Mr. Neil Walker:

That is a very good question. There have been four or five attempts at climate legislation in recent years. I am familiar with all of them, and with two authors of the legislation who are here today. I do not intend to imply any criticism of any person but as a point of principle it is important when designing national legislation that it works in harmony with the pre-existing European legislation. The primary criticism that we made of the last government attempt at legislation is that it effectively ignored the existing EU policy and would have directed mitigation efforts into areas where there would have been no environmental benefits, specifically the emissions trading sector where the absolute cap is already determined so the money would not have been spent on meeting national obligations but simply on driving down the price of EU allowances. This has been debated at length in various fora. There is very little debate about it now. It is imperative that national policies reinforce EU policies in the same way that EU policies have to reinforce the UNFCCC framework.

There is no room for national solo runs.