Mr. Jonathan Church:

First, to echo my initial remarks, there are two important components of effective climate laws. One is the political persuasion angle, as the Deputy has highlighted, and the accountability that is generated by the Act. In the UK, that has not proven to be sufficient to drive emissions reductions as needed to meet the carbon budgets in place.

The Deputy asked how far this law will open up possibilities for litigation. My perspective is that the more vague and less well targeted the duties in an Act like this are, the more it can have the effect of encouraging litigation. As Dr. Muinzer pointed out, a whole list of possible considerations need to be taken into account under the section he noted. All of those might attract litigants. There might be areas of uncertainty that will attract people to try to use the law to make progress where they feel progress is lacking. A better way to approach a law of this kind is to actually be clear and precise in the language of the law in order that the duties are clear. There will be less appetite for people to bring litigation if the edges of what is demanded by the Act are clearer. In the UK Act, there are clearly defined dates by which carbon budgets need to be set and they have always been followed. That is because of the clarity in those duties. It is only if those duties were less clearly framed that one might see more litigation coming into play.

I have one final thought on the enforceability of targets. Traditionally, people have always focused on how far those targets are enforceable and what the consequences are if one misses those targets. The important question is not so much what happens if one misses a target because once one has missed that target any enforceability mechanism is, in a sense, by the by. What one needs to do is focus the important parts of this law on what the Government needs to do and what steps it needs to take to keep on track to those targets. In a sense, remedying any deviation in terms of ongoing progress is much easier than waiting for a breach five, ten or 15 years down the track and then wondering how it can be enforced. If the law is drafted to require little and often, but with hard-edged accountability, I hope many of the problems about litigation might be lessened.