agreed with about a quarter of what she said, perhaps a little more.

I cannot support the concept behind the amendments that if there is to be a reorganisation to unitary authorities in Cheshire it should be a unitary county. Cheshire consists of many towns of different sizes and kinds—vibrant towns in many cases—and large areas of contrasting countryside; the idea that a unitary authority over such a large area is the ideal form of local government does not seem to be right. In fact, I would challenge whether such an authority could any longer be called “local”.

Manchester has fewer people than the new Cheshire would have, but big cities such as Birmingham, and perhaps some others, are communities in themselves. Cheshire consists of a vast constellation of communities, many of them interlinked in a complex way. Indeed, there is no point in pretending that there are not many people in Cheshire, particularly in the north-east and in the west, who look to Manchester and Liverpool as their main centres of employment—it is where they commute to—and they have moved out. They are part of those economic regions. But that is not an argument for incorporating them in city regions. Indeed, in parts of the south of Cheshire people would look to Stoke-on-Trent, and to Newcastle, perhaps, in some areas.

The questions of what kind of place Cheshire is is crucial. I do not like these proposed two new unitaries which seem not to make a great deal of sense. If you are going to divide Cheshire into two, that might be the best way to do it, but we are back to the obsession of this country with local authorities having to be larger than in any other part of the democratic world. We already have the largest local authorities in the democratic world and the Government are trying to make them even larger. I oppose that general trend. That is why I cannot support the Government in their Motion, but I certainly cannot support the amendments, which would make it far worse.

On the question of timescale and delay, if this is going to happen it is important to have elections as soon as possible. That is what is happening here—although not in all the new unitaries—so at least the people who are setting up the new authority have got democratic accountability and credibility. The decision to go for early elections is right, although it causes all political parties—not least my own—great difficulties. If you are going to do it, 12 months is long enough.

In 1973-74 the whole of local government in England—apart from Greater London—was reorganised. It was all two-tier; there was an upper tier—the counties—and the metropolitan areas. Everywhere outside Greater London was reorganised and it was not a disaster; it happened very efficiently in many areas. Many counties were set up that people thought were abominations and it is an interesting observation that the councils which have not been successful and have not taken off, whether at county level or at district level, were artificial creations. Places such as Tyne and Wear, I think it was called, and Avon were totally artificial creations and they were abolished. Of the districts which were created—south-east this and north-west that and places that had to be invented with funny names which people did not know before the district was created—some have been successful and many have not.

I worry that authorities have to be given names such as East Cheshire or Cheshire East, West Cheshire or Cheshire West and Chester because you cannot think of sensible names to give them that people would know referred to that particular area.

My final point is that local democracy and local government in this country are in crisis. Most of the debate has been about efficiency, economics, loyalties to areas and so on. The Minister talked about what really mattered being the long-term outcomes. I do not say for a moment that these things are not crucial; you have to have what is now called best value, efficient structures and structures that make sense in an economic way. However, no one has been talking about local democracy. The vision of what local democracy in this country ought to be about in future is something we all ought to start talking about seriously.

One of the problems with local democracy is that it needs councillors. Reorganisations that reduce the number of elected councillors mean that everyone has to represent more areas and spend more time doing what councillors do on the council rather than in the community. That is an erosion of my vision of local democracy.

Towns are important places when it comes to civic involvement, civic culture and, if you like, civic vibrancy. It is the towns, by and large; I am not saying that villages do not have their own institutions, society and all the rest of it since they clearly do, but the civic culture of this country—the word “civic” shows this—is based essentially on towns. It is always towns that give the lead. The problem with lumping towns together in hotchpotch authorities—even quite large towns that have a real sense of civic pride and civic involvement, whether Macclesfield, Crewe or Ellesmere Point—is that some of those towns will lose out in terms of status and future involvement. Many of the casualties of previous reorganisations, particularly the one in 1974, were towns that had a vibrant civic culture but lost it. Keighley, for example, was forced screaming into Bradford, and a great deal of its problems since then have been because it lost its civic culture and has had nothing; it became just two or three wards in Bradford. There are towns like that all over the country that got taken into hotchpotch, larger, amalgamated local authorities in 1974. What worries me about somewhere like east Cheshire or west Cheshire is that that is the fate that awaits some of those towns, which might not be resilient enough to avoid it.

I am advised by my party that I should abstain on all these things, although I do not like abstaining on anything. I would happily vote against this order and kick it out, but I am told that that would be hot-headed and I should not do it. I am advised to abstain, and that is therefore what I shall do.

My Lords, the Minister must be relieved that we are at the end of the current batch of orders, because they get more controversial as they go along.

We on these Benches support the principle of unitary government. However, it is a question of process. It is disingenuous of the Minister, however, to talk about this as a bottom-up process. The Government set the ball rolling, they have set all the frameworks within which these decisions have been made and they have made the decision to give Cheshire the two-authority solution. It is even more disingenuous to pretend that somehow it is the councils themselves that have come up with this solution. If local authorities were able to work together and share a vision for local government in their area, we would not be talking about local government review at all; we would live in a sort of two-tier nirvana where everyone worked well and the citizens all knew what everyone did. It is precisely because of the rivalries between councils that two-tier working has problems, and that is why we have this process now. To pretend that we can leave it all to the local councils and that what emerges is consensus is quite clearly flawed from the outset.

All the financial information, and all the ways in which support has been expressed and assessed, has been provided by local authorities that have a vested interest in the outcome. What has been lacking is any sense of how the Government have assessed all that. Among the public and what the Government like to call the stakeholders, there is no real sense of confidence about how the Government have assessed the information they have been given by local authorities. The Government have made that even worse by claiming an exemption from freedom of information when it comes to the financial aspects. Just because you can claim an exemption from freedom of information does not mean that you should. In this case, more transparency would have done a great service to this process by showing the basis on which these decisions were made.

I share many of the concerns that were expressed by the noble Lords, Lord Wade and Lord Grantchester, about the way the costings have been done. It has been suggested that the transitional costs are about £17 million and the efficiency savings about £30 million. It is a highly optimistic payback period. When we debated the other orders last week, I asked the Minister what would happen in the event of those calculations being inaccurate. She made it very clear that it would be for the councils themselves to deal with the fallout from that; in other words, if councils have got their sums wrong, whether through overenthusiasm to make their case or because they do not understand the big services, it will be local people who will be hit by a combination of council tax rises, cuts in services or both together.

The Minister has said strongly that the figures have all been independently verified and are all robust. If they are so robust, why are the Government not prepared to underwrite these costs? Why are they saying that it has to fall back on the councils? I fear that the district tier always underestimates the challenges involved in providing education and social care; they are services on a scale of which that tier has no experience.

My Lords, if we have listened to a classic tale of how things should not be done, then this is it. When I was in local government, we used to have an apocryphal tale of how Governments came to conclusions on anything. It ran along the lines that a problem was perceived, which was soon identified across the department. Eventually, some bright little clerk at about the fourth tier would say, “Well, my gosh, this is a solution”. He would talk to his superior, who would say, “Yes, by gosh, that might work. That’s a solution”. And he would talk to his superior, who would talk to the Permanent Secretary, who would talk to the Minister. And that was that. Of course, I am sure that that is not what is happening here.

What we have been talking about, tragically, is process. This is the end of the process. I hope that, when we get to the end, the noble Baroness will say, “Well, these are non-fatal amendments and, in fact, the order will be implemented”. It seems to me that, whatever we say tonight, that is going to be the reality, which we unfortunately have to recognise. If the Minister is going to say anything else, I shall be very surprised.

Other counties or areas are climbing up this greasy pole. The real question is whether the process is sufficient and sufficiently robust. Here, I come to the conclusion that the Government have been at fault, because they have not released sufficient information to the public for them to be persuaded. If one has listened to the whole of this debate, it is clear that, as people increasingly realised the implications of what was being proposed, opposition to those proposals strengthened. That is not unusual, but the problem is that there is no mechanism within the system to allow that opposition to have explanations or, when the opposition is as strong as it is in this case, to change the decision. This decision has not changed one iota, as far as I can see, from the original proposition. The Government will of course say that they invited proposals and they got these proposals. But the problem for the Government is that they then choose the wrong conclusions. The difficulty that they have is that they cannot get off that hook.

This is not a happy situation to be in. One report that I saw said that the process corrupts the body politic. That is a highly opinionated report and I would not give it any greater credence than that, but it is written by academics. We should never as a Government allow ourselves to get into a position where that could be an academic view of what was going on in government. It is incredibly damaging to the whole structure—everything that we do and that we stand for as a House of Parliament.

This is a mess and nothing we do tonight will change that. We can—and I hope that we will—pass one of these Motions, because that is the only protest that we have and the only possibility that we have to make the Government process more sensitive in the future. I am sorry for Cheshire. I have listened to the story and I am all too familiar with the territory—not with Cheshire as a county, but with what has happened. That die was cast a long time ago and it is a warning to other authorities in the country that they need to look at what has happened to Cheshire. They need to examine what has been said in this debate tonight and then think very carefully about where they really want to go in the future. Counties already involved in this process will have to look at that and take a decision, but I hope that they will be more fortunate than the county of Cheshire.

My Lords, this has been, predictably, a hotly contested and passionate debate. It is no surprise to me that the loyalties expressed about the county of Cheshire were done so in the tone and language that noble Lords used. I think that we agree on much of what has been said. Certainly, we all want the best for Cheshire. When it comes to the point, however—and I pay tribute to the excellence of Cheshire County Council, to which tribute has been paid throughout the House this evening—the Government have to make a decision. Ministers have to show leadership, just as the noble Lord, Lord Wade, said. We have made a choice, which does not command the support of many of your Lordships, but which we genuinely believe on the best of evidence is the one that stands the best prospect of actually delivering outcomes. I will not repeat what I said in a long opening speech. I will just make a few points, primarily about the deliverability.

My Lords, the Minister has reflected again on the position that the Government have taken, but the Government's decision was not based on consensus in any way at all. I hesitated to speak in this debate because I do not come from Cheshire, but the Minister cannot claim that the Government are doing this with the consensus of the people because, clearly, they are not.

My Lords, I did not claim that in my opening speech and I have not claimed that in any debate on any of the unitary authorities that we have had so far because the invitation that was issued specifically said that we would not seek consensus and we would not look for a majority decision. I will come on to that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, “Why don’t you simply leave Cheshire alone to get on with it?” We would have been very happy if Cheshire had wanted to get on with it. There was absolutely no pressure at all on Cheshire to come forward with any proposal, as my noble friend Lady Hollis said. It could have adopted enhanced two-tier status. That would have been perfectly proper.

I also take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. We were not disingenuous about there being a consensus. This was a genuine response by the local councils in Cheshire and there were two contradictory responses. That is what we were faced with. We were in a unique situation. We had to make a judgment on that basis. The two unitaries solution was proposed by those local councils. It was not imposed and was not of our design. It was put forward to us as a democratic choice.

I have heard apocalyptic language this evening. I shall explain why I think that noble Lords ought to have confidence in the people of Cheshire, in the local officers who are developing the proposals and will take them forward and in the committed local councils. For all the reasons given by noble Lords, Cheshire is a powerful idea. It has a long, complex and changing history, as the right reverend Prelate told us. I understand that Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame came from Daresbury—a unitary authority, which is interesting to reflect on. There has been a history of change, as there has been across this country. I come from East Sussex, a powerful and terrific county, but that does not make me any less conscious of the identity and history of Sussex itself. For all the reasons given by noble Lords, I cannot believe that what has been suggested will be Cheshire’s fate, either. It is too powerful a county. We are looking at a way forward that enables east and west Cheshire to take advantage of what is offered and not to be driven by cities or confused by them, as some noble Lords suggested. All I am saying is that economic opportunities may more easily be realised by having two counties that can take advantage of what is on offer in a more focused way. No one is suggesting anything other than that.

Noble Lords challenged the process. However, this was the most thorough process that we could have invented. It was open from start to finish. It proceeded by invitation and went through two stages of consultation. The financial information that was presented was returned twice to be reviewed and was then independently assessed. I can only repeat the reasons that I gave with regard to the Freedom of Information Act about why we thought it better to preserve Ministers’ capacity to take advice and make decisions. That is a very important principle. However, the process was very open and, as I said, the result proves that the measure is affordable.

I turn to why we think that this will work. There was broad but not popular support; we have not made that defence. All the polls that were taken threw up a different result. However, there was support from sufficient partners—people able and willing to deliver successful change. We made no further claims, but that was what influenced our decision. We think that the measure will work, given those critical partners, which include industry, some rural parishes and towns. We also think that it will work because it meets the affordability criteria, as I said. I also believe that it meets the criterion of local democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, brought that out in his positive speech. We will have two new authorities but within that there will be new local arrangements for local connections and local identities. Those local identities will build on present identities and enable them to flourish. I believe that we have that balance right.

My Lords, I have already been admonished for the lack of brevity of my speeches tonight, so I shall take inspiration from Raúl Castro rather than from Fidel Castro in the length of what I have to say. Only three points have been made, so I can keep it brief.

First, I thank my noble friend for summing up, but I remind her that, when the Government asked the district councils to look again at the financial implications of their case and when they put Deloitte in charge, Deloitte was surprised by the poor and threadbare nature of the debate. Indeed, they found that 28 of the 33 financial assumptions were above or beyond average risk.

Secondly, I was intrigued by what my noble friend Lady Hollis said. She said that, as she had little knowledge of Cheshire, she wanted to make some general comments. However, she went on to say that Cheshire County Council, of its own accord, brought forth the proposal for the unitary authority. I can assure her that Cheshire County Council made every effort to get agreement on the proper way forward among the seven councils involved. It was only when no consensus emerged that Cheshire County Council decided to propose a unitary authority, which was glowingly accepted by the Government.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was the only voice against everyone. His memory of Cheshire is good. It is a patchwork of towns across a principally rural county. The advantage of the Cheshire County Council proposal was exactly that, under the overarching county, the ambition to set up five local boards would have had the effect of meeting and greeting local communities in a superior way to the existing example. Neston and Parkgate, with Ellesmere Port, would be separated and responded to. Crewe and Nantwich, famously locked together, would each be able to speak for themselves. The same would apply to Northwich and Winsford. Cheshire is essentially a centripetal county, not a centrifugal one. The Government have argued all evening that somehow it is disappearing across its borders. However, people want to come and join Cheshire because it has locus, or location. It means something.

I have every hope and belief that the county officers, if this decision is taken, will take on the burden and responsibility of dissolving the councils. They will do that because they are professional, right down to the bottom of their boots. I shall withdraw my amendment to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wade of Chorlton, in the hope that your Lordships will support his amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment No. 1A, as an amendment to Amendment No. 1, by leave, withdrawn.

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate, in which the views of the majority of this House have been made very clear. I appreciate that the Government are in a difficult position, but it is of their own making. This is the first time that we have had an opportunity to hear the views of Members of this House and it is the first time that we have had an opportunity for the views of noble Lords from Cheshire to be expressed on these matters. Judging from the views of Peers in this House, and taking into consideration the views of the vast number of people in Cheshire who are extremely concerned about this, I would like to test the view of the House.

moved Amendment No. 71:

My Lords, the amendment shortens the timeframe within which the annual report must be laid. Instead of waiting until March of next year, the amendment brings it back to December and we support it.

I am sure that the Minister understands our concerns. Two years is a long time, and it seems absurd that the Government cannot get the figures together in a more timely fashion. March is now upon us. Had this Bill come into effect years before, we would this month be debating the annual report for 2006. Since then, there have been three different Secretaries of State for Defra, as well as a new Prime Minister. If we are to have real government accountability, the Government need seriously to consider the amendment.

There is always a risk with the measures under this Bill that we will find out about what is happening long after it has been done. The effectiveness of accountability is inversely proportionate to the length of time between the end of a period and the report on that period. Shortening the timeframe necessarily strengthens the accountability. We do not want the report to become overshadowed by political spin. Having a report published in the second year would allow Ministers the chance to claim that the problems of the previous two years were no longer important or germane. It is thus extremely important that the timeframe is shortened.

Will the Minister explain the circumstances that might lead to such a delay? Will he be specific about the sorts of things that need to be carried out to assemble the report and outline how long each aspect is anticipated to take? I expect there will be much discussion about the collection of data. I ask the Minister for some examples. Can he explain the nature of the data collection with regard to time periods? Is it a matter of calculations? Will surveys need to be done and collected? Is this an administrative problem? Does he feel that if there were to be more resources in Defra, he would be able to do it quicker or is it simply that the data can only be gathered in an historical perspective? There might be some problems with data collection; however, I hope that the Minister shares our concern about the timeframe of the reports. In an ideal world, we would like to see it reduced. What has been done to research streamlining the collection process? What specific ways have the Government considered in this regard? Is there any way to improve on it?

My Lords, we have considered this matter since Committee to see whether we can accelerate the timetable. However, I fear that we have not been able to move as far as noble Lords would want. The question of the timing of the Clause 12 emissions statement came up in Committee, and following that I wrote to noble colleagues involved in the debate, basically giving background. Essentially, the timetables in the Bill are based on international practice. Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UK must submit an annual emissions inventory by 15 April in the second year after the year to which it relates.

There are also good, practical reasons for this timetable, which is necessary to ensure the quality of the UK’s emissions data. Compiling the UK’s emissions inventory to the highest international standards requires data collection from a wide variety of sources. It is a difficult, time-consuming and labour-intensive task, but it is one that needs to be got right. Some 30 or more experts both inside and outside government are involved in the process at various points during the year. To bring forward the date of publication of the full inventory, even by a matter of weeks, would be an extremely difficult challenge.

Since our previous debates, together with the independent team of external consultants who actually deliver the UK’s emissions inventory, we have looked to see whether the timetable can be accelerated. This is not being done by Defra alone. I realise there is a degree of suspicion about the first-class civil servants in my department, but they did not do this on their own. They did it along with the external consultants. They concluded that bringing it forward could not be done without compromising the accuracy and integrity of the United Kingdom’s emissions figures. I remind the House that the most recent UK emissions inventory was accepted without any adjustment by the United Nations, so there is international recognition that the quality and accuracy of our emissions figures are very high; indeed, they are among the best in the world. I would not think that anybody would want to put that at risk. It is therefore for these reasons—the UK’s existing international commitments and the time needed to ensure the quality of the emissions figures—that the final emissions report is not available until March of the second year following that to which it relates.

However, I take this opportunity to reassure the House that the Government are committed to ensuring that as much information as possible on the UK’s emissions is made publicly available as quickly as possible. We will not delay unnecessarily. If the emissions figures are available, we will publish them.

I shall answer some of the specific questions. I may be repeating myself in Committee, but it is worth putting on the record. Compiling the UK emissions inventory requires the collection of data from a wide variety of sources; for instance, fossil fuel combustion is the major source of UK carbon dioxide emissions. These are based on BERR’s digest of UK energy statistics—I think that for BERR, I would read DTI, but you know what I mean—which is published annually seven months after the end of the reporting year in question; that is, at the end of July.

The inventory also covers the other Kyoto greenhouse gases and requires the collection of emissions data from other sources, including industrial installations, the Department for Transport, trade bodies, the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the Environment Agency. Each step in the calculation process requires stringent quality control and assurance processes to ensure accurate reporting. This takes several months to complete the results for the many thousands of pieces of data produced. As I said, the UK emissions figures are then subject to rigorous crosschecking, quality assurance and quality control procedures, including verification and external peer review, before being finalised.

Just in case anyone raises with me the fact that in January 2008, we have just published the United Kingdom’s 2006 emission figures, only 13 months after the year in question, we recognise the considerable interest in these figures, which is why we seek to publish as soon as possible and as soon as they are available. Headline figures are available a short while before the full UK emissions inventory is published. We therefore recently published the headline figures for the UK's 2006 emissions. However, the full emissions inventory is not available until March. That is a much fuller analysis, which sets out the UK emissions in more detail.

For instance, the data released in March contains a full breakdown of UK emissions by sector and by greenhouse gas and sets out the underlying data on what activity gave rise to the emissions. A full uncertainty analysis is also presented, together with details of the improvements in the inventory made from the previous year, so the information provided in March is much more useful when assessing the overall programme in terms of the different sectors and trade emissions.

The Government provide annual emission figures to Parliament under Section 2 of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006. Those figures are compiled on exactly the same basis as our emissions statement under Clause 12 will be. There have never been any complaints or questions raised about the accuracy of the figures that we already provide to Parliament. The accuracy and reliability of what we provide is very important; we should not put it at risk.

I think that I have covered much of the detail; if I have missed anything, I will gladly come back to it.

My Lords, in view of the Minister’s wish to bring the date forward—he was talking about the early headline figures—could he indicate how far they might be brought forward with some reliability? Are we likely to get to December, or whatever?

No, my Lords. I have come here to boast about the fact that we did it in January 2008, only 13 months after the year. The point is that those headline figures are available and were published as soon as they were available. Obviously, the headline figures can be made available only on an accurate basis, bearing in mind the enormous amount of detailed work that has been done, but there is enough information to do that before publishing the full emissions inventory in March. We will produce them as early as possible. If that could be done in December, no doubt we would do that. We have no reason to hold them back. Once they are available for publication, we will publish them.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his understanding of the issues here and for trying to bring this information forward. It is to everyone's advantage if that can be done. I thank him for the briefing note that he sent round a couple of weeks ago, which I found most interesting. The difficulty on our side is that I, like many of us, are used to organisations saying that things cannot be done, and it is always difficult to evaluate that. I understand that the international reporting must be done within a certain time, but clearly there is nothing to stop it being done earlier than the date laid down under the international conventions. I fully accept the Minister’s good will and wish to get this right. The sole motivation behind the amendment is to seek to enable the Government to take policy decisions about the future in a suitable period of time. That is a weakness of the timescales, which we might be stuck with, but for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 13 [Powers to carry amounts from one budgetary period to another]:

moved Amendment No. 72:

My Lords, I support these amendments; we have, basically, only a question mark. Obviously, this is more of a probing amendment. We were pushing for three-year targets. Therefore, the 1 per cent would be more easily worked out. The Minister was very helpful with some of the points that he brought forward at an earlier stage. At what point will the civil servants declare that they need to use the 1 per cent? Over a five-year target, obviously, year on year, it could be difficult to make sure that the 1 per cent is achieved. I agree that it is just in case there is a major variation from the figure year on year, but that takes account of a very stable environment. If there is a bad harvest one year, followed by bad harvests in the second and third years, will that lead to a major problem or is there a process to deal with that variation in relation to the 1 per cent? If a number of disasters affect the aim of the 1 per cent, it gives the impression that there will be a sliding scale. The 1 per cent might not be met, which would therefore lead to a failure to meet the target set up.

My Lords, I thought that the Liberal Democrat question was about taking the clause out altogether. This is Report stage; it is not Committee stage. I probably cannot answer the noble Lord’s question because unexpected events are unexpected events. The Committee on Climate Change will be a can-do committee and we are a can-do, open, transparent Government. As soon as there is a need to make a move, it will be announced. Scrutiny, clarity and transparency are crucial to this Bill, but I cannot begin to think on the unexpected. As the noble Earl said, this amendment was tabled in Committee. I am happy to repeat part of my explanation on why 1 per cent was suitable to be borrowed from a future budget.

It is true that the banking provisions reward good behaviour by providing an incentive to overachieve against the carbon budget and the borrowing provisions allow the Government, in strictly limited circumstances, to borrow a small amount from the next budget. As I explained in Committee, the 1 per cent figure is not a number plucked from thin air. It simply reflects the likely situation when there is an unexpected shock or an event towards the end of a budget period. It may be that, with the ebbs and flows of a budget period over five years, there is nothing in the bank. But if it is towards the end of the budget period and would lead to the risk that the budget was being missed, obviously that would be a good opportunity.

The 1 per cent was chosen because analysis suggested that allowing up to 1 per cent of a future budget would be consistent with the rise in emissions that may result from an unexpectedly cold winter or uncertainty surrounding emission data. It is based on evidence which shows that since 1990 there have been large emission rises due to three unexpectedly cold winters over the period, the coldest of which led to emissions being in the order of 3 to 4 per cent higher than the preceding year. This effectively means that if 0.8 per cent of the subsequent budget was borrowed—that is, 4 per cent divided by the five years of the budget period—the shock could be absorbed with a 1 per cent limit on borrowing, and the budget would still be met. This would not be the case if the limit was set at 0.5 per cent.

The 1 per cent borrowing limit is based on looking at what has happened since 1990, which is a fair time to go back. In the period, three winters were much colder than in the preceding years, and that gave us emission rises of between 3 and 4 per cent. The overall figure was not higher, but the range showed that a 1 per cent borrowing would mean that consistently we would be able to cope with it.

The noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, asked me some questions going back to Amendment No. 16 which I did not really understand. I shall take advice and, if need be, I shall write to him because I do not have anything I can use to answer him now.

My Lords, I was trying to tie the 1 per cent allowance with the indicative annual ranges to see whether banking/borrowing at 1 per cent ties in with the annual ranges. Would the annual range be up to 1 per cent or more than that? When we discussed this previously, the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, tried to tie the Minister down to not providing too wide a range in the annual allowance.

My Lords, I am speaking purely from memory so I may get it in the neck. I think I answered by saying that the range would be in single figures, but I cannot say whether the single figure would be 1 per cent. However, it would not be 10 per cent.

My Lords, I think I was trying to tie the Minister down more than that because it could be 1 per cent to 9 per cent, which is quite a big range. That was my aim. If, having thought about it, the Minister is able to suggest a more suitable range, I would be very grateful. At this stage, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 73 and 74 not moved.]

[Amendment No. 75 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]

Clause 14 [Final statement for budgetary period]:

[Amendments Nos. 76 to 78 not moved.]

moved Amendment No. 79:

My Lords, we on these Benches generally welcome what we think is a useful set of amendments to clarify and increase the co-operation with the other national authorities. This should not be too much of a difficulty for the commercial sector. Within the EU ETS, everything is plant-based—that is “plant” in terms of “site”, rather than of vegetation—not company-based, so about half of emissions are already there within the reporting systems. If that were the case in every other area as well, it would be possible to divide out carbon emissions in terms of energy consumption by area. The difficulty of that might be transport.

My Lords, that is true to a degree, but of course aviation is not plant-based. Is the noble Lord suggesting that we should try to split down aviation emissions even further into what comes from Wales, from Scotland and from Ireland? If so, does he anticipate that Scotland will refuse to have any international flights in and out for English residents?

My Lords, that is a good question. As I have said, it should be quite straightforward to write rules for this area; no rule is perfect and you have to choose the best. Given that airports in particular are in specific geographical locations and, on the whole, are not movable—unlike the planes that go in and out of them—I should have thought that it would be no more difficult than for any other area. I do not disagree that there could be issues with that, but the point is that it would be useful from a policy point of view, and to the national authorities and the UK as a whole, to be able to see that level of split with regard to emissions. That would be useful to the national authorities, which will have their own climate change programmes.

On the whole we welcome this. There are questions about how disagreement by one of the national authorities will be resolved. To me, this is a fascinating area. There will be other policy areas where there has to be some sort of federal agreement by unanimity. I should be interested to hear from the Minister of other areas of policy at the moment that require agreement by all national authorities, what operates there, how that is dealt with and how that might be used in relation to the Bill.

My Lords, at this time of night, with the Bill progressing excellently, I do not want to strike a note of dissent, but I have to say that I will be watching with interest when the Bill goes down the other end, where Members of the Scottish Executive will be looking at it. Although everything here has been done in a positive way, the underlying tone, both here and in Committee, is of failure; that is, we will never get agreement on this, they do it differently north of the border, and what are we going to do if it does not work? It is nitpicking and expects failure. Since it was introduced, we have been trying to make devolution work. There are lots of issues in Whitehall where even today we are at the edge and we have discussions. Sometimes we agree; other times we do not.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked me for an example. I will give him one. Tomorrow, although I have now forgotten the long title, the new farm animal genetics advisory committee will meet. It is a new non-departmental UK-wide public body that was set up without the slightest difficulty after discussions between Defra, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That was done under the concordat and under our normal procedures for taking the Government forward with devolution when UK issues are involved. That is a good example. It was only today that we announced the membership. It will have its first meeting tomorrow. I have got that off my chest and I feel better about it now.

Issues have been raised to which I want to respond. In the other place, there are representatives of the Scottish Executive, because of the results of the elections last year. There will therefore be a different debate there. I say in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, who I understand cannot be with us at this time of day, that the draft Climate Change Bill was published in March last year before the elections in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. For that reason, it made no provision on devolution, but a disclaimer stated that these issues were still to be agreed. Following the elections, the devolution aspects were agreed between June and September. The Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly passed legislative consent Motions in the autumn. It has been hinted that the Bill is not meeting with their approval. I am not putting words in their mouth or saying that they agree with every dot and comma, but they buy the package and the procedures in it.

This group of amendments looks at various aspects of how the national authorities are involved in processes under the Bill. We discussed the overall issues in Committee. The provisions of the Bill have been agreed with the devolved Administrations and consent Motions have been passed. As I have mentioned previously, we are developing a detailed concordat with the devolved Administrations which will set out how we work with them to meet the Bill’s requirements. This is the best way to ensure that our efforts are properly co-ordinated.

When we discussed the issue in Committee, one of the big questions raised was what the devolved Administrations were doing to tackle climate change. I hope that I can reassure your Lordships that all three are strongly committed to contributing to emissions reductions. For example, the Scottish Executive have recently launched consultation on a proposed Scottish climate change Bill and a target to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Within the One Wales agreement, Welsh Ministers have committed to a number of actions to address climate change, including an annual 3 per cent carbon-equivalent emission reduction in areas of devolved competence. The Assembly Government have also established a Climate Change Commission for Wales that will work towards building consensus on climate change in Wales and assist the development of new policies.

The key driver for action on climate change in Northern Ireland is the Northern Ireland sustainable development strategy, which includes strategic objectives and targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2025. Specific actions include reducing electricity consumption by 1 per cent annually to 2012, making the government estate carbon neutral by 2015, improving energy efficiency in buildings and encouraging renewable energy sources. Perhaps I may give a little plug: virtually all that work in Northern Ireland was initiated and driven forward when Peter Hain became the Secretary of State. When we were direct rule Ministers, he made it a top priority to get cracking on it. It has been accepted and embraced by business and politicians in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Environment Minister has also made a commitment to reconsider a Northern Ireland emission reduction target once the certainty of the Northern Ireland emissions baseline has been established. So we think the Bill takes the right approach in working with the other authorities.

Amendment No. 115, along with Amendment No. 95, would require the UK Government to publish the results of consultation with the devolved Administrations. It would not be right for the UK Government to be given that responsibility. It will be for each devolved Administration to decide whether they wish to publish their representations. We have devolved: we have to let go from Westminster. If devolution is to work, those Administrations have to make that decision. In any case, the Secretary of State is under a duty to say how he has taken the representations into account. That would be difficult to do without broadly indicating what was in those representations in the first place. I hope that is the clarification and reassurance that the noble Lord is seeking.

There are well established procedures for resolving differences between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, as set out in the 2001 Memorandum of Understanding (Command Paper 5240). This Memorandum of Understanding established the Joint Ministerial Committee, consisting of UK Government, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Ministers, which has as one of its functions a role in resolving disputes. As I mentioned earlier, we will draw up a detailed concordat with the other national authorities in relation to the Bill. In the interests of transparency and continued constructive relations between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, we expect to publish the concordat when finalised. That will have to be after Royal Assent, since the precise detail of the concordat depends on the final provisions of what is included in the Climate Change Act. That is the reality of the situation.

Amendment No. 233 would require that we legislate for an agreement that sets out what happens if national authorities are unable to agree on an issue under the Bill. That is exactly what is already provided for—albeit not in legislation—in broad terms under the 2001 Memorandum of Understanding. We do not want to be heavy-handed about this.

I was asked a specific question about the carbon units themselves. The department has prepared a briefing paper on carbon accounting, which I am happy to share with interested colleagues. I shall ensure that it is sent to the normal circulation list without noble Lords having to apply for it. The UK already has a well established system for tracking carbon units under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. That system has an excellent track record and has so far been licensed to 16 countries in addition to the UK. The UK Emissions Trading Registry is administered by the Environment Agency. It is a web-based system developed by Defra which facilitates the distribution, trade and surrender of emissions allowances, but it is a UK-wide system. The devolved Administrations do not have carbon accounts under the Bill.

I hope that that is considered to be a positive response. I understand why questions have been asked and I am not saying that they are all negative, but we are trying to make devolution work and procedures are in place, not just for the Climate Change Bill but for a whole range of issues where there are a mixture of devolved and non-devolved issues. My day job deals with farming, which is an EU issue and a devolved issue, so it is one that I am familiar with.

My Lords, I have listened with some care to what the Minister said because this is a difficult technical issue. I appreciate his difficulty in that we cannot have a concordat on the Bill until we have the Bill. Equally, it is difficult for us in drafting the Bill to know what we have to put into it until we know the contents of the concordat. There is an awful danger that we will start to go round in a whirlpool and get nowhere and that is the last thing that we want to happen.

I can give my noble friend one marginal assurance. He asked a very similar question to mine at the end of Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, answered as best she could at the time about how all the Ministers in Scotland in particular would work together with the other devolved Administrations and the Secretary of State. Although she gave as competent an answer as she could, subsequently, one of the officials came across and said that the answer lay in the devolution Bills and quoted the relevant paragraphs. I am somewhat surprised that they did not put that into the Minister’s brief tonight. It still leaves us with a dilemma. Will the Minister assure us that the concordat, when it is finally arrived at, will contain sufficient requirements to report the actual details of the carbon budget for Scotland, so that the Secretary of State will have enough information to provide a sufficiently accurate carbon statement budget when he has to do so? Without that assurance we are in great difficulty.