Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019

Debate between Lord Lilley and Viscount Ridley

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley]

My recollection is the words, “look at the cost, and in particular the distribution”, which seems sensible. I endorse both aspects of my noble friend’s appeal to the Treasury.

[Viscount Ridley]

Does my noble friend agree that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report on this order says:

“It would have been helpful for the Department to provide a summary of the work that is underway to assess the significant costs and wider impacts of the transition, to inform Parliament’s scrutiny of the instrument”?

[Lord Lilley]

Absolutely. That is what we ought to do in this House: look closely at these things. That does not mean to say we reject them. Unless we know the cost of this measure, which is potentially enormously costly, we are really buying a pig in a poke. I hope the House will focus on that point: should we go ahead and pass this without an impact assessment, or should we at least demand that the Treasury comes forward with such an impact assessment and a distributional assessment as soon as possible?

That distributional assessment is important, because these measures tend to fall disproportionately on low-income households. We have seen that in any country where the cost of climate change measures has come into political contention, those on modest incomes have tended to vote against them. We saw it in Australia and Canada; we have seen the gilets jaunes in France. We should beware and be aware that we are imposing large costs on ordinary households, and we should not go ahead and do that lightly and without knowledge of the figures.