To ask the Chairman of Committees whether he will ensure that only British pork and bacon are used in House of Lords refreshment outlets.

My Lords, all House of Lords refreshment outlets serve only English pork and bacon, except for the River Restaurant, which serves Dutch bacon. This is because English bacon, at £6.71 per kilo, is considerably more expensive than Dutch, at £4.85 per kilo. If we were to serve English bacon, the cost of a rasher would increase from 25p to 45p because of the higher price and lower yield. In order to ensure value for money for our customers, the Refreshment Committee reaffirmed the Refreshment Department’s policy on 26 March.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply, although there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy about it. After all, I and many others on all sides of the House have argued that it should not be a matter of price. We have urged the British consumer to buy British bacon because of the higher welfare standards that are applied in this country. Will the noble Lord also take into account the presence in Dutch bacon of a deadly form of MRSA, ST398, which can cause skin infection, heart trouble and pneumonia? Is he not putting people in this country at risk, particularly as the strain has passed from animals to humans? Indeed, when Dutch farmers go into hospital, they go into isolation. Why is he putting the British consumer and those who buy bacon in this House at risk in this way?

My Lords, the noble Lord’s first comment was to accuse me of hypocrisy, which I find slightly strange. The question is one of price. It is our job to offer value for money to our customers in the River Restaurant. The market is price-sensitive and we charge considerably less than the House of Commons, which serves British bacon. Ours is about half the price. Bearing in mind that the staff are some of the lower paid in the Palace of Westminster, I think that that is right. It is fine for people such as the noble Lord and, indeed, me to buy British bacon for ourselves, but when we are dealing with other people we have to offer value for money. As far as MRSA is concerned, I read the article in, I think, the Daily Express a couple of weeks ago. I do not think that it has been followed up by anybody else, so I do not know whether it is true or not. If it were true, it would be a matter for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and not for us to deal with.

My Lords, I do not know whether the Chairman of Committees is aware that next week is British Tomato Week. All of next week, extremely competitively priced British-produced tomatoes will be served in all the restaurants in the Palace. I note that the Question was confined to the price of bacon. Might we have a promotional event for pork products that is analogous to British Tomato Week?

My Lords, I was unaware of British Tomato Week, I must say. I am sure that British tomatoes are extremely competitively priced and extremely good, especially those that come from the Isle of Wight, as many of them do. However, as I said in my original Answer, the pork served in the House of Lords is all British; it is just the bacon where the price is completely uncompetitive.

My Lords, is the Chairman of Committees aware that we are not preparing to throw tomatoes next week, but the reason for the differential in cost between British and Dutch bacon—and, indeed bacon from other parts of the world—is that our welfare standards for keeping pigs are really good and that, by choosing bacon that is not sourced from the United Kingdom, we are not assisting the cause of animal welfare?

My Lords, I am aware of the reason for the price differential and the problems that that has caused to British farmers. Unfortunately, the decision was made many years ago that we should pre-empt the regulations that would come in for everyone. I will not comment on whether or not that was a good decision, but it leaves us in a position where British bacon is, sadly, not competitive.

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as an occasional pig keeper, although I do not make bacon from my pigs. Is the noble Lord aware that bacon cuts are often cheaper because they have lots of additives and water? Has he tried the frying test with the bacon that is used in the River Room to compare it with the British bacon that he has been buying by seeing how much it shrivels?

No, my Lords, I must admit that I have not. The test, I think, is in the consumption by the customers down in the River Room, many of whom, I must say, are not British and therefore probably do not mind where the bacon comes from. They obviously find it good value for money.

My Lords, when the noble Lord speaks of British pork being served in the premises of this House, is he talking about the source of the meat or about where it is processed and packaged? He may well be aware of the British Pig Executive’s recent claim that an astounding 70 per cent of the nearly 1 million tonnes of pork products imported to this country falls well below British animal welfare standards. Much of that is labelled as British because it is packed and processed here. What assurance can he give to Members of your Lordships’ House that we can know the true quality and the true source of all products consumed here?

My Lords, I hope that, when I said that all the pork products apart from the bacon were British, I was telling the truth and they really are British. If I find that I am wrong and that they have been imported into this country and labelled as British, that would be extremely bad news.

My Lords, is the Chairman of Committees aware that a friend of mine came back from Mexico recently thinking that he had symptoms of swine flu? He rang the NHS Direct hotline and all he got was crackling on the line.

No, my Lords, I was not aware of that.

My Lords, I will follow the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, by saying that there is a lot of disease and antibiotic use on the continent of Europe. Members of this House will recall that this country banned the use of antibiotics for growth promotion, which had a very salutary effect. Now we learn that antibiotics are used at the end of a growth period for finishing off both pigs and poultry. Is the noble Lord aware of this and are the Government of this country doing anything comparable to the banning of growth promoters?

My Lords, I was not aware of that use of antibiotics. I am aware that we joined the Common Market some years ago, which means that we cannot distinguish between bacon and other products produced in this country and those produced in other EU countries. As I said, the problem arose a long time ago when we adopted higher standards earlier than other EU countries. When those countries come into line, no doubt we will find that British bacon is again competitive with continental bacon.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many cases of Panton-Valentine Leukocidin (PVL) Staphylococcus aureus positive there were in the last year for which figures are available and what is the incidence of PVL in all Staphylococcus infections.

My Lords, in 2007, 1,206 Panton-Valentine Leukocidin positive cases were reported to the Health Protection Agency. On the second point raised by the noble Baroness, although data are not available to calculate the incidence of PVL infections, it is estimated that less than 2 per cent of Staphylococcus aureus infections are PVL positive.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her Answer. Is she aware that this is a particularly nasty toxin that mixes with MRSA and causes the white cells to be killed? Therefore it is exceedingly dangerous. People are dying because they are not diagnosed; often they are young children or students. Will the noble Baroness make this a notifiable condition and send guidelines to primary care staff and also to schools and clubs?

My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite correct that this is an extremely unpleasant infection; but fortunately it is extremely rare. Very few infections are notifiable diseases—generally they are those where a public health action is required. Available data do not suggest that this is required for PVL, but we are keeping this under constant review. For example, notification regulations are currently being updated, and there will be provision to add new infections as necessary.

The noble Baroness is also correct that our priority is to ensure that doctors and other clinicians are aware of how to diagnose and manage this infection, because it does need to be managed very quickly. We are also making sure that information is available to healthcare workers in primary care and to GPs. Information is also being made available through the HPA to other workers who are dealing particularly with young people.

My Lords, what research is being conducted into PVL?

My Lords, because this is a very serious—if very rare—illness, we are sponsoring two major projects on the prevalence of PVL in different populations. The first is to determine the proportion of skin and soft-tissue infections when people come into emergency departments. The second is a study of nasal carriage from a random sample of people in the south-west. We are asking GPs to provide us with samples where there are no clinical symptoms, so we can see how prevalent it is among the general population. In addition, we have commissioned PVL testing of stored samples of Staphylococcus aureus in a Birmingham hospital.

My Lords, although it is an uncommon condition, it is serious so why does not the Minister consider making it a notifiable disease for a trial period of, say, a few months? It is a very serious infection indeed.

My Lords, the noble Lord is right: it is very serious, as I said, but, as I also said, most notifiable diseases are ones where there is a health protection issue. We are keeping the condition under review and we are collecting data. I am not ruling out making it a notifiable disease; I am just saying that at the moment, we do not think that it is necessary.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords, why do we not hear from the Liberal Democrats? We should have time to hear from the Cross Benches as well.

My Lords, it is indeed a very serious infection, as is swine flu. Does the Minister not agree that all infections can be prevented by good personal and household hygiene, efficient community services, clean water and good nursing techniques, all promoted by Florence Nightingale 150 years ago? Will she undertake to visit the museum across the road as soon as possible, buy a copy of Notes on Nursing and make sure that everyone in the Department of Health reads it?

My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. She is not the first person today to suggest that I should visit the Florence Nightingale exhibition, and I will do so.

My Lords, will it be possible in future to be vaccinated against these infections?

My Lords, I do not know the answer to that, but I undertake to find out for the noble Lord. At the moment, we are surveying it, identifying it and making sure that information is out there so that doctors and clinicians recognise it and treat it as quickly as it needs to be.

My Lords, although extremely rare, this infection is very dangerous because of the speed with which it kills. There is usually little or no time to wait for the relevant tests to come back from the laboratory. What is desperately needed is a rapid bedside diagnostic test. Is my noble friend aware of any research going on to provide a test such as the one that is becoming available for haemolytic Streptococcus?

My Lords, I am indeed aware of that. My noble friend is completely correct to say that bedside identification is necessary. It takes 24 hours to get absolute confirmation, and my noble friend is right: that is not quick enough. However, the disease can be treated by normal antibiotics, so we just need to get on and treat it.

My Lords, in view of the similarity of the early stages of PVL infection and swine flu, and, as has been mentioned, the tremendous urgency of having an accurate diagnosis, because if PVL is not treated, it can rapidly be fatal, what guidance is the Ministry giving to the medical profession on the issue?

My Lords, there are two forms of guidance: one provided by the Health Protection Agency and the other provided by the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. I have given the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, part of the guidance that has been issued; I will be very happy to make that available in the Library.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made towards introducing legislation regarding the Civil Service.

My Lords, as set out in the Queen's Speech and in my Answer to noble Lords in January, the Government continue to develop our proposals on constitutional renewal, including the Civil Service provisions, and will bring them forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, but is she aware that we have now been waiting for more than 10 years for a solution, and that in the past five years, there has been some comment as to when things would happen? We have had some further comments this afternoon. Can my noble friend tell us when we will actually get the legislation and put it on the statute book?

My Lords, I am well aware of the long wait that has ensued. I think that my noble friend must have a recurring reminder in his diary to hold the Government to account on this matter; I am very grateful. I can merely repeat that we will bring forward those proposals as soon as parliamentary time allows.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the independence of the Civil Service has been gravely undermined by making it part of the project of the Labour Government? Does she also accept that the presence of so many special advisers—at the last count there were 24 in No.10 Downing Street alone—has made the independence of the Civil Service very difficult?

No, my Lords, I believe that our Civil Service is wholly impartial, and I celebrate and welcome that. The number of special advisers has nothing to do with the impartiality of the Civil Service.

My Lords, the time of this Parliament is running out. Will the Government acknowledge that the Joint Committee of the two Houses found little to complain about in the part of the Constitutional Renewal Bill that was concerned with the Civil Service, and suggested that it might be severed from the other matters, which were considerably more controversial? In view of the fact that it is not just 10 years since the Civil Service has come under discussion, but nearer 150 years, since the Northcote-Trevelyan report, will the Government, even at this late hour, give us a commitment to introduce the Bill before the Summer Recess in respect of the Civil Service?

My Lords, the Joint Committee did an absolutely splendid job, and as many people have in the past, I thank it for its excellent work. I can merely repeat that we will bring forward these proposals as soon as parliamentary time allows. It has taken 150 years, but at least we have produced a draft Bill, and are proposing to bring legislation before this House.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. That committee twice recommended that there should be a Civil Service Bill introduced rapidly, and on both occasions, if my recollection is correct, that recommendation was welcomed by the Government. The earliest occasion was 1998—more than 10 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, said. However, that was not the first time the proposal had been made. Action is called for very swiftly.

My Lords, it will come forward as swiftly as possible.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Civil Service will welcome any opportunity to have its core values and impartiality guaranteed in law? Given that there has been considerable delay in bringing this measure forward, would she consider introducing a mirror provision that would place a statutory duty on Ministers to respect that impartiality and the values of the Civil Service at all times?

My Lords, as I mentioned earlier, our Civil Service is completely impartial. The core values and duties of the Civil Service as set out in the code, including impartiality, are well respected now, although I agree that it would be good to put that on the statute book. Ministers uphold and respect the code of practice as it stands, and I am confident that they will respect whatever law comes forward.

My Lords, do the Government accept that the members of the Joint Committee were concerned about the number and role of special advisers? Does the Minister accept that the code for special advisers needs to be reviewed and brought before Parliament—as was recommended by a number of the members of that committee—and that if we are to avoid a repetition of the Damian McBride affair, this is very urgent?

My Lords, we have a very solid code in respect of special advisers. While the Damian McBride case was absolutely appalling, and we all loathe and abhor what happened, having these provisions in law would not have prevented somebody doing that. I entirely condemn what Mr McBride did, but I do not think that a law would necessarily have stopped it.

My Lords, should there be a separate Bill for the Civil Service, as recommended by the Joint Committee on which I had the privilege to serve? Reasons were given.

My Lords, many people have advocated a separate Bill, and I entirely respect that perspective. However, it is the Government’s intention to bring forward the Constitutional Renewal Bill, which contains clauses on the Civil Service.

My Lords, if Mr McBride had been sacked two and a half years ago when he was first exposed for his activities, surely that would have avoided all the difficulties that we had recently.

My Lords, the problem with Mr McBride came to light a few months ago. As soon as it did, he was sacked. The Government acted quite properly and swiftly.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with Corus and its parent company Tata Steel about the future of its Teesside Cast Products plant.

My Lords, I spoke to Kirby Adams, chief executive officer of Corus, last week when I first heard the news of the situation at Teesside Cast Products. I am seeing him again tomorrow. Officials in my department are exploring how the Government can help to resolve the dispute with the consortium of partners to the 10-year off-take agreement in a way that avoids job losses. Local agencies have also met Corus to discuss potential help for employees whose jobs may be lost if the dispute cannot be resolved.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Will he join me in paying tribute to the outstanding skills and dedication of the 3,000 workers employed at the Redcar plant, which is under threat of closure, who have made that plant a world-class steel production facility? Does he share with me, and with the many people on Teesside whose jobs are under threat from this announcement, the intense anger that this closure should be the result not of any lack of international competitiveness but of a flagrant breach of contract by the people whom they have supplied? Will he commit this Government to giving every possible support to Corus, to the management, and to the unions and other organisations that are working to ensure that the proud history of steel production at Redcar is retained?

My Lords, I certainly can give that commitment on behalf of the Government. The Prime Minister expressed the same sentiment in the other place only today. The noble Lord and I share a former constituency interest in Teesside, so I am well focused on this matter. It is extremely serious. If the plant is mothballed, there will be a risk that it cannot be restarted cheaply or easily. That will threaten the 3,000 jobs at stake. It is essential that Corus does everything that it can legally to reinstate the off-take agreement. I urge Corus and the consortium to seek to resolve their differences and reach a satisfactory solution that avoids these redundancies.

My Lords, I recognise that the Minister will not disclose to your Lordships the details of current and ensuing commercial negotiations, and I am sure that everyone on all sides of the House agrees with the sentiments that he expressed, but will he confirm that he has no intention of going back to the bad old days of old Labour propping up industries?

My Lords, I am not quite sure what the noble Lord means. This is not some sort of old, discarded plant or industry that has no future. As the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has made absolutely clear, this is a profitable plant with high productivity, as shown by an excellent workforce. I have asked our embassies abroad to make contact with the consortium companies to understand their actions and to explore the options for reopening discussions with Corus to resolve this to everyone’s satisfaction. As I say, I will meet and discuss this again with the Corus chief executive, Kirby Adams, at a steel summit that I will hold with the All-Party Group on Steel tomorrow.

My Lords, bearing in mind that our manufacturing industry is at a very low ebb, will the Minister give the assurance that if some sort of subsidy is needed to keep the plant open, the Government would be prepared to make that subsidy available even if the European Union disagreed to it?

No, my Lords, I do not think there is any need for a subsidy for a plant that is perfectly profitable and efficient, and simply needs a consortium of partners from four different countries to uphold their side of the agreement which they have entered into. That is what we will be seeking to obtain.

My Lords, will the unions be fully involved in any negotiations on this matter? I speak as a member of Unite, which as you will know has been very concerned about support for manufacturing industry.

My Lords, shortly after I spoke to the chief executive, I telephoned Mick Leahy of the Community union on this matter to discuss the potential impact on the workforce and what can be done, and I will continue to talk to him and other representatives of his union as necessary. We are all joined in what we want to happen. We want the terms of this agreement reinstated so that the production and sale of steel slabs can resume as soon as possible.

My Lords, may I join with all those who have celebrated the skill, the commitment and the efficiency of those at the plant? We find what the Minister has to say very reassuring and we all urge him to continue what he is doing until it is brought to a successful conclusion.

My Lords, the matter is now going to arbitration. The notice that the company gave last week is for a 90-day consultation period. I assure my noble friend that I and other members of the Government will be working as hard as we can and pursuing every possible avenue in support of the company to get this matter resolved at the earliest possible moment.

My Lords, I undertook to keep the House informed about developments in the investigation into allegations made earlier this year about a number of Members of this House. I will continue to discharge that undertaking and am now in a position to give the House some further information.

The Committee for Privileges has now considered the report submitted to it by the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Interests on the allegations made by the Sunday Times on the 25 January. I can now inform the House that the report of the Privileges Committee will be published tomorrow at 11 am. It will contain the full report of the sub-committee. I believe it is important that Members of this House are made aware of the developments on this matter through information provided for them in this House, rather than speculation in the media, hence this brief statement. I understand that, especially in the current climate surrounding Parliament, there may well be considerable interest in these matters. For my part, and I hope on the part of others, I shall be making no further statement on these matters until the report is published. I urge Members of this House, and indeed the media and the public beyond, to concentrate on the report itself from the Committee for Privileges when it is published tomorrow, rather than any attempts to second guess it. The Members of this House, and indeed the House itself, deserve nothing less.

That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be appointed to the Special Public Bill Committee on the Perpetuities and Accumulations Bill [HL]:

L Archer of Sandwell, L Bach, L Clinton-Davis, L Goodhart, L Hart of Chilton, L Henley, L Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, L Kingsland, L Lloyd of Berwick (Chairman), L Thomas of Gresford, B Whitaker.

That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records;

That the evidence taken by the Committee shall, if the Committee so wishes, be published; and

That the Committee do meet on Wednesday 20 May at 11.00 am.

That it be an instruction to the Grand Committee to which the Welfare Reform Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 3, Schedule 1, Clauses 4 to 7, Schedule 2, Clauses 8 and 9, Schedule 3, Clauses 10 to 21, Schedule 4, Clauses 22 to 42, Schedule 5, Clauses 43 to 46, Schedule 6, Clauses 47 and 48, Schedule 7, Clauses 49 to 52.

That the draft order laid before the House on 22 April be approved.

Relevant Documents: 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 15th Report from the Merits Committee.

My Lords, I shall speak to all three statutory instruments on the Order Paper in my name. Noble Lords will remember the many stimulating debates we had during the passage of the Climate Change Act 2008, which was much improved by the contributions of Members of this House. All three instruments have been laid in accordance with that Act and implement elements of the system of carbon budgets established by it. I thank the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Merits Committee for carefully considering them. As noble Lords will be aware, neither committee found anything to comment on, but the Merits Committee reported the statutory instruments because it felt that they would be of interest to the House, as we are seeing today.

The challenge presented by climate change is enormous in both scale and urgency. The scientific consensus is unequivocal; namely, the global climate is warming and it is caused primarily by human activity. Without concerted world-wide action to reduce emissions, we face a best estimate increase in average temperatures of 4 degrees centigrade by the end of this century, with severe economic, social and environmental consequences. As the noble Lord, Lord Stern, set out very clearly in his review of the economics of climate change, the benefits of strong, early action outweigh the costs. The benefits include enormous economic opportunities for those companies and economies that adapt and innovate to take advantage of a low carbon future.

That is why this House passed the Climate Change Act last year. It provides a clear, credible framework for the UK’s transition to a low-carbon economy and shows our commitment to playing our part in the global effort to tackle climate change. It is the core provisions in the first part of the Act that are most relevant to today’s debate; first, the requirement to reduce greenhouse emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050 and carbon dioxide emissions by 26 per cent by 2020 and, secondly, the system of five-year carbon budgets, which are set up to 15 years in advance. Carbon budgets are one of the most radical and distinctive features of the Act. They provide a strong framework for delivering and monitoring the emissions reductions required to achieve the 2020 and 2050 targets.

This framework includes a legal requirement on the Government to put in place policies that ensure we live within the carbon budgets. This means that the effects of any new policies that could increase emissions are carefully considered and corresponding reductions found elsewhere if this is necessary to meet the budget. There are of course processes already in place to help ensure that this is done systematically, in particular through the requirement for an assessment of the carbon impact of all new policies within the overall impact assessment. To ensure that the overall impact is to keep us within the budgets, we are developing strong internal mechanisms within government to ensure that every department has a clear responsibility to play its part. We expect to set out more about how this will work alongside the publication this summer of our climate and energy strategy, which will also clearly set out the details of our policies and proposed policies to meet the first three carbon budgets as required by the Act.

I will speak to the first two draft orders before the House today; namely, the Carbon Budgets Order 2009 and the Climate Change Act 2008 (2020 Target, Credit Limit and Definitions) Order 2009, which are closely linked. The 2020 target should be covered first as it dictates the minimum level of the third carbon budget. As noble Lords may recall, the 2050 target was amended from 60 per cent to 80 per cent during the final stages of the passage of the Climate Change Bill. That followed advice from the shadow Committee on Climate Change, which is the independent, expert advisory body established by the Climate Change Act and very ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Turner. At the same time, the default greenhouse gas coverage in the Bill was changed to include all six Kyoto greenhouse gases rather than just carbon dioxide.

However, the level of the 2020 target was not amended. It remained at a 26 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions on 1990 levels. The Government made it clear at the time that, once we received the advice of the Committee on Climate Change, we would consider amending the gas coverage and the level of the 2020 target. This advice was included in the committee’s first report, which was published on 1 December last year. The committee’s view was that the 2020 target and our first three carbon budgets should reflect the outcome of negotiations for a global deal to reduce emissions, which is the focus of the conference in Copenhagen this December. It felt that the UK should follow the European approach of setting targets contingent upon a global deal.

On that basis, the committee recommended that an appropriate level for the target reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, before a global deal is reached, would be 34 per cent. That level is consistent with the UK’s share of overall EU targets under the climate and energy package agreed last December, which set out the EU policy framework for the period 2013 to 2020. The Government accept the committee’s recommendations on this point. The order therefore uses powers under Section 6 of the Climate Change Act to amend the 2020 target to 34 per cent and extend its coverage to all greenhouse gases.

I turn now to the Carbon Budgets Order 2009. This sets the first three carbon budgets; that is, the total permissible level of the net UK carbon account for the periods 2008 to 2012, 2013 to 2017 and 2018 to 2022. The net UK carbon account means the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the UK, adjusted for any credits or debits. I will say a little more about crediting and debiting later. The levels in the draft order are units of million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the standard for measuring greenhouse gas quantities. The reductions on 1990 emissions amount to just over 22 per cent in the first period, just over 28 per cent in the second period and just over 34 per cent in the third. The third budget complies with both the current 2020 target of a 26 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide and the amendment to a 34 per cent greenhouse gas reduction being considered today. Those levels follow the advice of the Committee on Climate Change.

In line with its approach on the 2020 target, that committee proposed two sets of carbon budgets: interim budgets to apply now, before a global deal is reached, and more challenging intended budgets to apply once a global deal has been agreed. The levels in the draft carbon budgets order are broadly at the committee’s interim level, with a small adjustment to reflect the final outcome of the EU climate and energy package. That package, which came after the Committee on Climate Change reported, results in budgets that are slightly more challenging than those recommended by the committee.

Some noble Lords have called on Government to set the budgets and the 2020 target at the intended level now. We accept absolutely the need for tighter carbon budgets following a successful global deal, but we agree with the committee that we should await the deal before setting them. The committee proposed a 2020 target of 42 per cent under the intended scenario, but the precise figure will depend on the details of a global agreement; after a global deal, and once proposals for sharing out the EU target are agreed, the Government will ask the committee to review its recommendation. We will then amend the budgets to take into account its advice.

It is important that I draw noble Lords’ attention to something that we announced when we laid this order before the House on 22 April. We said that we would aim to meet the budgets we propose through domestic emissions reductions alone, without use of international offset credits, outside of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. That commitment shows how serious the Government are about decarbonising the UK economy, but we also think that it puts the UK in a good position to make the transition to tighter budgets after a global deal. That is because, given that we would expect international credit purchase to form part of the additional effort needed to meet tighter carbon budgets, we are likely to be well placed to deliver any extra domestic reductions that are needed. The committee recommended that approach and also advised that it was consistent with the path to meeting the long-term 2050 target of an 80 per cent reduction on 1990 levels.

I come to the second element of the Climate Change Act order—the credit limit. This refers to the use of carbon units to represent emission reductions, which have often taken place abroad, as credits against carbon budgets, thereby offsetting UK emissions. In line with the commitment to domestic emissions reductions I have just mentioned, the draft Climate Change Act order sets the limit for the first budget period at zero. There are two exceptions to the limit, where credits may be used, although in both cases they would not be bought by the Government, but by participants in emissions trading systems. The Government have consistently supported the principle of emissions trading and it remains our ultimate objective to achieve a global carbon market.

First, as I mentioned earlier, our commitment does not apply to the EU Emissions Trading System. Companies participating in the EU ETS may either purchase carbon units from within the scheme or from the international system, such as credits from projects under the Clean Development Mechanism, if they do not have enough carbon units to cover their emissions. If they have a surplus of carbon units, they may sell them to other EU ETS participants, whether in the UK or elsewhere in the EU. Overall, if UK participants are net purchasers of credits over a carbon budget period, by which I mean their collective emissions exceed the level of the UK’s overall cap under the scheme, we propose to count this as a credit against the budget, whereas a net sale would be counted as a debit.

However, there are already limits on the use of international credits by participants in the EU ETS which guarantee that at least 50 per cent of the emissions reductions between 2008 and 2020 will take place in Europe. In its report, the committee advised that these limits were appropriate and that further restrictions for carbon budget purposes were unnecessary. For this reason, we intend that any credits resulting from the EU ETS should not be counted against the zero limit being proposed.

The second exemption relates to EU allowances acquired through a trading scheme under Part 3 of the Climate Change Act. In practice, this would apply to the proposed carbon reduction commitment trading scheme which will include a “safety valve” mechanism that allows participants to use EU allowances to offset emissions in excess of the scheme’s cap. Because the mechanism will lead to a reduction in the number of EU allowances available to EU ETS participants, the Government consider it appropriate also to exclude these units from the zero limit. I should make it clear that safety valve allowances will be an option of last resort. We expect that the price of allowances purchased through the safety valve will be higher than the prevailing carbon reduction commitment allowance price, which will deter participants from using them. Furthermore, the exclusion does not mean that any safety valve units must be counted as credits, and the Government will aim to meet the budgets without using them, reserving their use as a fallback.

I turn now to the third and final element of the Climate Change Act order, the definitions of “international aviation” and “international shipping”. Noble Lords will recall that emissions from international aviation and international shipping are not covered by the targets and budgets in the Climate Change Act at present. This is on the basis—the point was much debated during the passage of the Bill—that there is currently no globally agreed methodology for allocating emissions from international travel to individual countries. The Act gives the Government the power to define “international aviation” and “international shipping” for carbon budget purposes, which is what we are considering today. The reason we feel it is necessary to define these terms is so that they are used in a way that is consistent with how international emissions are reported in practice.

The definitions themselves therefore reflect international reporting practice and follow the approach we use in reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They put beyond doubt possible ambiguities such as how to treat flights which have interim stops. It is important to note that their purpose is only to set out which emissions are not covered by the Act. The definitions have no bearing on how international aviation and shipping emissions might be allocated to the UK or any other country.

Finally, I turn to the last of the three instruments for consideration today, the draft Carbon Accounting Regulations 2009. I have already mentioned the concept of the net UK carbon account and the possibility of crediting and debiting carbon units against it. These regulations are required by the Climate Change Act to establish a system to define what we mean by carbon units, when and how they can be credited and debited, and how we will keep track of them. The regulations make use of the existing UK registry for holding and tracking carbon units, which is used under the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading System. This avoids unnecessary costs and complications in setting up a separate registry.

The first thing the regulations do is define what will be counted as carbon units. Only carbon units that are internationally recognised, under United Nations and European Union Rules, will be counted. These have the benefit of being subject to significant international scrutiny and allow the system to be compatible with the existing systems under the Kyoto Protocol and the EU ETS.

Secondly, the regulations establish a new credit account in the UK registry, into which carbon units to be credited voluntarily must be placed. As I said, we are aiming not to use any such credits to meet our carbon budgets, but we felt that it was best for continuity to put in place the mechanism for crediting them at the start, which we are likely to need when we move to tighter budgets after a global deal.

Thirdly, the regulations provide a mechanism to account each year for credits and debits from the operation of the EU ETS, as I described above. This will have the result that the contribution of the EU ETS towards the carbon budget will correspond to the level of the UK’s cap under the system. Fourthly, the regulations define how units will be debited from the net carbon account if the Government dispose of any of their existing holding of carbon units.

Fifthly, the regulations implement a very important provision of the Climate Change Act. Because the first carbon budget is significantly more stringent than our Kyoto target—a 22 per cent reduction rather than 12.5 per cent—we could meet our Kyoto target and still have a large number of carbon units left in the national registry. If the UK were to sell or give these to other countries, allowing them to offset their own emissions, the environmental benefits of the tighter budget would be lost. To avoid this, and to comply with the Act, the regulations set out how any such surplus carbon units will be cancelled to put them beyond use.

Finally, the regulations establish a register of transactions, to record details of the crediting, debiting and cancellation of carbon units. This was included because a number of responses to the public consultation called for transparency on carbon accounting. Together with the guidance that I have already mentioned, and the annual and end-of-budget statements required by the Act, this will ensure full transparency on how the net UK carbon account is calculated.

I apologise for speaking at length but these are the first statutory instruments to be produced in relation to carbon budgets. I beg to move the draft order.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Government for ensuring that these statutory instruments, of which the first is particularly important, can be debated at a convenient hour. I shall not comment on the assertions made by the Minister before he got on to the instruments except to observe that they are wholly unfounded.

I suspect that many noble Lords have not yet read the Government’s impact assessment for the Act that we are discussing, which was slipped out without notifying Parliament, and then not until the Bill had already received Royal Assent. It is a grubby business that rather defeats the purpose of impact assessments, which are intended to enable Parliament to judge before passing legislation whether it is likely to be cost-effective. In this case, the impact assessment states that the costs to the United Kingdom of the policy commitments in this Act are likely to be of the order of £400 billion—a massive sum—which, it notes,

“does not include the full range of costs”.

In passing, it is worth noting that most energy economists, such as Professor Helm of Oxford, regard the methodology used to arrive at even this figure, large as it is, to be seriously flawed and absurdly overoptimistic. Be that as it may, those are the costs that the Government assess.

So what are the benefits? These are anyone’s guess, but two things are clear. First, any measurable benefit that may accrue as a result of reduced warming would not help the United Kingdom, at least for the next 100 years, since scientists are agreed that northern Europe would actually benefit from a warmer climate over that period. Secondly, and rather more importantly, there can be no discernible benefit to anyone unless the rest of the world follows the United Kingdom’s quixotic lead, which, to say the least, is highly unlikely. As the Government’s impact assessment puts it, with studied understatement,

“The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak”.

How conditional is the commitment contained in the 2020 order that we are considering today and, indeed, in the Act of which it is a part? The Minister said something about these targets being contingent on a global deal, but there is nothing at all in the Act or the order to say that anything in them is contingent on a global deal. These are just words from the Minister; they do not affect the legally binding nature of the Act, which is unconditional. What precisely does he mean by,

“contingent upon a global deal”?

If there is no global deal, will the Act be repealed? What kind of global deal? Is it any old kind of global deal or just one that says that there will be technology transfer and nothing else? What nature of global deal is required in order for this to be acceptable to the Government?

Given that the European Union has made its 2020 target conditional on the outcome of the global Copenhagen conference this December—that was the explicit conclusion of the December European summit on the subject—and will review it next year in the light of that, and given that the Obama Administration in the United States have made it clear that their own post-Kyoto commitment will depend on an adequate contribution from other major emitters, notably China, is the United Kingdom alone in making a massively expensive commitment wholly unconditional? Again I ask: is this genuinely legally contingent on a global deal and, if so, on what kind of global deal is it contingent? This is important because these targets are legally binding—that is, they are justiciable and the Government are subject to judicial review on this whole issue.

While we are on the subject of international conditionality, the Minister will be aware that the DfID-commissioned report An Institutional Architecture for Climate Change proposes, inter alia, a new international institution with coercive powers to force countries to cut their carbon emissions and suggests that countries that do not accept this should be,

“effectively barred from all forms of international co-operation”.

It is bad enough that responsibilities for climate change used to be divided between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, but now DfID, too, is getting in on the act. So much for joined-up government. Do the Government accept the draconian recommendations of the report that DfID has commissioned? Will the target that we are discussing today be contingent on some such so-called new architecture being put in place?

Nor is this the only form of conditionality at issue. In his Statement last month on carbon capture and storage, the Secretary of State, Mr Miliband, said in another place:

“With a solution to the problem of coal, we greatly increase our chances of stopping dangerous climate change. Without it, we will not succeed”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/4/09; col. 382.]

He therefore announced a requirement for new coal-fired power stations, which are needed to prevent the lights from going out, to be retrofitted with CCS by 2025—incidentally, well after the date of the order before us. The date was set as late as that because the technology needed does not at present exist, but the Government hope that by then it will. Perhaps it will, perhaps not—but, even if it does, at what cost? At any cost? Is there any cost conditionality at all?

Most experts believe that even if the technology does become available, it will be prohibitively expensive, for compelling reasons that I do not have time to go into here. To be fair, the Government suggest conditionality in the department’s press release accompanying the Minister’s Statement to Parliament, which states that the goal is:

“Full scale retrofit of CCS within five years of the technology being independently judged as technically and commercially proven”.

What precisely—and I mean “precisely”—does “commercially proven” mean?

In conclusion, I suggest to the House and to the Minister that it would be the height of irresponsibility for the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom alone, to be required to incur the massive costs arising from the order that we are debating today, wholly unconditionally, irrespective of whether CCS, which the Government concede is absolutely essential, becomes either technologically possible or affordable, and irrespective of whether the rest of the world commits to following suit, without which even the conjectural benefits of this hugely expensive policy cannot possibly accrue.

My Lords, I hope that at some point in the future the noble Lords, Lord Lawson, Lord Stern and Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, can be locked in a room and the key thrown away until such time as they can agree on anything. I followed the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, with great care, I read his book, and there are many things a brain the size of mine cannot challenge, so I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, the other half of my brain, having been involved in this business for 30 years—I was a government delegate to Rio in 1992, before Kyoto and all the rest of it—sees that there is a problem of sustainability.

There is an issue about the OECD taking the lead, if there is a case to be answered whereby China and India have to come on board. It was always a difficulty that we could not be sure that China and India would come on board. We are keeping our fingers crossed about Copenhagen and so on. I think I am right in saying that we are getting closer to a position where the whole world is around the table, rather than just the industrial countries, which arguably have 10 times more CO₂ consumption per head than sub-Saharan Africa. That is the framework in which the debate takes place.

There is a different debate about whether there is some long-term cycle in the planet temperature or whether it is very much down to recent human activity that we are going to go over 2 degrees centigrade growth in the lifetime of some people alive today. That will have problems particularly for low-lying areas, with desertification increasing in Africa. However, if I were playing devil’s advocate, I could say that if population is growing in sub-Saharan Africa at 3 per cent per annum, which doubles every 20 years, the whole world is going to have a much bigger crisis than anything we have seen. If we are talking about slash and burn from Madagascar through to Senegal—religion comes into it and so on—all these different factors are very hard to make a coherent speech about because they go on too long.

Before I get on to the particular points that I want to make, let me say something about those people who are interested in why the Stern model is flawed, as I believe it is. The noble Lord has been very reluctant to answer questions about my pet topic, which is income distribution and the effect on jobs around the world slowing down by x percent, which he waves aside as very minor relative to the wealth of the world. Leaving aside the inter-generational aspects, we want to know about jobs and so on. If we did not represent people by asking those questions, I do not know who would.

It is very important now that the biggest intellects of public policy on this question do not carry on like ships passing in the night, never conceding any point to each other. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, will nod to indicate that he would be up for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Stern, could be encouraged a little. Since he was appointed, he has made only his maiden speech, which was on a totally different subject. We could all strongly encourage all these well informed, two-brained Members to help us out.

I note that the orders will come into effect on 31 May 2009. When I saw that, I thought that rang a bell; it is quite soon. Then I realised that it is very soon indeed—it is in two weeks’ time. We have been cutting things a little fine, and so I will be supporting the Government today because if we do not, I do not know what will happen to this whole business. I will give the Government five out of 10.

Oh!

My Lords, no, no—everyone knows that that is a good mark for some of us to give to the Government. Both my noble friends on the Front Bench will be highly gratified by what I have just said. Let me mention one or two areas in which they could go further.

When I contributed to the debate answered by my noble friend Lord Rooker on 18 March last year, and I said that there ought to be a fiscal impact statement, side by side with the Budget, my noble friend said that he would take that suggestion away. That is one reason—I am sure not the main reason—why these orders appear in this form. Certainly, there is the linking with the Budget. It is the first time that we have £ million, or £ billion, numbers to look at. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, pointed out that we have a total of £800 billion on the second page of Chapter 7 on building a low-carbon economy. We have a figure for investment of £50 billion:

“Tackling climate change requires substantial levels of investment across all sectors of the economy. The Government’s policy framework is enabling £50 billion of investment over the period of the Comprehensive Spending Review (2008-11)”.

That is quite a large figure—there are a few peanuts there, even these days. Other big numbers there are for energy efficiency, renewables support and so on. The biggest number of all is public transport and low-carbon and electric vehicles. That may have a bearing on the next main remark I want to make.

In the first set of announcements in Chapter 7, we see that the fuel duty is going up by 2p a litre from 1 September this year, and another penny on top of that in each of the next three years—that is 2010, 2011, 2012 to 2013. Two and three make five these days, but there it goes. I guess that that will have some income-distributional effects. Of course, the great danger of the macro-Stern approach is to say, “There’s no problem, we’re all wealthy, but who’s wealthy and who’s at the bottom of the receiving end?” If it was a poll-tax-on-wheels, or a poll-tax principle, within a nation in the OECD, and north/south in the world, one would be shouting from the housetops that this is not the way to get public support for a consensus policy. Therefore, I request my noble friend to commit to track the income-distributional consequences of the measure.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lea, referred to ships passing in the night, and rightly so on the economic front. I hope that I shall find myself on HMS “Lawson”, rather than HMS “Stern”. The same goes for ships passing in the night in science, which has now devolved largely into a shouting match between extreme alarmists and sceptics, with not nearly enough moderate dialogue between them. Perhaps I could help to gain a little perspective on this by referring to what my noble friend Lord Lawson referred to as the unsubstantiated assertions of the Government, to see where common sense stands on those.

Since the end of the little ice age in the late 19th century, the world has been re-warming at a rate of about 0.6 degrees centigrade per century. There have been fluctuations in that. There was a period of rapid warming from 1920 to 1940, much as there was more recently. There was no explanation for that. There was a period of cooling until 1975, when emissions rose quite rapidly. There was no explanation for that. There was a period of rapid warming from 1975 until the end of the century, much as there was from the 1920s to the 1940s. This has been seized on by alarmists as evidence of really frightening growth in temperatures. However, it has been succeeded in the 21st century by nine years of static and, more recently, falling temperatures. Again, that is completely against all the prognostications of the alarmists and the IPCC and wholly unexplained.

When you look more deeply into this at where all these measurements are coming from, you find a large number of them are extremely unreliable or, in the case of the Antarctic and the Arctic, almost non-existent. By far the most reliable database, which is not all that reliable, of any large land mass is in the United States of America, where there is a huge number of recording stations. We now know that temperatures in the United States in the 1930s were the same as, maybe even very marginally warmer than, they were in the 1990s. That is probably the best approximation there is for what has really been happening in temperatures—that is, a growth of about 0.5 to 0.6 of a degree per century, a figure that fluctuates for a whole variety of reasons that I shall not go into here.

A lot of what you read in the media or hear on the BBC is highly anecdotal, and there is a widespread impression that the polar ice caps are melting. It is worth spending a minute or two on that. The Arctic ice cap is, at the moment, bang on normal in the winter. In the summer, it has been melting a little bit. The Antarctic is considerably above normal. If you add together the Arctic and the Antarctic ice, they have measured about 700 square kilometres above normal in all the time that they have been accurately recorded. So the idea of great warming and melting in the polar ice caps is a complete figment of the imagination. I have, for Members who may be interested, a picture of the US nuclear submarine “Skate” at the North Pole in the winter of 1958, before the summer melt—14 March, to be accurate.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but as regards ships passing in the night, can he just come in on one ship, passing through the north-west passage? Is the growth of industry going through the north-west passage and the scampering between Canada, Denmark, Russia, the United States and everyone just a figment of my imagination?

My Lords, if the noble Lord would let me finish the sentence that I was in the middle of, I can say that this photograph of the US nuclear ship “Skate” was taken at the North Pole during the winter in March 1958. It was completely ice-free. If you put that together with the ice records I mentioned, there is a great deal of myth that passes about the North Pole and the South Pole. The North Pole is subject to currents, which probably explains the fact that it is sometimes completely ice-free. It is not a great static block of ice that is melting. Those are the facts about the Antarctic ice.

Laboratory science theory states that doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures by 1 degree. A doubling of carbon dioxide takes place approximately every 200 years at the current rate of emissions, perhaps a bit more. Therefore, the whole argument hangs by a thread. Do other factors such as currents, sun and clouds accentuate that warming or do they decrease it? The IPCC’s theory is that they increase that warming. That is why the Government have, as my noble friend Lord Lawson, said, made the completely unsubstantiated assertion that temperatures will rise by 4 degrees this century.

Probably the best climatologist in the world is Professor Lindzen and another good one is Professor Singer. Professor Lindzen calculates that the effect of all these other feedbacks, as they are known in the jargon, is to reduce temperatures not increase them. He calculates that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures by about 0.3 of a degree. You can argue about the science and I am not a good enough climate physicist to make any direct contribution on that. What you cannot argue about are the facts. The facts are that there has been no acceleration whatever in global warming since emissions took off after World War 2 and that temperatures today, after the past nine years of static or cooling temperatures, are bang on that consistent recovery of 0.6 degrees from the little ice age and are well below even the lowest estimates of the IPCC range. So observation suggests that Professor Lindzen may be right and the IPCC completely wrong.

My Lords, we are talking about facts and observations. I am a simple person in this area, but one fact that seems indisputable is that sea levels are rising, and rising faster. There can be only two reasons for this: either the land is sinking or the sea is rising. Why would the sea rise? The only reasons for ocean levels to go up are either that the oceans are getting warmer and expanding, or that the ice sheets are melting and therefore the amount of water is increasing. There can be no other reason; therefore that simple fact says that global warming is happening. It is a problem and a fact.

My Lords, if I may say so, that is a perfect example of unsubstantiated assertion and anecdote. The world’s leading expert by far on sea levels is Professor Axel Morner, the IPCC’s lead author on sea levels. He says that sea levels have been increasing at six and a half inches per century since the little ice age, that they have over the past 100 years modestly declined, and that they are now rising at about six inches per century. The assertion of one and a half metres, and Al Gore’s absurd assertion of many metres, are pure speculation and wholly unsubstantiated by observation, or by the best single expert on sea levels in the universe—the IPCC’s lead author, who resigned from the IPCC, if I am not mistaken, because he refused to substitute fanciful numbers for the right ones.

I turn back to the science. It is widely believed that there is a universal consensus. If that is so, why have 33,000 scientists—the number grows so fast that I may be out of date, and it may be 35,000 or 40,000—signed a protest against the climate extremism expressed in the Kyoto Protocol? There is no scientific consensus. There is an official, political consensus. There are dangers to people’s careers and funding, and to the esteem in which they are held in official circles, if they express the views that I am expressing now. I can express them because I am not a scientist, so my career is not at risk. There is absolutely no consensus.

I once wrote a letter to the Times, saying roughly what I am saying now. I received a flood of letters, and those supporting me outnumbered those against me by six or seven to one. Many of them came from professors and fellows of the Royal Society who said that they did not care to speak out. That is just anecdote—I will not give their names—but it is typical. If you immerse yourself in the blogosphere, which is as good a place as any to study the science—and where sceptics are much more courteous and open to dissent than believers—you will find that scientific opinion is very divided, and that there are at least as many sceptics as believers.

The concern of anybody who is open-minded, and who recognises that ships must not pass in the night and that we must try to come to some agreement, is that the Government are not open-minded. They have signed up to the most expensive possible version of climate extremism. Professor Carter, a distinguished economist specialising in climate economics in Australia, recently testified before the authorities there that emissions trading schemes would cost every Australian family 3,500 Australian dollars per year for a theoretical IPCC-modelled reduction of one-1,000th of a degree centigrade. Let us suppose—although he is a very distinguished witness—that he is wrong by a factor of 100. It would still be true that the theoretical saving in climate warming would be one-10th of 1 degree—a wholly trivial amount for a vast expenditure. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lawson that there has not been a proper cost-benefit analysis of this, and that what cost-benefit analysis there has been has gone wholly against the government programme.

Has the Minister studied Professor Carter's figures? If so, does he agree with them; do the Government agree with them? If they do not, do they have better-founded estimates and what are they? As I say, the professor is a very serious witness, and if he is even remotely right, the cost of government emission reduction schemes is frankly grotesque. He particularly applied it to emissions trading schemes, but the same goes for carbon offset, wind farms and various other forms of government-sponsored intervention.

Sometimes people talk about those vast expenses as though they were free, as though they fell out of the air. They do not; they come out of the vast shortfall in resources that are needed for huge projects, whether for economic well-being, reafforestation, ocean pollution or disease control—to go rather closer to home than the climate change arena. The trillions that we intend to spend on those grotesque schemes have to be taken from somewhere, and that is where they will be taken from—from adaptation, flood defences, reafforestation and disease control projects. Or, if the money comes straight out of the economy, it will come out of the wealth creation that is essential to survive properly in the 21st century.

It is not too late for the Government to reconsider. In my opinion, the only redeeming feature of the order is that there is not the slightest prospect that it will be taken seriously or actually implemented. Even if every other country signed up, it would not be implemented. I just ask the Government to reconsider this unsatisfactory proposal.

My Lords, we are very grateful to my noble friend Lord Lawson for challenging the Government on the orders. All too often, statutory instruments—orders—slip through even though they have big implications. This one has mega-implications. I do not want to make many points, but I start off with one fact. It is staggering—as anyone who begins to understand how the system should work would agree—that the impact assessment for what is probably the most expensive piece of legislation ever passed, the Climate Change Act 2008, was produced only after the Bill had become an Act. Yet the idea of an impact assessment has always been that it helps good governance because you can see the cost and the consequences of legislating. What sort of government is that? Bad government, bad government, bad government.

What is the size of the impact assessment? It is £400 billion. As my noble friend pointed out, that estimate does not necessarily include everything. Have the Government really lost all sense of proportion of money? That £400 billion is 27 per cent of GDP. It is 50 per cent of the public sector net debt. Public sector net debt has already reached £792 billion, so £400 billion is half of that. It is 60 per cent of total government spending for this year, yet gaily they produce a £400 billion impact assessment as though it was all perfectly natural.

The Act is thoroughly pernicious. I particularly criticise the fact that with gay abandon the Government produce this sort of legislation when they have not been doing the things that they could have. We all agree that it is much better to reduce the use of oil and reduce carbon emissions. However, they have taken 10 years even to decide to go ahead with nuclear power. They have only now produced the list of places where they might have nuclear power stations. They have taken 10 years to do that.

The Government are not even clear whether nuclear power is a renewable. I believe that it is, to all intents and purposes. The noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, speaking ex cathedra from the Front Bench as Science Minister, said that it was a renewable. He said that; it is all in Hansard, so the Minister need not shake his head. He was of course made to renege, because the green lobby does not like nuclear power. Recently, the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, who now occupies an exalted post in the Government—and he is a splendid fellow to have there—referred to,

“nuclear power and other renewables”.—[Official Report, 8/12/08; col. 160.]

I happened to speak in that debate and drew attention to those felicitous words, which have not been denied. However, I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will get up and say that the Government do not regard nuclear power as a renewable.

The sad thing is that this Government are going into something alone, probably alone in Europe, as President Obama is most unlikely to be prepared to commit the United States to anything like the scale of what we are attempting to commit this country to, unless the world does so. However, the chances of the world doing so are remote in the extreme. I am delighted that we are challenging this sloppy thinking by this sloppy Government.

My Lords, there is an issue of the Government against the real world and I certainly would not wish to get up and defend the Government on this or any other issue in broad principle, given their incompetence in action. However, the world is not standing still. We keep hearing about this enormous sum of money that may have to be spent, but that seems to be said without any regard to the huge sums of money that are being spent by every country in the world at present to maintain their energy supplies.

A few years ahead is something that is constantly referred to as peak oil. What we are really talking about—whether or not we are ever going to get agreement on global warming—is the security of future energy supplies. I say to my noble friend Lord Marlesford that I tend not to be too concerned about whether nuclear energy is renewable or not, as it is emissions free. That is the energy distinction that we need to make.

We will have to spend increasing sums of money even if we do not change the technology, in order to supply this country with energy. There is a net amount to come off the huge sums that are talked about in respect of the costs mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stern.

I say to my noble friend Lord Fairhead—I beg his pardon, as I should have said Lord Leach of Fairford; I am getting muddled up with some relatives of mine—that there is a distinction between the scientists whom he mentions, who are all apparently not prepared to come out in public, and the scientists who have been doing all the work on global warming and who are all well known and out in public. That may or may not be an argument but, if I understood my noble friend Lord Leach, he said that many people disagree with what is going on but are not prepared to come out in public about it.

My Lords, I said that more than 30,000 had signed a petition coming out in public. I referred to a few people who still have not come out. Among those 30,000 are many of the most distinguished scientists in the world. I can happily supply my noble friend with a list of 20 very distinguished scientists, including IPCC lead authors.

My Lords, I stand corrected and I withdraw that remark, but the fact is that there is, whether one likes it or not, and despite the great inconvenience, virtually an international consensus on this and I do not think that we will ever reach agreement between those who believe that this is happening and those who do not. There is evidence in the changes in the oceans and in the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps and the ice caps in Europe and the Himalayas. They are all diminishing. That is inconvenient, but it is happening.

My noble friend Lord Lawson raised an important issue; it was the one really significant thing that he got into before he tried to carry us all into the upper reaches of this Chamber with a blast of hot air. The Minister made it quite plain that the success of these orders depends on international agreement, which is due to be reached, we hope, this autumn. I do not go with the pessimists—I hope that there will be agreement—but it is legitimate to ask the Minister what happens if there is no such agreement. He made a great deal of the fact that there would have to be agreement, but we need to think about what will happen if there is no agreement. Will he come up with an answer to that point? Although I do not expect us to reach agreement in this Chamber today over the principles of the thing, we must try to ensure that what we agree to at the end of the day will be practicable and will work. The Minister must address that in his reply.

My Lords, the Government are introducing legislation now that is due to have effect in 2050. I just ask noble Lords to put their minds back to 1910 or 1911—the year of Lloyd George’s Budget. Would it have been possible to have foreseen in any way whatever what was going to happen around the time of the death of George VI? It strikes me as very dangerous to legislate or even to attempt to have any idea of what will happen in 40 or 50 years’ time. It is impossible to know what will happen the day after tomorrow, let alone in 50 years’ time.

I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lea, that it is a great pity that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, does not come here more often to defend his views on occasions such as this. My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith made a very good point about the security of oil and other energy supplies, but that is a distraction from the debate on global warming. The talk of global warming is preventing us from thinking logically about the replacement of oil supplies, because perfectly reasonably, with the decline in the North Sea supply, we are not inclined to trust either Arab sheikhs or Russian oligarchs, who are the main source of supply.

Just recently, there was an announcement that 90 square miles or kilometres—I am sorry; I cannot quite remember which, but it is quite a large area—of the Thames estuary will be covered in wind farms. I am sure that that is absolutely excellent. The announcement said that those will provide the fuel for 500,000 houses, but it did not say that that is only under perfect wind-blowing conditions. I do not know whether your Lordships are aware of this, but we had a very cold snap this February. The wind stopped because there was a great blodge of immovable high pressure over the United Kingdom, so all those windmills just stood there not moving at all and producing no energy. What an immensely useful investment that is; you invest in 90 square miles or kilometres of windmills to produce no energy when it is very cold.

There was an intervention from the Liberal Front Bench about how sea levels were rising by 1.5 metres per whatever it is. The noble Lord is obviously unaware that Flinders University did a test on Tuvalu and found that there was absolutely no movement in sea levels whatever. The instruments that were used were the most modern and sensitive that there have been.

I used to think that it was completely logical to believe that, if we chucked buckets of gunge up into the sky, that would have some effect. I thought that people were right about this and that it made sense. Then I read the book written by my noble friend Lord Lawson—I hope that I am not giving it too much of a boost, but there it is—and found the intellectual argument behind it extremely interesting. It has converted me from thinking that one should not do all this damage to asking what harm is being done.

We know that CO₂ levels have gone up between 1997 and 2007. However, temperatures have not. We know that the other day a test was done on the depth of the Antarctic ice cap and it was found to be rather thicker than everybody thought. We know that in the 1860s one of the Norwegian explorers, Nansen or Amundsen, tried to get through the North-West Passage and found clear water further north in the summer than it was last year. We know that there has been extremely heavy snow in the Himalayas, the Alps and all the big mountain ranges this year and we know that the Arctic ice cap is actually larger this May than it should be.

Those are facts. These are not things invented by people; these are documented facts. So have they got it right? I have become, because of the books of my noble friend Lord Lawson and several others, a serious doubter, not because I have any emotional attraction to an idea but because I am presented with a series of facts that make me now think slightly differently.

The concept of budgeting to spend £400 billion—at that number, one begins to lose all sense of reality—by 2050 because of facts that look to me jolly dodgy does not seem a very sensible thing to do. I know that the Minister will say that it is received scientific knowledge that global warming is happening, but my noble friend has shown that it is not. We ought to be very careful before we go on a spending spree of this magnitude because of something that might happen in the equivalent of the difference between the Parliament Act 1911 and the coronation of our present sovereign.

My Lords, I am not going to follow the arguments from my much more experienced colleagues, although I found the debate this afternoon extremely interesting and very educational. The Minister recently gave evidence to the European Union Select Committee on the Emissions Trading Scheme and the renewable energy targets. The Select Committee is grateful for that. We intend to publish that evidence for the benefit of the House in due course. My questions are brief. First, can the Minister give your Lordships an assurance that he will use all efforts to ensure that there is a further Statement on energy policy to this House before it rises on 21 July rather than waiting until late October? Secondly, will that Statement include an explanation by Her Majesty’s Government on how we will reach these very challenging renewable energy targets? My noble friend has already referred to the London Array wind farm in the Thames estuary, which I warmly welcome, but there is still a mountain to climb. Finally, the Minister referred to not relying on buying credits under the Emissions Trading Scheme, which I also warmly welcome, but will he say something about certificates of origin and the scheme to purchase some of our obligations on renewable energy from abroad?

My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the debate, which has been a bit like a Second Reading debate on climate change. I am beginning to think that I have been rehearing some of the stories one heard in the eight years of George Bush’s presidency of the United States. There was a kind of unholy alliance between him and the oil companies to fund an enormous number of scientists to produce evidence, which was clearly in their view fact, that there was no such thing as global warming, the sea was not rising and it was all a big mistake. I do not know which is true. From what I have read, just as many scientists have said that there is a serious problem with global warming.

The noble Lord, Lord Leach, quoted a large number of scientists, but in his response to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, he did not explain whether the sea level is rising. The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, said that it is not. The noble Lord, Lord Leach, did not deny that it is rising, but he did not explain how it is rising or whether it is due to warmer water and/or the ice cap melting. Perhaps he can do that. I sort of visualise King Canute sitting by the beach waiting for it to happen and when it happens saying, “It is not happening. My feet are not getting wet”. I believe the scientists who say that there is a serious problem with global warming and I welcome what the Government are trying to do about it. They are setting an example with the European Union and, to an extent, other parts of the world. I give my noble friend seven or eight out of 10, which is even more than my noble friend Lord Lea gave him.

I have a couple of questions about world aviation and shipping, on which I urge the Minister to go a little further. It is good to know that there will be ways to measure them, but I hope that very soon we can go even further than that. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, congratulated the Government on joined-up government with DfID. If he did not, he should have done. I suggest that the same approach is taken in respect of BERR. On what the Government can do to put into practice the policies now being developed, I welcome the 2p on the fuel duty. But I am surprised that we are still going ahead with the £1,000 payment to anyone who wants to scrap an old car to buy a new one, especially when cars are mostly made abroad and there is no particular job benefit in this country. That investment could go into better cycling and walking—it would be very cheap and healthy, which sitting in a car is not—and public transport.

Investing in infrastructure in this country creates jobs in this country, so there would be a win-win situation. I hope my noble friend will say that the subsidy to buy a new car and scrap an old one is just an aberration, and that the real policy will emerge in the coming months through investing in projects and policies which will improve the rather lamentable performance of the transport sector in going green. In the mean time, I support my noble friend’s introduction to these regulations.

My Lords, perhaps I may quickly answer those pertinent points. The big ice melting was about 12,000 years ago at the end of the last glaciation, which greatly increased sea levels. The more recent increases of about seven inches since the little ice age are thought by the experts to be due to thermal expansion, at which I think the noble Lord hinted. As the seas get a little warmer, they expand. At the moment, that is regarded to be the cause and not ice melting, because it has not melted.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord. Will he explain what is causing the sea to expand? Presumably, it is getting warmer.

Yes, my Lords, with the recovery from the little ice age that I referred to earlier, that is at about 0.6 degrees per century since about 1370.

My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt this fireside chat and move on to the order. From these Benches, we could get to at least six; that might be between the two noble Lords opposite. A more general point is that the work of the Committee on Climate Change has been excellent; it has been highly respected by those on all sides of the House. I thank it for its work and for the work that it will have to do in the future. Of course, a number of noble Lords from this House are involved there.

Before I go on to the order, I shall pick up on one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. It particularly concerned me when he said that here in the northern hemisphere, anyway, or here in Britain, we are not going to be affected for at least another couple of decades, or a hundred years, or whatever. To me, that is to misunderstand utterly the problem of global warming, in that whether or not it is man-made, if it is happening then there is no way that northern communities will be isolated from migration flows from the inundation in developing nations, or from the changes in ecology and biodiversity that happen with rapid climate change, or from interruptions to trade routes and energy and food security. All of those areas will disrupt global systems and flows which, whether they are of capital, commodities or people, will very quickly be affected. We will not be able to put up a wall and say, “We’re safe; sorry about the rest of you, but we’re enjoying global warming for the next 200 years and we’ll worry about it after that”. That is not an option; it is a very dangerous thought.

I welcome the fact that the order encompasses all of the greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, which much broadens it out. I know that that came from the Committee on Climate Change; it is a major step forward. I welcome the fact that there are budgets and that they stick pretty well to targets that are, at least, challenging—although on these Benches we believe that we would need quickly to achieve and move toward the larger, intended targets.

A particular area that has interested me, and which was a topic of great debate on the Climate Change Bill, is that of international credits and how they are treated. While I again welcome the fact that the limit on those credits is to be zero, I regret that it is only for the first period—which now goes up only to 2012—and that, even now, we cannot extend that to the next two periods, as it is such an important area. Will the Minister clarify—I did not understand this from the order and it may be that I have not read or understood its meaning properly—whether he specifically said that the Government themselves would not purchase EU ETS units in order to offset?

The order says that it outlaws clean development mechanism units, but that since the EU ETS operates, those units should be counted. I disagree with that to some degree, but I shall come on to that in a minute. Will the Minister confirm that the Government themselves will not buy EU ETS units—or EUAs, as they are called—so as to close that carbon gap in terms of targets? First, it would be an abuse of how that system works and, secondly, it would be a way in which members of the EU ETS in other parts of Europe might purchase clean development mechanism units that enabled them to sell EUAs to us in Britain. That would effectively make it a carbon-credit laundering system, if one was not careful. I am sure that is not the Government’s intention, but I should be pleased to receive an assurance that the Government will not be counting EU ETS credits toward their own carbon budget.

As the Minister said, it will be interesting to see the Government’s report setting out exactly how these targets are to be met. I agree entirely with the noble Lord that we should include air travel and shipping as soon as possible. It is great to have a definition and I should like to hear from the Minister when he now believes these areas will be brought in. One of the main concerns about shipping was that of international definitions. Has progress been made on those, and similarly in terms of airlines? We know that aviation is going to be included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2011, but surely there is still scope to include it in our target now.

We welcome the order generally, although we would like to see the credits brought down to zero for all three periods. But the core of the argument in terms of targets and action towards combating climate change is that in themselves targets are fine, but what is needed is action to ensure that we have the sort of effect on carbon emissions that we require. At a time when the European trading scheme is to some extent floundering again in that we have a slow uptake of renewables and are very dependent on wind, that energy saving has not yet moved forward significantly, that there has been little practical progress on carbon capture and storage and a perhaps understandable hesitation about biofuels, the challenge lies not this order but in the Government’s programme and the programme across Europe to make sure that changes in energy use and how we conserve energy enable us to meet these targets.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee for drawing our attention to these important orders and regulations, and I thank the Minister for laying them out before us in such detail. I should like to ask a brief question on each of them and I will try not to turn my remarks into a Second Reading speech. We have heard some marvellous contributions to the debate, and no doubt the Minister will want to answer the questions put to him by my noble friends Lord Lawson, Lord Leach, Lord Marlesford, Lord Dixon-Smith, Lord Onslow and Lord Freeman, and those put by the noble Lords, Lord Lea and Lord Berkeley, before he gets around to responding to anything that I might contribute at this point.

The Climate Change Act 2008 (2020 Target, Credit Limit and Definitions) Order 2009 complies with the provisions of the 2008 Act in setting out the mechanisms for establishing the 2020 emissions target limiting the net amount of carbon units that may be attributed to the UK carbon account and further defines the terms set out in the Act. We cannot but agree with it, and my only question is this. The Conservatives have argued consistently that the expert opinion of the Committee on Climate Change should be the primary driver of climate change policy. Does the Minister support our belief that the majority of carbon reduction activity should be undertaken at home in the United Kingdom so as to offer the maximum competitive advantage to UK businesses rather than simply paying other countries to develop clean technology through the Clean Development Mechanism?

I turn now to the Carbon Budgets Order 2009. This order complies with the provisions of the 2008 Act in setting the next three budgetary periods: 2008-12, 2013-17 and 2018-20 before the deadline specified by the Act. The carbon budgets set a cap on the maximum level of the net UK carbon account for each five-year period.

I welcome the budgets. During the passage of the Climate Change Bill, we pushed hard to strengthen the Committee on Climate Change, and we urge the Government to heed its advice as far as possible. These carbon budgets provide a major opportunity to United Kingdom business owing to the long-term certainty that they offer. What steps are the Government taking to spur business on to take that leap towards investing in a low carbon future? The third statutory instrument—the Carbon Accounting Regulations 2009— makes provision on carbon units and carbon accounting for the purposes of Part 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008. We are in general agreement with that as well.

I am certain that the Minister will agree that transparency and accountability will be vital to the smooth running of these budgets. Under the Climate Change Act the Secretary of State must ensure that carbon units are kept track of for establishing and maintaining accounts in which carbon units may be held. Provisions are in place to enable the Secretary of State to appoint a body to do this. Can the Minister outline today what progress has been made in appointing such a body? I look forward enormously to hearing him answer all the questions that were put to him by eight noble Lords, let alone from the Front Benches.

My Lords, it has been an absolutely splendid debate, and how grateful I am to the business managers for ensuring that these statutory instruments were debated in prime time rather than in the dinner break when the debate was originally scheduled. I sense that it was a little like a Second Reading debate, and I suspect that some of the arguments this afternoon were deployed during the passage of the Climate Change Act. I was a very late entrant—I dealt with Commons amendments—and I realise that I missed a great deal of splendid debate, a flavour of which we had this afternoon.

These statutory instruments are important but they are consistent in the context of the Climate Change Act. I was intrigued by the intervention of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, who said that the decisions that the House is being asked to make by approving the orders and regulations are committing the Government and the country to action a long time ahead. He referred to Lloyd George’s Budget of 1911, and I was struck by the thought that one of the by-products of that Budget was the first stage of reform of your Lordships’ House. I wonder whether they thought then that we would still be debating matters to do with reform.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. If noble Lords do not accept the consensus, scientific position on climate change, what we are doing would seem to be unnecessary and expensive. If you accept the general consensus and believe that climate change is very likely and that unless we mitigate and adapt there will be catastrophic impacts on the world, the measures before us this afternoon are entirely reasonable. I suspect that we will not agree on that substantive point.

My Lords, the Minister does not want to mislead the House. The consensus to which he refers is not a consensus but a majority. There is a wide range of opinions among climate scientists. The majority view, as encapsulated in the IPCC’s report, is that it is very likely that most—not all—of the warming in the last quarter of the 20th century was due to the increase in carbon dioxide emissions. However, there is absolutely no agreement among climate scientists about this being catastrophic. There is nothing in the IPCC’s report about it being catastrophic. Mr Mike Hulme, who founded the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, has consistently said that people who talk about catastrophic climate change are going far beyond the evidence. I hope that the Minister will wholeheartedly withdraw that part of his statement.

My Lords, I do not think I will. It is essential that we as a country, jointly with other countries, do all that we can to mitigate and adapt to climate change. I suspect that it is not going to be fruitful to debate the science today—

My Lords, does the Minister recall that exactly 40 years ago—after all, we are projecting ahead 40 years to 2050—the very same sort of scientists who are now predicting global warming and climate change were predicting that there would be a new ice age in the ensuing 40 years? That has not actually happened. The Government should take that into account and perhaps make contingency plans in case, instead of global warming, we have global cooling.

My Lords, I do not think I can be held responsible for those events. All I can say is that the IPCC’s recent report was written by 690 named scientists and reviewed by another 622. In total, the IPCC’s latest assessment was written by more than 1,250 authors from more than 130 countries and reviewed by an additional 2,500 experts over six years. Objectivity is ensured by the broad and open review process.

My Lords, the Minister said something very important there: the word “objectivity”. If—this is just as big an “if” as his “ifs”—the world temperature does not increase for another five, 10 or 15 years, when do people start looking at it again? After three years? Five? Ten? Fifteen? How many years have to go by of global non-warming for people to look at whether they were right or wrong?

My Lords, I am not going to walk into that one. The research and analysis continue, we think that the IPCC process is robust. and we will be guided by the best available science. In the mean time, we believe that we should prepare on the basis of the science available to us now.

I enjoyed the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Leach, although I do not necessarily agree with it. He asked me if we had studied Professor Carter’s evidence. My understanding is that we have closely analysed and estimated the cost of emission trading, and we see that as set out in the impact assessment that was published alongside the carbon budget levels announcement on 22 April, to which noble Lords have referred.

The second point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Leach: the cost of dealing with climate change, introducing carbon budgets and some of the other changes that have to be made as a result. Of course these figures look very high. A number of noble Lords referred to the noble Lord, Lord Stern, and wished that he were present in our debate—I certainly do—but your Lordships might observe that he has an Oral Question tomorrow on the whole issue of climate change to which I have the privilege of responding, which will give us all an opportunity to understand where he is coming from. We believe that the noble Lord has done extremely valuable work. He, in his review of the economics of climate change, said that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the cost. Also, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, was absolutely right to say, of course, that a lot of the costs and investment—if we think of energy policy in particular, given the rundown of many of our existing power stations—would have to take place in any case.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, first asked me whether we will continue to listen very closely to the advice of the Committee on Climate Change. Yes, the orders reflect that we have taken the advice very seriously. She then made the important point that we want to ensure that the majority of carbon reduction takes place in the UK, rather than the UK having to buy in credits abroad. Also, is UK business in a good place to take advantage of a low-carbon economy? That is a very important point indeed.

I will come in a moment to the lead-up to the negotiations in Copenhagen but, unlike some noble Lords who have spoken, I am optimistic about the outcome of those discussions. I believe it is absolutely clear that the world is on a path towards a low-carbon economy. The question for this country is: are we going to take advantage of that? Are we going to be a country that is at the forefront of technology innovation? Is it going to be British companies which take advantage of the technology lead that we have in many sectors? In the past, we have had the technological lead but have then lost the advantage to other countries; can we ensure that that does not happen again? The noble Baroness has asked one of the most important questions that ought to be before us this afternoon. Clearly, the Budget announcements, and some of the stimulus that has been given towards agreeing a low-carbon economy, are very important in helping British business ensure that we are at the forefront of leading towards a low-carbon economy.

The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, asked me about negotiations, and he is rather more pessimistic than I am about the possibility of a deal. To clear up any confusion, I should say that in the orders we are debating interim budgets. Those are being set before a global deal is reached. If we are successful with a global deal, we will then ask the advice of the Committee on Climate Change about tightening the targets—the budgets—that have been set. Clearly, we very much hope that there will be a deal, that the advice of the Committee on Climate Change is indeed to tighten the budgets, and that I will have the honour of bringing further orders before your Lordships’ House to put that into practice. How confident are we about a deal in Copenhagen? Well, progress is being made. It is clear that the US Administration have signalled positive moves in helping towards a deal. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State was recently in China in discussion with the Chinese Government, and it would be fair to say that he feels a sense of confidence about our ability to come to international agreement. Of course, a lot of water has to flow under the bridge before we come to Copenhagen, but the preparatory work gives us optimism about successful conclusions.

The international architecture is an important issue. I do not know the details of the DfID report, but I will certainly ensure that I study it closely. The noble Lord would expect me to say that we work closely across government, and of course we do. I can tell him that the international architecture is vital; it is important to ensure the integrity of any dealings in relation to international credits. Part of the agreement in Copenhagen will be about the actions that developed countries have to take, but it will also be about the actions that emerging countries have to take. However, we hope also that the vulnerable, poorer countries will commit to a low-carbon world. The international architecture that follows from that to ensure the integrity of the system as a whole will be vital.

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, asked me about the definition of nuclear energy. In his not uncritical speech about the Government’s record, I detected at least some acknowledgement of the Government’s go-ahead for new nuclear energy in this country. He knows that the definition is quite straightforward. It is not defined as renewable in international definition terms, but the carbon emissions surrounding nuclear development are very low indeed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on that point. It seems to me to be a rather theological issue, but there is no doubt that nuclear energy will have a very important role to play in the future.

The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, referred to the announcement made only yesterday about major investment in wind farms in the London Array wind park, and he implied criticism. In any number of questions I have answered about renewable energy, noble Lords have complained that companies were not prepared to invest in renewables. We should rejoice that the announcement from E.ON came yesterday. Of course, it is an energy that is intermittent, and that is why you need back-up from other sources of energy. But in any case, noble Lords have consistently argued that we need a diversity of supply alongside—I was going to say “the dash for renewables”; it certainly will be a dash if we are to meet the 2020 targets. That is why we are glad to see the development of new nuclear energy and are delighted about the package of announcements around coal and CCS.

I well understand the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, in saying that as regards the announcement to be made in the summer, he hopes that “summer” will be defined as being before the Summer Recess and that a Statement will be made in your Lordships' House. He will know that I cannot absolutely commit myself to that, but as I hope I implied in committee, I take his point—although perhaps I did not imply that as I was rather cautious about defining the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s “summer”. I certainly hope we achieve that.

As regards coal and CCS, I am not ducking the questions that the noble Lord asked me but we are working on many of those matters. We will make further detailed announcements in the summer on how we are to take CCS forward. Given that coal is responsible for some 40 per cent of electricity generation globally, those of us who believe that we have to take climate change seriously consider that carbon capture and storage is absolutely essential to achieve the targets that we have set. It also offers huge possibilities for the UK. With the announcement of up to four pilot programmes, we have a wonderful opportunity to develop UK technology and export it to many parts of the world. I am delighted that we made the relevant announcement two weeks ago.

Of course, this comes with a cost; there is no point in running away from that. I well understand the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Lea that these measures might have an undue impact on poorer people. I agree with him that it is absolutely essential that we consider the impacts of different measures to help meet carbon budgets, including their distribution across society. Of course, we wish to build social equity into all our policy-making. The impact assessment of the proposed budget levels assessed the impact of fuel bills on individuals and businesses. When we publish details of our proposals and policies for meeting the budget in the summer, we will consider these impacts in greater detail, including their effects on different groups in society. I believe that the creation of the new Department of Energy and Climate Change has allowed us to think carefully about needs in terms of creating a fairer society. This very much comes to the fore in relation to energy and climate change policy.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to my next point. Energy saving constitutes a great part of moving towards a low-carbon economy. The challenge for us is to ensure that energy-saving proposals are more successful. This can have a very good impact on many poorer people if we ensure that measures are properly targeted.

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for his clarification and assurance on tracking the income distribution or social equity consequences. However, it is widely understood that, in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Stern, the Government agree that the economy will continue to grow but at a slightly lower rate—in the order of 1 per cent slower—than if there had been no other constraint, including climate change. Will my noble friend note that that is a separate but important consideration? We are seeing how a 1 per cent change in GDP affects employment. An undertaking needs to be given that that, too, will be subject to further analysis and tracking. Although it sounds like a small figure, it is not inconsiderable if we all agree that the general rate of economic growth in terms of productive potential is adrift by 1 per cent.

My Lords, I do not want to go back over what I said about the benefits of a low-carbon economy. I agree with my noble friend that one cannot lightly dismiss that scale of reduction in GDP. However, I think that the substantive point that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, made is that, if we do not take action now, the cost could be very much greater later.

My Lords, I thought I heard the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford—

My Lords, the Minister has been winding up for more than 20 minutes and, other than contributions from noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, he should be allowed to conclude his speech.

My Lords, the Minister gave way. This is an important question because it involves cost to ordinary people, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lea. I estimate and calculate that it means £10 billion per year, which is roughly £1,650 per person per annum that has to be found by ordinary people through their taxes and higher prices. People should be informed of exactly how the Government’s policy will hit them.

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord about transparency. Clearly, some of the measures that have to be taken will have an impact on the cost for individual householders, which also has to be taken into account. Equally, development of a low-carbon economy, where Britain is in the lead, can also bring huge advantage for our economy. The substantive point is that, clearly, these matters have to be kept under constant review.

My Lords, I would not intervene in the Minister’s lengthy speech—as we were reminded not to do by his noble friend—if he had answered my questions. May I briefly give him the opportunity to answer them before he sits down?

First, when the right honourable Mr Miliband said that carbon capture and storage would not be insisted on unless it were commercially proven, what precisely did he mean by “commercially proven”? It has nothing to do with technology. Did he make the statement without the faintest idea of what it meant? Secondly, and more importantly, of course the Minister hopes that there will be a satisfactory—from his point of view—agreement in Copenhagen, but even he must accept that there may not be. A satisfactory agreement in Copenhagen would see all other countries in the developed world pursuing the reduction targets, and the developing world pursuing maybe slightly lesser targets. If there is no agreement of that kind, will we still plough on, at vast cost and to no effect on our own, or will the Minister repeal the order before us, which sets the 2020 target?

My Lords, the order that we are debating is entirely consistent with the Climate Change Act, which has been passed by both Houses. Of course, our policies will be developed consistent with the Act. I will not contemplate failure in Copenhagen; the signs are as positive as they could be. I have answered the noble Lord’s question on CCS. We made a statement on the broad principles. We are now doing intensive work on further publications, which will be made available in the summer, setting out the details of what we mean by the assessment and how it will be undertaken. I answered that point.

I confirm for the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that the Government do not intend to buy EU allowances to help meet carbon budgets. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, that we have committed to aiming to meet all three budgets without international credits. I note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on aviation and shipping. We hope to make progress on them in the international negotiations ahead of the start of the second budget period. We remain in the lead in the EU in our efforts to include international aviation and shipping emissions within that global framework.

Of course, there is much more work that needs to be done. We will develop carbon budgets in relation to what it means for government and the impact on policies. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, that we will continue to take the advice of the Committee on Climate Change. As she suggested, alongside the mitigation policies, there is a huge challenge on adaptation. The names of the members of the adaptation sub-committee will be announced very soon. We very much look forward to the advice that they will be able to give to the Government directly and to the committee.

In conclusion, this has been a very good debate. I did not detect entire consensus on all matters, but the statutory instruments have had a thorough airing and I commend them to the House.

Motion agreed.

That the draft order laid before the House on 22 April be approved.

Relevant Documents: 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 15th Report from the Merits Committee.

That the draft regulations laid before the House on 22 April be approved.

Relevant Documents: 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, 15th Report from the Merits Committee.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they and the Security Industry Authority are taking regarding the unjustified clamping and removal of cars.

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the usual channels for finding time for this Question for Short Debate and to all noble Lords who agreed to speak at such short notice.

As far back as 1997, it was apparent that the clamping of vehicles parked on private land was becoming a serious problem because the law was not fit for purpose, and that is still the case 12 years later. If anything, the problem is getting worse. The short answer to my Question in respect of the SIA is “not very much” because it does not have the power. The Government for their part have belatedly issued a consultation, which I will turn to later. Before getting into detail, I should make it clear that I fully accept that there is a need for legitimate parking controls, including clamping—for example, at a doctor’s surgery next to a convenience store or a pub with inadequate parking provision.

I apologise if I tar these operations with a very black and broad brush, but my target is those parasitic operators who prey on vulnerable motorists who are ill equipped to defend themselves. These are the decent, hard working and skilled men and women who go about their business but have to use a vehicle extensively. The release, tow-away and storage charges are disproportionate because they are unregulated by the law and are often much more than the statutory removal fees set by the Minister and his department. Moreover, the statutory removal fees are based upon vehicle recovery operations, pressure of time and 24/7 availability, but parking control operations are much simpler and less costly.

The Government introduced the Private Security Industry Act 2001, the PSIA, but this was primarily concerned with the private security industry, club bouncers and the like. However, it provided that an individual involved in vehicle immobilising, known as a VI, has to be licensed by the Security Industry Authority. The SIA is not an appeal body and malpractice is outside its remit. The appeal mechanism lies within the company alleged to be at fault, but there is no requirement for the company to be registered or approved in any way. The SIA is obviously not as well resourced as it would like to be, and its problem is that 1 per cent of its licensed members are VIs, but this generates 25 per cent of its parliamentary correspondence and at least 70 Parliamentary Questions per year. That cannot be a lot of fun for the SIA. If a motorist complains to the police, they will say it is a civil matter and decline to get involved. The police are right because they have no powers, but it is extremely damaging to their reputation among decent, hard working members of the public.

For the past 12 years, the Government have completely failed to deal with this problem, leaving the most industrious and vulnerable members of our society exposed to the following problems: inadequate or misleading signage that sometimes leads motorists to park where they should not; the size of the release and tow-away fees, coupled with the curious reluctance of VI companies to take payment by means of a card—I wonder why they do that—immediate clamping or towing away without exercising any discretion; operatives refusing to identify themselves, leading one to suspect that a number of them are unlicensed; operatives luring people to park, or intimidating them for payment; the SIA’s lack of powers against these types of conduct; and the clamping of vehicles that should never be clamped because of their use.

There is also a new problem concerning the use of cameras and the complicity of the DVLA, which seems to have a policy of releasing as much private information as possible. This help from the DVLA results in unsophisticated motorists being sent a document that is made to look like a fine originating from the Government or their agents, but is more likely to have come from a parasite.

Ministers belatedly recognised the problem and issued a consultation paper on 30 April this year. The Minister will have seen some dodgy staff work in his time, but I am sure that this paper can take pride of place in his black museum. It is well drafted, but it demonstrates that Ministers and the Government have a complete lack of comprehension of the scale, nature and effect of clamping.

The paper is full of holes. For instance, it is predicated on the fact that there are only 1,900 licensed VIs. Elsewhere, it notes that some VIs refuse to identify themselves. A recent GfK NOP survey commissioned by the RAC Foundation suggested that between 8 and 12 per cent of households have had at least one vehicle clamped on private land. This, coupled with the amount of parliamentary activity, suggests that the 1,900 licensed VIs are amazingly active. A more likely explanation is that the problem is much bigger than the Government recognise.

The paper offers only four options. The first is to do nothing, an option that should always be considered. The second is a voluntary code of practice, which is more or less what we have now. The third is regulation by a business licensing system, which apparently is the preferred option. However, this is a cosy cartel set up and run by the parking industry for its own benefit. Where is the independent tribunal component? Since depriving a person of their freedom of movement is a serious matter, there should be a proper and genuinely independent appeals mechanism. The fourth option is a compulsory approved contractor scheme. A voluntary scheme is in place, but only five companies are in it. My guess is that the SIA does not want any greater involvement than running the licensing system, as the regulatory and appeals side is seen as a poisoned chalice.

I am sure that the Minister, like me, will wonder why the paper did not consider other options. A permit could be issued by the local authority, which would introduce a strong element of local democratic checks and balances, to ensure that parking controls are necessary in the location applied for. On the same tack, should it be legal for a VI company to pay a landowner for the right to exercise parking controls? This is happening more often, and the incidence will increase further as premises with parking fall out of use. Another option might be to use the parking appeals tribunal currently used for resolving on-street parking appeals.

The partial impact assessment is just that. It looks closely at the costs to the VI industry, but not at the costs to the motorist and his employer, or the adverse effect on productivity. It is also predicated on a very low number of VIs and VI companies.

This is a sorry tale of ineffective government. The consultation is full of holes and demonstrates that the Government do not fully understand the impact of their inaction. There is now not enough time to effect any changes before the end of this Parliament. That is bad for all the stakeholders: the property owners, the respectable VIs and parking companies and, above all, the motorists.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on securing this debate today; it is very important. He ended by saying that there is not enough time in this Parliament to introduce any regulations. I am not sure whether that is a threat or a promise, and if his party by some fluke wins the next election I will be interested to see how quickly it introduces the right regulations, but that is for the future.

This is a serious example of a part of the motor industry that is wholly unregulated. It is almost the law of the jungle. That worries me, because attitudes in one area, such as the issue of parking, which we are discussing tonight, will have an effect on the attitude of motorists to other issues. The Government have done a good job in the past few years in encouraging motorists to obey the law, whether on speeding, drink-driving or drivers’ hours. We are getting better, but there is still a long way to go with some trucks.

I was talking to a former director of VOSA recently, who told the story of some checks that he was doing on truck drivers going between Ireland and eastern Europe. The company sacked all the Irish drivers and replaced them with eastern European drivers and paid them £2.50 or £3 an hour. If they stopped for a rest—which of course is statutory—they were charged the same rate per hour as if they had been in a hotel, because they were not moving. The consequence of driving for 36 hours without any rest or sleep is extremely serious.

VOSA is doing better; it needs to do an awful lot more. The point is the difference between what motorists expect and what they get when they obey the law as laid down by the Government, agencies and local authorities—what motorists expect and often get, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, when they try off-street parking. The stories abound of serious problems. As the noble Earl said, the Security Industry Authority licenses individuals, so when you complain to the company, the company says that it has nothing to do with it. Often the company allegedly in charge of the parking employs a subcontractor. Motorists wonder who they should appeal to. There are stories of companies saying, “You cannot appeal until you have paid the fine in the first place”. That is the usual business of people being guilty until they have tried to demonstrate their innocence. It is not even an independent appeal. Something needs to be done to sort out that process.

We have had a lot of debate in your Lordships' House recently about the police not always having their numbers on display. My noble friend has made some positive and welcome comments about that. It is perfectly reasonable that private sector people who operate these parking lots should have some identification that means something. We have even greater trouble with CCTV, because there will be no contact between the motorist and the company until the motorist receives a nasty letter through the post saying, “You were seen there and it will cost you a lot of money”.

I hope that my noble friend can help me with this. The Transport Select Committee produced what appears to be a very robust recommendation in its report. It basically says that the whole process should be governed,

“by the same framework of restrictions and codes of practice as public on-street clamping. The Government should ensure an equable legal framework including public roads and private land used by the public for parking, which will stamp out these abuses”.

That clearly refers to both the private sector operators and the public sector ones as well.

I conclude by commending, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has done, the organisation that deals with parking appeals in London. I had reason to appeal a few years ago to this organisation about something which my son had done. It turned on whether a parking restriction on a particular road was applicable on Sunday. It is an example to follow. It was very easy; it was quick and convenient. You felt that it was absolutely fair—they listened to your evidence and to the evidence from the local authority; I presented a photograph of the road sign, which said parking was not forbidden on Sunday, and we got the answer. It is not a very difficult thing to do and I do not imagine it costs very much. However, it would give confidence to motorists that they were going to be treated fairly—they would behave better and it would give the industry a good name. I do hope that my noble friend will consider that when he responds.

My Lords, I listened with great interest to what my noble friend had to say and I agree with everything that he put before us. My interest in the SIA is not so much to do with private clampers but with bailiffs, whom it is also due to regulate. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, will be speaking in the gap, although it seems not, which is sad, as she seems to be making some good progress in getting the SIA under control. It was not the best of regulators before she arrived. It suffers from the great deficit that it cannot deal with complaints but just regulates. You cannot, as has been demonstrated by my noble friend, have a system of regulation and registration without having a complaints system, with teeth, tied in with it in some way.

The SIA could say that we will not register a clamper unless it belongs to a reputable organisation that has a proper complaints and adjudication procedure so that something is made available for motorists who get stuck in this way. That does not seem to be difficult. You have that point of impact on people when you give them a licence. If they have not signed up to a complaints procedure then you do not give them a licence. That does not require any legislation or any changes. It requires someone to have the courage to say that, “Yes you, the British Parking Association”—which after all is a thoroughly reputable organisation—“is running a complaints and disciplinary procedure that we are happy to go along with, and being a member of that process would tick the box”. That seems to be a lot simpler than trying to create something statutory, or, worse still, trying to run a complaints system through the department.

I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said about the appeals procedures for ordinary—as one might call them—public sector tickets. I do not think they are actually that satisfactory. The whole appeals procedure is not allowed to listen to common sense. It has very restricted grounds for appeal and there is immense inefficiency in some local authorities. Camden sends tens of thousands of people to bailiffs every year because of parking tickets, mostly because of its own inefficiency in contacting those people in the first place and its own rapacity in setting up traps for motorists where there should be none. It is not an elegant and perfect system in the public sector either.

My Lords, I confirm that I referred to the London system and not to a nationwide one. The London system is very good.

My Lords, PATAS is not a bad organisation, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, found out not so long ago when she tried judicially to review it, what it can do is greatly restricted. In particular, it is not allowed to pay any attention to common sense; it just has a set of six very restricted grounds on which it can allow an appeal. I am glad that the noble Lord came within that set, but many people with many good cases do not because of the way in which it has been set up.

I like self-regulation if we can give people access to it. I hope that the Minister will find a way of doing this, because it would be an easy remedy to the problems which my noble friend illustrates.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on securing the time for this debate and on his excellent introduction to it. He covered pretty much all the points that need to be covered.

I declare an interest in that, a few weeks ago, my husband was parked for four hours, for which he paid, in a car park in Exeter. Although he was fined and not clamped, his letter to Premier Parking Solutions, which is managed by Valley Enforcement Limited, makes some of the important points that I would have made, and I am grateful to him for having done the homework, albeit unintentionally, for this debate. He wrote:

“Your sign warns of penalties for overstay; but £100 for a very short overstay after a five hour period of paid for parking seem to me to be grossly disproportionate, and if it was to be enforced at that level then it should be backed by very prominent signage. What is the basis of this charge, and is it backed by a statutory order? If so where can I inspect such an order? I can find no trace of it in the public domain. If I am satisfied that it is properly legally enforceable, then of course I shall pay. If it is not, then I shall offer you a nominal sum in damages for my overstay of say £10 and then dispute any demand for further payment in Courts. I have copied this to the Environment Director at Devon County Council and the Leader of the City Council as this kind of practice could seriously damage Exeter’s reputation as a tourist and business destination”.

Funnily enough, my husband is a Devon county councillor and an executive member of the council’s Strategic Planning, Regional and International Affairs Committee. That is relevant, because he is very concerned about the reputation that towns get, and these sorts of practices are sometimes unfairly blamed on the local authority and not on the private operator who is committing these abuses. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, referred to my noble friend Lady Walmsley, who had to go to extraordinary lengths to prove how unfair the system was. She did the public a service in doing that. There is a widespread feeling, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, that the hardworking individual who tries to do their best to be law abiding is at a significant disadvantage in every way because this is not regulated or taken seriously.

The Government will complain about the lack of time in which to do something about this, but there is plenty of time this evening as the House will run out of business very shortly. I remind the Minister that just a few weeks ago we in this House considered a statutory instrument to update the legislation on the SIA, so it is possible to do something. The Government have been aware for some time that when the SIA was introduced in 2001 it was not given the necessary powers to limit these sorts of activities and that there is not even a code of conduct. Those issues could have been addressed in the SI that we were talking about recently.

The scale of the clamping industry is enormous. I gather it is in the region of £240 million a year, so this is not just small beer. It is something that I should have thought the Government would be very anxious to get to grips with, given its effect on individuals. I would particularly like the Minister to comment on the role of the DVLA in all this. Should it actually co-operate with the private companies operating in a most unsatisfactory way—or even if they were operating in a satisfactory way, should it co-operate? Do Her Majesty’s Government have a policy on this? Does the Minister feel that it is satisfactory?

The Government themselves could do a large amount to resolve the situation, but some of it is what other speakers have mentioned: the fact of the signage; the fact that very often the private car park operators try to make their car park look as like a public one as possible, I would say in order to deceive people, so they think that the same rules apply, when in fact they do not.

What would the Liberal Democrats do? For some time now we have had a firm policy that was documented in our Fast Track Britain. In that publication we say:

“We will tackle abuses of power, poor standards and unfair appeals procedures in relation to car parking. We will regulate the parking system and increase confidence in Local Authority Parking Enforcement by creating an ‘Independent Parking Complaints Authority’…to act as a regulator for all car parks over 10 spaces and be responsible for policing the standards for all parking facilities and decriminalised parking enforcement—including appeals processes, adequate lighting and public safety provision, disabled parking provision and adequate signage of fines. The IPCA remit will include applications for the blue badge scheme and the implementation and management of this scheme. The IPCA will recognise those car parks meeting the required standards by awarding a kite mark. The IPCA will replace the Traffic Penalty Tribunal which does not tackle private car parks, and it will be funded by a levy on all car park operators”.

I commend that policy to the Minister and I urge him to find parliamentary time to take forward the suggestions made in this debate because it is a serious issue for all of the individuals who have been so unfairly treated—people who have had their cars towed away, people who have had to deal with clamping which causes trauma and puts them to enormous expense, and people who have been faced with fines that can be set at a level and then arbitrarily increased with no oversight from anyone.

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on obtaining this debate. It touches on an issue which is of great interest to many members of the public, as we know from the number of letters that have been written and other contacts that have been made, as well as to many Members of this House, those who have spoken in this debate and the other place.

It is an issue that needs to be addressed. There are a lot of problems within this area, and I am glad to say that we are beginning to address them. It was also good that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, pointed out that that we need some regulation of private space, such as where there is a doctor’s surgery and a supermarket close by. I can think of things such as rugby matches when spaces being filled are actually for other purposes, so it is quite right and appropriate to have a method by which people can ensure that their private land is not used if they do not want that to happen and, if they are willing to let other people use it, they should have some control. It is absolutely right that we should do something about this in primary legislation; we intend to legislate as soon as possible in the next Session.

The role of the Security Industry Authority is to regulate the private security industry in Great Britain under the Private Security Industry Act 2001; it reports to the Home Secretary. The 2001 Act requires the compulsory licensing of individuals undertaking designated activities. Under the Act, any individual in England and Wales involved in immobilising vehicles on private land—the noble Earl referred to these people as vehicle immobilisers, VIs—with a view to charging a release fee must hold a licence issued for the purpose from the SIA. This requirement also applies to anyone involved in blocking in or towing away vehicles for the same purpose, and to those who collect the fee. Directors, managers and company owners also require a licence, which is known as a “non-front line” licence. Licensing by the SIA will be extended to Northern Ireland on 1 December 2009. This does not apply to Scotland, which has separate laws on this issue.

As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, it is important to make it clear that the SIA is not involved where the owner of a vehicle which has been clamped or removed from private land disputes the justification for that action. Unless some criminal action is alleged it is a matter between the vehicle owner and those responsible for the clamping or towing. This has been touched on by a number of speakers and it is one of the problems. One feels at the mercy of these people and it is extremely difficult to get something done. I have been involved in an interesting debate with someone who tried to charge me on this sort of occasion. This is a very real issue.

The SIA licence requirement for individuals was aimed at excluding criminals. Of course, criminals have been involved. There have been cases where criminals have been caught and taken through due process of law for their involvement. There has also been unacceptable behaviour by individuals. However, while it has gone some way to ensuring good practice, it has been made clear by other speakers and the noble Earl that there remains a significant level of bad practice among some vehicle immobilisation businesses. I thank the noble Earl again for this debate because I certainly had not put my eyes on this issue and looked at it in any detail. I have found that quite useful.

At the request of Ministers, however—it was announced by my honourable friend Vernon Coaker in February 2008, more than a year ago—the SIA completed a feasibility study into regulating businesses in the industry. On the basis of its proposals we launched a public consultation on 30 April, to which reference has been made already. We want to curb the unacceptable practices of some businesses, over which the individual worker will probably have no or perhaps little control, such as exorbitant release fees, which a number of speakers have touched on. We need to put some balance behind that, and set some principles and top lines on what can be charged. On inadequate signage, to which reference has been made already, sometimes not only is the signage inadequate and it is unclear that one has to pay anything, but people are lulled into thinking that they can park for no or little fees. That is wrong as well and needs to be looked at. The noble Baroness referred to her husband and to parking in Exeter. I did not realise that these things happen in the West Country. I understood that they do in London, but it is terrible if it goes on down there.

Immediate clamping and towing away is unacceptable. If a person is two or three minutes over their time, suddenly being clamped or towed away is absolutely inappropriate. We need to look at that. The fact that wheel-clampers do not identify themselves is not correct and is not allowed. They should identify themselves, but sometimes they do not. Indeed, that was the main thrust of my debate with a gentleman on this issue. Nor should people be lured to park where they will be clamped.

Our preferred option is compulsory membership of a licensing scheme for vehicle immobilising businesses. A third party accrediting body would be contracted by the SIA to decide whether each company which applied for a licence met the scheme’s requirements. The SIA would remain as the regulator. The accrediting body, or bodies, would decide whether a business which applied for a licence met the requirements for qualification. It would also be responsible for monitoring all licensed companies to check their compliance with the scheme’s requirements. Failure to comply could result in the SIA removing the business’s licence or taking other action to secure compliance.

The noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, talked about the DVLA. I understand that there is a concern here. This is really Department for Transport business, but, as I understand it, the DVLA has always taken the view that disclosure of data where there is a breach of civil or contract law is fair and reasonable. Tracing people who do not comply with the conditions for parking on private land is regarded in most circumstances as a reasonable cause. However, there are strict rules. For example, before being granted electronic access to DVLA records, a company must be a member of a DVLA-accredited trade association, and abide by its code of practice. The only trade association currently accredited for the private car park industry is the British Parking Association.

The Government have just launched a consultation that seeks views on the DVLA making keeper data available, whether electronically or manually, only to parking enforcement companies that are members of an approved trade association. We need to look at that area carefully within this consultation, because there is clearly something wrong if fines and so on are put out as if they come from the DVLA. That absolutely must not be allowed.

The noble Earl talked about partial impact assessment; this is a draft, and we need the comments received during the consultation to help refine the costs and benefits. The detail will be decided after that consultation; any inputs will be gratefully received, because there are some important issues here. The information received during the consultation will be taken into account.

I think that I have touched on how the proposals on business licensing, which the noble Earl specifically asked about, differ from the current arrangements. To run through them again, the issues, which we will decide on after public consultation, include: excessive penalties for releasing clamped cars; impounding cars unreasonably quickly; inadequate signage; an effective appeals process, which is important and has been touched on, and luring cars into car parks by any means.

The noble Earl also asked whether the Government could require local authorities to license private parking. Even if they did, it would require some business standards to be imposed. The real question is: who is in a position to do that, or has access to the necessary expertise? There is a danger that local authority licensing might just impose a layer of bureaucracy; that is something we need to look at in the consultation, as it might not be the right way ahead. There would also be the possibility of local authorities having competing and differing priorities at local level, depending on circumstances. I imagine that Twickenham would be very different from say, Wargrave, out in the Thames Valley.

The noble Earl specifically asked how the scheme will be enforced. Our preferred option is that businesses failing to comply with their licence conditions will be subject to sanctions. Exactly what those are, we will have to decide in the context of this consultation. The SIA will have powers to revoke or suspend a company’s licence if it is found to be breaching the conditions. There will also be specific criminal offences connected to working without a company licence or breaching licence conditions. From what has been said, people probably feel it is important that we can achieve that to get control. The detail of those offences will be determined as part of this consultation process.

My noble friend Lord Berkeley asked again about clampers. I touched on that and if clamping happens at night people sometimes feel intimidated. They cannot prove who has done it and do not know if they have a licence. It is clear that clampers must wear the licence when doing that, although the chap I had a discussion with was not, and that any licence-holder who collects a fee must provide a receipt, showing the location, the date and their own name, signature and licence number. If someone suspects that a person involved in immobilising or towing vehicles does not possess a licence or is failing to follow the rules they should report it to the SIA, as it is a criminal offence. I quite understand what the noble Earl was saying; if a single woman is parking somewhere, it is sometimes quite difficult to ascertain those things. However, that is probably about as far as we can go, as it is a criminal offence which would then have to be taken through due process of law.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned bailiffs, which is, of course, a matter for the Ministry of Justice. As I understand it, the details are being developed but an appeals process will be introduced. He also asked about the appeals process; it is part of the consultation, and I touched on it before. The scheme will prohibit employees or representatives from engaging in unacceptable practices, make them more accountable and require a transparent appeals system. The scheme should also include general and sector-specific licence conditions. We will have to be clear on what is laid down because these are not easy areas.

My message is this: we take this issue seriously. Perhaps we have taken too long to react, although we started the process a year ago last February. It is something that needs to be focused on and any input into the consultation will be extremely valuable. I hope that, with the consultation and the legislation which will be introduced in the next Session, we can take a good step forward. It is a worrying issue and sometimes leads to quite difficult situations, as I discovered myself. I hope that we can move it forward.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the future of St Helena.

My Lords, I am grateful to the business managers for allowing this debate at short notice. While the quantity of contributors is not great, I am confident we shall hear comments of great quality from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, who is to speak in the gap, my noble friend Lord Shutt and the Minister. I must declare an interest as one of the officers of the All-Party St Helena Group chaired by Bob Russell MP. Like him, I am one of very few parliamentarians to have visited St Helena. I did so in 2003 as a member of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation accompanied by John Smith MP and Anthony Steen MP, while valuable administrative and seafaring assistance was given by Paul Jackson, the deputy secretary of the CPA UK Branch and a former commander in the Royal Navy.

One of the facts we learned was that no government Minister has ever visited the island. Members of the Royal Family have, and we visited the Prince Andrew School. My noble friend Lord Shutt will have more to say about educational opportunities on St Helena. The reason that no Minister has visited is that it takes such a long time to get there. Currently there is no airport and the only scheduled transport available is by the RMS “St Helena”, the last remaining Royal Mail ship in operation. Occasionally cruise liners venture near the island, but for insurance reasons their passengers are often not allowed to disembark if the swell is too great.

The RMS can transport 120 passengers and a limited amount of freight. There is no wharf on St Helena so disembarking is fraught with excitement. As a result of the difficulty of getting to and from St Helena, the island has no effective economy. As a British Overseas Territory, it is entirely dependent on an increasing subsidy from the British Treasury, the largest of any overseas territory. Over the last 25 years, the taxpayer has given St Helena more than a quarter of a billion pounds. Unless something changes, that sum will be significantly larger over the next 25 years.

Due to the lack of employment opportunities on the island, many Saints, as they like to be called, have sought work elsewhere. I met some of the 600 or so Saints in the Falklands when I visited last year. There are several hundred on Ascension Island, one of St Helena’s dependencies, along with the even more remote Tristan da Cunha. There are thousands of Saints in the United Kingdom with particular clusters in Reading, Swindon and Southampton, and we have 20 or so in my former constituency of Cheltenham. The local college, now part of the University of Gloucestershire, had an educational link with St Helena stretching back over several decades. We trained teachers from St Helena, some of whom went back to the island while others stayed in the UK, married and brought up families here. I met the Cheltenham Saints before I visited St Helena in 2003. Without exception, they wanted to go back to the island, either to retire, to settle with their families or at least to be able to spend their holidays there. With no airport that is simply not possible. Many noble Lords will know that one of the Doorkeepers along the corridor is a Saint who has not been back to the island in more than 20 years. This brings in a related issue of frozen pensions, but that is a debate for another day.

To reach St Helena it is necessary to start from Cape Town in South Africa or Walvis Bay in Namibia. There one embarks on the RMS and sails for five days. The Atlantic Ocean is a very large expanse of water. There is nothing but ocean all around. You go to bed, sleep, wake up and there is still ocean, nothing but ocean, day after day after day. Eventually you reach the island, disembark, spend 56 hours there, some of it sleeping, and then embark again for the voyage to Ascension Island, another two days at sea. That schedule is simply not feasible for tourists or those wanting to spend regular holidays there to see families and friends. With very small numbers of visitors, it is impossible to sustain a tourist industry.

Following the CPA visit in 2003, we had a debate on St Helena in Westminster Hall, when I said that the island needed three things: airport, airport and airport. Actually, it needs only one thing. All three of us who visited the island agreed that an airport was needed, which is something that has been talked about and consulted on for decades. A referendum among islanders showed 72 per cent in favour of air access.

It was a great delight to learn just before the previous general election that the Government had decided to build the airport. The then Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, made the announcement and I recall meeting him in a Corridor and congratulating him warmly. An environmental impact assessment was carried out and the project received a clean bill of health. Of particular relevance was the situation of indigenous species on St Helena, including the wirebird or, to give it its Latin name, charadrius sanctaehelenae. I have my St Helena National Trust wirebird adoption certificate, as I am now the proud adoptive parent of a wirebird with a unique identification number, NW44532. I hope to meet it one day.

An invitation to tender to build the airport was issued and received no bids. Another invitation to tender was issued changing the terms to include government payment for island visits. Four expressions of interest were received, two of which dropped out at a later stage. Two companies produced compliant bids to build the airport, the Basil Read Group based in South Africa, and the Italian-based Impregilo. After a long evaluation Impregilo’s was selected as the preferred bid. Then last December, the Government announced a pause in negotiations. Later, yet another consultation was announced which is ongoing. The last consultation showed undisputedly that an airport is necessary to give St Helena any chance of becoming self-sufficient financially. That is still the case so this consultation is regarded by many as no more than an expensive time-wasting exercise.

The new consultation’s options are: first, to build the airport now; secondly, to not build the airport at all; or, thirdly, to wait five years before making a decision. I understand the current financial difficulties in which Governments find themselves, but there are reports from Mr George Soros and other experienced commentators of green shoots of recovery breaking out. Hanging around for years to build St Helena’s airport makes no sense. Not building it at all will lead to an ever increasing subsidy to the island year on year, and any delay is likely to lead to an increase in the cost of building the airport and the possibility of losing potential private sector investors who are keen to develop a tourist industry for St Helena. Frankly, who would enter a new bidding round after the shenanigans of the current process?

Why would tourists want to visit St Helena? I have already mentioned Saints who wish to spend their holidays there, but there are a host of other attractions for potential visitors. Napoleon was exiled to and died on St Helena. A section of the island around Longwood House where Napoleon lived has been given to France. A French official lives on the island and shows visitors round. There is an amazing collection of original Napoleonic artefacts, including the billiard table on which he laid out his battle plans while writing his memoirs. Around the world many people are interested in Napoleon. I am told that in the United States of America there are 4 million Nap nuts, as they are called, let alone those in the French-speaking world who want to see where he lived. St Helena need attract only a tiny fraction of these people to visit perhaps just once to fill every hotel and guest house on the island.

Napoleon is not the only reason for visiting St Helena. Anglers and divers will also find extraordinary attractions. There are 1,100 shipwrecks around St Helena—a diver’s paradise. The island was, of course, the place where ships called in to replenish stocks of fresh food and water during the days of the East India Company. The island has a wide variety of fish for sea anglers, which is a growing leisure activity. There are many varieties of birds—not just the St Helena wirebird—for the ornithologist. There are also a number of historic sites, many of which need refurbishment.

I talked about inward investment. There are potential investors, most particularly a consortium called Shelco. I have seen its plans for the most environmentally sensitive hotel in the world, not just in operational matters but in building materials, designed by the architect Jeremy Blake of Purcell Miller Tritton. It promises to be a landmark in sustainable tourism, using wind and solar power and growing its own fruit and vegetables, something St Helena used to do in abundance.

Other investors wish to help develop a thriving tourist industry, including some Saints who have already gone back and started to refurbish buildings that could be used as small hotels or guest houses. The problem is that none of this will happen until the airport is built. Has the Minister any idea how long this pause in negotiations will last, and is he confident that the preferred bidder, Impregilo, will stay in the frame with its current bid at the current price?

The consultation document’s figures seem to present the worst-case scenario, with spending for several years all bundled into a single total. If the airport were given the go-ahead now, what would be the cost in each of the financial years 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12, by which time Impregilo plans to have finished the airport?

What has been the outcome of recent communications between the Government and Shelco, or with any other private sector companies? Have there been any meetings, and has there been any discussion of private sector assistance with the costs of building the airport?

It is difficult to imagine a French overseas territory suffering like St Helena. Have the Government made any application to the European Union for assistance in funding the airport? What about the UK’s responsibilities under the UN charter, which says that the UK has special obligations to our overseas territories, and the Government’s claims in their own White Paper that overseas territories have first call on DfID funds to meet “reasonable” needs?

If I had more time I would quote from two excellent books which I recommend to noble Lords: The Last Pink Bits by Harry Ritchie, the former literary editor of the Sunday Times, and The Teatime Islands by Ben Fogle, the journalist and broadcaster.

The Government made the right decision in 2005 to build an airport on St Helena. It is now time to deliver on that promise, give the Saints the chance to develop a thriving economy and put right decades of neglect by successive British Governments. I hope that the Minister will give some encouragement to these remarkable people and ensure that a government Minister will, at last, visit St Helena to gain first-hand knowledge of conditions on the island and the difficulties of getting there.

My Lords, I am sorry that I did not put my name down and am speaking in the gap; I was not expecting this debate. I hope, in view of the time, that I will be permitted a little longer than would be normal, because I want to follow up what has been said: that this decision has been awaited by St Helena and it thought it had got it. It has been waiting for it for nine years, to put this into context. Last December, as has been said, we were told that there would be a delay, and we knew that there was an economic crisis. Now we are being told that there will be a further delay until, I gather, July, although some say it may be the turn of the year before a decision is made.

What are the three options? First, to go ahead with the airport; secondly, not to go ahead with it but to commission a new ship, which will take another five years; or, thirdly, to delay any decision for five years. The economic circumstances of the island cannot take that kind of delay. Already the people who are required on the island—the young people, the working people—are leaving. That leaves, as has been said, an island of either very young children or very elderly citizens.

This airport was going to be the lifeline. It might be costly—all airports are costly wherever you build them, that is true. Nevertheless, if the island is going to be self-sufficient, if the people who live on it are going to have any opportunity for a future and indeed if the island is going to retain people at all, the airport is absolutely necessary. There is no other way around the difficulties, as the noble Lord explained—I have not been myself—of actually going by sea, and the length of time it takes. He described very graphically some of the beauties that can be found on the island, and the points of interest—it was the last resting place of Napoleon, from which he could not escape.

There would be a great deal of interest in St Helena. A lot of tourists would want to go there and development would take place in relation to the hotel. I say to the Minister that, because of the assurances that were given, a lot of people have already invested in the future and they will begin to lose. The people are extremely disillusioned, I must say, at this outcome of events; they have to wait again and they do not even know now whether there is a future—whether the airport will go ahead. A new boat will have to be commissioned if it does not. To wait another five years would absolutely kill it. The people interested in development in the island are not going to hang around for another five years.

Will the Minister tell us what discussions have taken place? I noticed that when this matter was discussed recently in the Commons—I think it was the day after the announcement was made—the Minister who was replying said, “I know a lot about St Helena but I have never been”. That is one of the problems that we are facing—many of the relevant people have not been. My interest is there because I have an interest in overseas territories generally, and I have a great interest in the people of St Helena because the situation that they find themselves in is life or death.

I know that we are not going to get a reply, and that is nothing to do with my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham, because he has been forthright throughout his political career. He is not in a position to say any more to us, except that there is an economic crisis, that we are in the midst of recession, and that the Government cannot commit themselves at this time. But when are they going to commit themselves? That is the position. When are we going to get this answer? We are now told, yes, there could be a decision in July, or it could be the end of the year. There could be a decision not to go ahead. But to say “Another five years” is the end of the road as far as St Helena is concerned. I see my noble friend Lord Gilbert, who is a greater expert than I am on defence, but I would have thought that one of the other advantages of the airport would be that it would add an extra staging post to the aircraft going to the Falklands. That in itself should be invaluable. If we do not go ahead, there is a cost. Already “St Helena”, the ship, is costing roughly £9 million per year. As the Government said, there is a variation in help of about £1.75 million and this is an ongoing cost that will continue. It will continue because we have a commitment to the overseas territory. I think my noble friend would recognise this.

There is disillusionment; people are so disillusioned that they do not know whether to join in the debate. I make an appeal to them: I want them to continue to show their interest and to participate, and to make very clear to the Government that there can only be one answer and that is for the airport to go ahead. I welcome what my noble friend has to say, but I am not very hopeful, and the people of St Helena are not just not hopeful but are losing hope altogether—and that is the real tragedy of this situation. I hope that, although he cannot give an answer, he will press on the Ministers concerned that the lifeblood of the island lies with the airport, and that a decision—a positive decision—to go ahead is required as soon as possible.

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Jones of Cheltenham on rising to the challenge, made 24 hours ago, to take his QSD today. He has given us a wonderful historic background from the experience of his visit and from what he has learnt. The debate is not perfect in timing, and perhaps we could have got two dozen people to speak had we had five weeks’ notice, but I am delighted that the option has been taken. It is not perfect for me as many of my relevant papers are in Greetland, but it is an important challenge for St Helena. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, was able to speak in the gap as I know much about his interest.

I returned from St Helena exactly three months ago. I went on a CPA visit with MPs Fraser Kemp and Brian Jenkins. The island is not only an overseas territory but a dependent overseas territory. It is in the same position as Pitcairn and Montserrat; it is in need of significant aid and assistance and it is nowhere near self-sufficient. That is the starting point for a special island and its needs.

The island is two weeks away from Britain. As my noble friend Lord Jones said, we spent 56 hours on St Helena, but deduct 16 hours’ sleep and you are left with only 40 hours. It was enough time for me to realise that this was a beautiful place and that it had a very interesting heritage and a welcoming and hospitable people. There was enough time to give me a real understanding of the needs of the people, particularly when added to that was the reading and research both before and after.

The sea journey, leaving from Walvis Bay on a Monday and arriving at St Helena on Friday morning, was an absolutely wonderful experience. And it was a wonderful experience sailing again on Sunday and arriving at Ascension Island on Wednesday morning. It was wonderful and it was romantic, but it is not realistic. This is a place of isolation and restricted resources. Let me give three examples. When we were there, my wife, who came with me, had an alternative tour. She went to the hospital where she saw a scanner not in use. She made inquiries about it—it had arrived the previous September and unfortunately something had happened to it en route. I do not know whether anything has been done about it since, but then no one had been prepared to make the journey to St Helena to mend the scanner. If you think about it, you can understand that, because it takes a fortnight of someone’s time. When they get there, they might not have the necessary spare part, and it would take another fortnight to get it. That is one example of the island’s isolation and its dependency on the RMS.

We spoke to people who were concerned about medical treatment and told us about the amount of money needed to get to Cape Town for urgent medical treatment. They explained that in an emergency and for matters beyond the competency of the small hospital on the island, there were problems of having to travel by sea. I learnt of the restricted opportunities in education. I did not go to the school as it happened, but I made my inquiries. There is an average of 51 pupils in each year group at secondary school level. The resources of St Helena are such that only two of them can go to university. Here in the UK, it is the Government’s aim to have half the pupils in secondary school going to university. Therefore, if those pupils were in the UK, there would be an expectation that about 25 of them would go.

There are just over 4,000 people in St Helena and nearly two-thirds of the working people are in the public sector. The GDP is less than £5,000 per head. More than half the employees are earning £95 a week or less, yet the cost of living is greater than in the United Kingdom. Therefore, as my noble friend hinted, it has a four-tier economy: the people who are content to earn their living in St Helena; those who are content to go a little further and go to Ascension and earn a little more; those who are prepared to go a bit further and earn more still in the Falklands; and those who, until recently, came to the UK. Remittances from those working abroad assist the economy and are a very important part of it, but those working abroad rely on grandparents to look after their children in St Helena.

An airport would improve access, the economy and quality of life. Clearly, this comes down to money. I have looked at the nature of aid. As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, will respond to the debate with a brief from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, yet the resources for St Helena come from the Department for International Development. As my noble friend indicated, it is the stated policy of the Government that the reasonable assistance needs of the overseas territories are a first call on the aid programme. With the exception of St Helena, Montserrat and the Pitcairn Islands, DfID has an entirely different, albeit entirely honourable, remit of trying to achieve the millennium development goals. However, that aim is shared by others: 10 per cent of aid comes from Britain, 90 per cent comes from elsewhere. Many countries throughout the world that receive aid from us receive far greater sums of aid from elsewhere. However, that is not the case with St Helena, which receives aid only from the UK. The only bilateral aid that St Helena receives is from the UK. It has received some resources from the European Union, a tiny smidgen from a United Nations body and something like £7,500 from Australia and Greece.

I have been looking at aid from other Commonwealth countries. Hardly any of the small islands in the South Pacific that have been granted independence in the past 30 years are receiving UK aid now. In other words, once a place is independent, it is able to knock on other doors. However, that is not the position with St Helena. For example, well over half of the overseas aid of the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde comes from countries other than Portugal. The point I am making is that other independent countries have other doors on which to knock. However, dependent overseas territories have no other doors on which to knock. I question whether DfID, as opposed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is fit for purpose in terms of dispensing aid to the dependent overseas territories.

There is a consultation document on the most appropriate option for access. When you first read the document you think that its proposals are fair enough, but when you read it again you think, just a minute, this jars somewhat. The document refers to a code of practice on consultation and when to consult. It states that formal consultation should take place where there is scope to influence the policy outcome. The document tells us that the preferred policy option is option C—delay. It then refers to who will be consulted. Consultation will take place with St Helenians, residents, expatriates and other stakeholders and others with an interest in the overall use of the Government’s development budget. These groups will include representatives of potential investors and non-governmental organisations. I am rather in favour of non-governmental organisations, particularly those that are involved in overseas aid, and so forth. If one bears in mind that DfID is in partnership with these very organisations and mentions them in particular as being appropriate to respond to this, then, almost on a wink and a nod, if an airport is built, perhaps there will not be quite as many resources for the NGOs to be concerned about.

The document also tells us a lot more about DfID than it does about the concerns of St Helena. It tells us about its global concerns over resources. In one sense, the document is slightly neo-colonialist because it almost assumes that the only money that one can spend is sterling. If it is a bad time for sterling, it is a good time for the euro and the dollar. It may well be that our aid money is not buying as much as it did, but the corollary to that must be that other people’s aid money is doing rather better.

Option C is delay but, in truth, option A means delay anyway. If the Minister were to say in 20 minutes’ time, “I am going to surprise you. We are going ahead with this airport now”, it will be 2013 before the first plane lands. That is a delay. Option C means even greater delay. Access and economy go hand in hand. DfID is already exposed to some £8 million on this project. St Helenians themselves are already exposed to £6 million and promises are being made. The airport is a significant issue for the Government to tackle. It is not some incidental matter in the projected DfID budget.

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Jones, on swiftly seizing the moment and giving us the opportunity for such an interesting and, I suspect, quite significant debate, although it comes at the end of rather a quiet day. My honourable friend the shadow International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell MP, has taken a personal interest in the future of St Helena. Indeed, his deputy, Mark Lancaster MP, has this morning returned from St Helena, which he visited specifically to ascertain what the prospects are and how to go forward. That is part of thinking through the overall strategy for the dependent territories, which we feel has, frankly, been lacking from the Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, was eloquent about his romantic and prolonged journey, but he also raised some important questions about the administration strategy and handling of the situation, not only in St Helena but in other dependent territories. However, the subject is St Helena, which has a special place in our national historical memory. We all remember the vivid cameo of Bonaparte caged on the HMS “Bellerophon”, anchored, I think, off Falmouth, with people rowing out to look at the tyrant. He was waiting for an answer to a polite letter that he had written to the Prince Regent, asking whether, now that it was all over, he could have a modest-sized mansion in somewhere such as Claremont in Surrey, with a dozen servants, where he could live quite modestly as a country gentleman. He waited and waited and, of course, instead of a reply from the Prince Regent, to his dismay he got a note from the captain saying, “We are not going to leafy Surrey; we are going to St Helena and Longwood”.

That is the history, but now we must move into the future. My colleagues have been looking seriously at St Helena, examining the central question of whether an airstrip or airport could be built within an inevitably tight budget and whether something could be taken forward on a sensible scale, with the help of private enterprise. I do not know the precise answer, but I can tell the House that one suggestion put to me by a leading aviation consultant, Mr Michael Woodley, is that, in the absence of a decision about the big project—the £200 million airport—some thinking about an interim air-access development could be organised at a fraction of the cost. Options for enlargement would come later. That would begin to open up a situation in which, as we have been told, the only lifeline to the island is the RMS “St Helena”, which I want to come back to in a moment. Otherwise the islanders, particularly those who are seriously ill or with medical conditions, would be literally cut off and condemned, because they could not get out at short notice.

How could such an objective be achieved if there were an airstrip, rather than a full-blown airport that could carry larger jets? It has been suggested that the civilianised versions of the Grumman Albatross amphibian planes, which are especially equipped to land in rough water, could land in the St Helena harbour at first and, later, on a shorter airstrip, which would be half the length of the eventual full airstrip. Those aircraft would connect on a feeder basis from Ascension Island with the twice-weekly—I think—RAF flights from Brize Norton that pass through Ascension on their way to the Falklands.

I should very much like the Minister to comment on this, because it is an extremely important possibility. There was, and I hope still is, an agreement between the US and the UK to allow a few commercial weekly flights to land on Ascension, which, of course, is mainly controlled by the US military, in the light of its elaborate installations there. Is that agreement still there, because that could open the way for some unscheduled commercial flights and open up the possibility of air links that are otherwise denied to the islanders?

All of this is against the background that RMS “St Helena”, which is the only lifeline, needs refurbishment. There is talk of it needing a £12 million refurbishment and that, for that to be done, it would have to be out of action in 2010. The island would be even more cut off than it is now. It would have no link at all with the outside world.

I do not know whether any of this is possible. It would require expert aviation consultants and highly skilled engineers, including the Royal Engineers, to lay down quick and effective airstrips, as a start. However, it is an interim possibility that would open the way for the eventual development of a full link, when it can be afforded.

The time has come for a bit of creative thinking about the people of St Helena, who are, as we have heard, disillusioned and disappointed at the cancellation, postponement, pause or whatever it is in the major project. That creative thinking opens up the possibility of initial air links, if only to bring a few tourists or to bring a lifeline if someone becomes seriously ill, even if it reduces the connection with the outside world from whatever it is—five or six days—to a few hours. It could be done, but that degree of creative thinking does not seem to be evident in the consultation document or in the departmental thinking that we have heard so far about the future. I should very much like to hear the Minister’s views as to whether these kinds of propositions, which give hope to the people of St Helena, can be opened up. Then we would be able to see a way forward for this beautiful and historic island.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate and in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Jones, for promoting it at short notice. The importance of the issue is reflected by the strength with which the case was put on all sides of the House. I will let my noble friend Lord Hoyle know when I want to use a scriptwriter for any contribution that I make from the Dispatch Box and I will make absolutely sure to avoid the phrases that he suggested I would use.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, was right to say that we are in considerable difficulty with regard to the St Helena airport project, for reasons that we all understand. Of course I am guarded this evening, because we are involved in a consultation exercise and there is no way that I will pre-empt the outcome of that process. The consultation exercise is part of the pause in the project that we have initiated. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Jones, said about the pause being dispiriting for those who had hoped that the project would go ahead according to our plans of 2004-05, but the world lives in changed circumstances and it is understandable that a project of this significance should reflect that change.

Of course we have difficulties, with regard to our development and aid budget, in meeting our requirements. Resources have gone down while the demands of those who need aid have increased with the impoverishment that the changes in the world economy have brought about. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, mentioned Montserrat. The value of our aid to Montserrat has dropped by 30 per cent because its currency is pegged to the dollar. We will address this cut in support as constructively as we can, but it is a measure of how difficult the economic crisis is making matters for DfID and for our aid projects. A project on the significant scale of the airport in St Helena was bound to occasion great difficulty, which is why we are engaged in the consultation exercise.

I have been asked how long the pause will be. The consultation exercise ends at the end of July, so the Government expect to produce an analysis of the situation, and a response, by the end of the year. We will then take the matter from there. In his opening speech, the noble Lord, Lord Jones, left us in no doubt about the significance of the airport to a society that is clearly suffering. The figures relating to the loss of population from St Helena are clear. We know, from the difficulties aptly described by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, and by everyone who has had the good fortune to make it to St Helena, how difficult the journey is.

Reference was made to the fact that the Minister has not been to St Helena. I ask the House to recognise the obligations of the DfID Minister, given the support that we give to so many countries in the world. Our aid to Africa alone involves a significant number of countries. I was on the Select Committee on development in the 1970s, when we shifted our priority towards Africa. Even with a Select Committee working full-time, we did not begin to touch the surface of the problems of Africa. We made one or two visits, largely because Select Committees do not have to answer Questions back in the House, respond to debates or undertake any other ministerial obligations. In the four or five years that I was on the Select Committee, I never felt that we could—

My Lords, my noble friend is making a very good point about the amount of travel that a Minister has to do, but can he tell me of any other overseas territory that the Minister has not visited?

My Lords, I am saying that there are bound to be several because otherwise a Minister would spend the whole of his time in aircraft. My noble friend has spoken with great strength on the issue, but I wonder with what enthusiasm he envisages regular visits to St Helena, given the travel difficulties that noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, have identified. That is bound to be a constraint. After all, there is a constraint on the airport.

I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, constructively said about the airport, although I notice that he made no commitment on behalf of his party about the resources involved; he had smaller-scale suggestions. I understand the noble Lord’s concept that smaller aircraft might produce a feeling among the community that something was being done, however marginal. I can see the value of that for a very small number of people. It might act as help for those who are stricken and cannot get elsewhere; I am not denying the value of that and I take the point on board. The noble Lord will know that the airport is about the development of that society, and the only prospect of development is tourism. The airport is therefore about how you get tourists in sufficient numbers to make an impact on the economy. The noble Lord’s proposal for small sea-planes landing in the non-existent harbour in choppy waters seems to me to have limited attraction for large-scale tourist operations, although I have no doubt that he will find my noble friend Lord Hoyle to be the first on that aircraft, if it ever emerges.

There are difficulties. This is a large-scale project for a very small economy. That is not to decry the needs of the people of St Helena. We have obligations to them—obligations that the Government are fulfilling. It was recognised in the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Jones, that the island can sustain its present population, distressing though aspects of that level is, only through British commitment and British aid. We are fulfilling our obligations under the United Nations charter to St Helena and other overseas territories in the resources that we make available. Inevitably, those resources are more limited at present than they otherwise would be.

My Lords, I have been listening to the debate with great interest. I was at a private briefing in the town a few weeks ago where it was made clear to me—an official of Her Majesty’s Government was present—that private interests were prepared to contribute substantially to both the capital and the running costs of the airport. I have heard no mention of that today. Can my noble friend assist the House by telling us precisely what private interests may be involved? Have there been discussions with Her Majesty’s Government?

My Lords, there certainly are discussions; of course the Government are keen to examine every conceivable option. My noble friend, with his vast experience of defence contracts, will know that the capital work involved is the bulk of the cost and has to be met up front. The estimated costs in the consultation document are between £230 million and £250 million. We are not talking chicken feed here; we are talking about significant resources. Therefore, in the period of credit crunch and shortage of resources in the private sector as much as in government circles, he will appreciate how much more difficult it is to obtain private support.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, asked about a particular group of private contributors, namely Shelco. Officials have had a meeting with Shelco, which has had ideas about financing the project. We understand that proposals may be submitted for a private sector approach and of course we are open to and indeed enthusiastic about such possibilities and look forward to seeing the nature of those proposals. However, we are at a rudimentary stage with those developments at present and I did not dare not wax enthusiastic about the potential outcome; I merely record the fact, bearing in mind what my noble friend Lord Gilbert has said—and it has reinforced what everyone who has spoken in this debate has said—that, if we can get resources from elsewhere to buttress government funds for this project, we are eager to explore every option. However, I am counselling against undue expectations about that position.

I was asked about European funding. St Helena gets its proper share of European funding and that money is already voted for this year, so it is not being short-changed on the European front. Of course, it would not be in the interests of the Government to fail to obtain a guarantee on the availability of those resources to St Helena. The money is available over a considerable period—the next five years. However, it is a very limited sum and so we cannot look to the European Community resource for too much; it is a little more than tokenism but far short of what is needed to make a real impact on the lives of the people there. That is why the British aid programme is so critical. Although I will fulfil the expectation of my noble friend Lord Hoyle in not really saying anything too positive about the airport project, I am positive about the Government’s commitment in its aid programme to ensure that we sustain the position as far as St Helena is concerned. Against a background where we all appreciate the pressures on government expenditure, the Government deserve some credit for that.

As for timescale, I have indicated that we are not going to pronounce on the outcome of the consultation; I merely say that we will receive the results in the very near future, although that will be against a background of substantial constraints on government expenditure. All noble Lords will recognise that the only responsible way of addressing these significant issues is not to suggest that it is easy for us to create the circumstances that obtained in 2004-05, when we were setting about the task of addressing the airport issue at costs that were much lower than they are now. The figure of £230 million to £250 million is a significant escalation on the costs that we were contemplating in 2005. More important than that, the economic circumstances of the world and the British Government have changed significantly over the last 18 months. That is bound to condition our response to this important and worthwhile project, although I congratulate the noble Lord on bringing this debate today and airing the issue.

My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge that the aid budget is a huge figure? If the Government want to honour these responsibilities to St Helena, they can do so knowing very well that this expenditure will be spread over several years.

My Lords, as I have indicated, the expenditure on the construction of the airport is not spread over a number of years. We will have to spend a lot of money very soon to get things going, but I hear what the noble Lord says. Noble Lords could speak to this House on every aspect of the aid budget and rightly identify very real need and very real reasons why the Government should direct themselves to such a priority. These priorities are myriad; that is in the nature of development and aid. I shall state the obvious: the Government might be subject to certain criticism at the present time, but the expansion of the aid budget since 1997 has been second to none.