Lord Deben:

I thank the joint committee for inviting us. We were very pleased to come. I will start by outlining my experience.

I have been Chairman of the UK Committee on Climate Change for the past six years and have another four to go. During my time as Chairman, certain issues have become very clear to me as the key ones that have affected our ability to operate. First, the Climate Change Act under which we operate has sought – successfully, I believe – to deal with the dysfunction of time. Democracy demands that a mandate be given again after a regular period. One has to have the mandate refreshed. On the one hand, that is what democracy is, but, on the other, climate change demands a continuous policy over a long period because otherwise we cannot deliver what we have to deliver. What the Act did was ensure these two elements could operate together. What happens is that every five years we produce the carbon budget and present it to Parliament. We have now produced five and Parliament has accepted each one of them. Once it has voted on a budget, meaning that the democratic mandate has been adhered to, it cannot change it, unless the climate change committee agrees. That is crucial because the difficulty is that when decisions are made, everybody immediately thinks not about the long term but about how they will affect his or her constituency and what will happen to Mrs. Miggins or a particular small factory. Our next carbon budget which will be our sixth will cover the period 2032 to 2036. That is far enough ahead for most Members of Parliament to think independently and in an holistic way. Therefore, the discussion is moved to reality and the issues are moved away from the individual questions asked if one was talking about what to do tomorrow. This means that what to do tomorrow is put into the hands of the government and Parliament.

The second point is that the climate change committee's job is not to lay down an annual statement of what the government has to do. What it has to do is keep its feet to the fire to meet the targets. It can do it in any way it likes. I have sometimes said that if the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy who is responsible for dealing with climate change wants to meet the targets by standing on his head and it works, that is perfectly all right. We will give a series of explanations for what needs to be done and a choice or menu. As we have to prove that what we propose in meeting the targets is possible, we present a series of scenarios and outline that if one does not do this, one has to do that. We give the government a range of options, but, ultimately, our role is not to make decisions of a kind that should be made by Parliament but to set the parameters within which the decisions have to be made.

That brings us to the third issue, which is that the system be very carefully arranged. It means that before the end of June every year, we have to assess how well the government has done in meeting the targets. That is an independent assessment. Before the end of October, the government has to produce a response. If our assessment is pretty tough, as it was this year, the government has to explain what it will do and it has to do so publicly. The advantage of the law is that one has to do it which for us is sometimes quite difficult. Whatever else we have got on, we have to produce our assessment by the end of June and whatever else the government has got on, it has to produce its response by the end of October. Therefore, the rule is very tough and clear.

The fourth element is that, unlike anywhere else, the climate change committee is a scientific and economic committee, not a representative committee. This is to distinguish it from the representative bit - the elected Parliament. The committee consists of scientists who are regarded by their colleagues as the leaders. The same applies to economists. I am the only non-scientist and non-economist. I have to be appointed, not by the Prime Minister but by the Minister responsible for dealing with climate change, the First Minister of Scotland, the First Minister of Wales and the First Minister of Northern Ireland when Northern Ireland has one. Therefore, the mechanism normally involves four parties making the decision. In my case, I had a Liberal Democrats member of the coalition government, a Scots nationalist in Scotland, a Welsh socialist and a Protestant unionist in Northern Ireland. They have a Catholic and a Conservative as their Chairman. It gives enormous independence because it means that someone has genuinely been chosen by a range of people who have said he or she is an independent and that they accept that independence. Consequently, that person is able to be critical of whatever government is in power and can also be congratulatory, which is important. When the government gets it right, it is very important for people to say, "Thank you." Being independent, someone can say "Thank you" without appearing oleaginous or sucking up to the government. That is important because otherwise people receive no encouragement.

Based on experience, there is one thing about the system that I would have written differently, not because it has not worked but because I can see it might not work. We do not have an independent judgment of how much money we need to run the secretariat we need to meet the requirements of the Act and perform the tasks the government asks us to perform and that we believe we have to perform in order to meet the requirements of the Act. I have to say we have never had an occasion to complain about governments. We have had three sorts of government to work under and never had to come with a complaint. The governments tried to keep us within rules and restrict our expenditure - all governments do - but I really do not have a complaint about it. I believe, however, that the one thing we did not get right was not having a court of appeal, so to speak. We should have been able to appeal to the Comptroller and Auditor General to assess whether we were being given the money. The Act states we have to be given the money to make it possible for us to do the job. There ought to be a bit in the law affording some independence, which the Comptroller and Auditor General has. That is what I would do.

They are the crucial elements which we believe are important. It seems helpful for me to repeat them because, having been Chairman for six years, I am very conscious of how valuable they are.