Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Tunnicliffe

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I welcome these amendments and very much welcome what my noble friend just said. I do not point at my noble friend in saying this, but I am always disappointed, given the truism about gas being the future, that we have not made more effort to make sure that, in the short term, gas is substituted for coal and that we have a far more rigorous gas industry than we have at the moment. That was the route forward, but we have been unable to put it to bed during the passage of the Energy Bill and now of the Infrastructure Bill. I hope that it is something that can at least be given greater attention after the election. However, I welcome these new clauses.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, the government amendments in this group touch on the role of the Committee on Climate Change in advising on the impact which combustion and fugitive emissions from petroleum have on the carbon budget. I understand that this was introduced in the other place as a result of a Lib Dem initiative, and we are fully supportive. We have always said that, if fracking is to take place, we would need the appropriate framework for regulation and need to consider a wider range of issues on which it will have an impact, including climate change. The Climate Change Act 2008, which was introduced by the then Labour Government, was an important piece of legislation that subsequently established the Committee on Climate Change. We therefore support the Committee’s role in advising the Government.

[Lord Teverson]

Before the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, sits down, can I just point out one thing that I want to get off my chest? The Climate Change Act was a great thing that the Labour Government did, but among the amendments that they did not allow was one about excluding traded EU ETS certificates from the carbon budget. That means that the power sector is still largely excluded from the Climate Change Act and carbon budgets. It is a big hole in the system and it is regrettable that those changes were never made.