I am afraid that it is not a sideshow. It goes to the heart of what we trying to achieve. The Government are trying to fob us off with warm words—I accept that the Minister means them sincerely—but they are acceptable only if they are followed by action. As we have seen throughout the Committee’s proceedings, there is an elephant in the room; it is the obstruction of the ODPM. The Minister may be on board, and I know that he is sincere, but every proposal seems to be frustrated by the ODPM. I am sorry that that Department is not here to answer. Frankly, it is not a one-off situation. Both sides have moved amendments and new clauses, but the ODPM has frustrated the Committee’s genuine efforts to make the Bill work. It is the ODPM that is the roadblock. I shall come back to that point later.

The background to the new proposal is simple. It is that, according to the report published by the Energy Saving Trust earlier this month, 92 per cent. of local authorities are not prioritising climate change. We are entitled to use the Bill as a device to get those matters on the agenda. That is what the new clause would achieve. I assume that that is what the Prime Minister meant earlier today when he spoke about the need for urgent action.

I have been served tremendously well throughout the Committee stage with outstanding support from the interested NGOs, which have a wealth of expertise and advice. My advisers met ODPM officials face to face to discuss the new clause. They found the Department’s response extremely disappointing. The independent advisers expressed their disappointment, and contrasted the reaction of the ODPM officials with the bold statements made by the Prime Minister and his clear suggestion that climate change is the greatest long-term threat. When asked how they reconciled the Prime Minister’s rhetoric with their implacable opposition, one ODPM official said that he regarded the Prime Minister’s words as political spin. That is what we are getting from the ODPM, and no one is being well served, including the Minister for Energy.

Paragraph (a) would require the local planning authority to consider renewable energy. Officials explained that the planning system was forward-plan led; that local authority responses to planning applications should be as per their development plans; and that paragraph (a) was not acceptable as it was outwith that policy. My advisers argued that many local planning authorities were not doing that, and that the clause simply brought the issue to their minds. It did not require them to go outside their development plans; it would simply require them to use their local discretion, which they already have, on each and every occasion.

ODPM officials suggested that a better approach would be to give new guidance to local planning authorities on considering renewables, and that new development plans could then be drawn up. However,  they said that the guidance could take between 12 and 18 months to get sorted, which was too late for the Bill. As can be imagined, my advisers argued that 12 to 18 months for guidance, with another year or two to amend the development plans, would mean that nothing could be done before 2009 at the earliest. In view of the recent EST report, that was unacceptable, but ODPM officials remained completely unmoved.

As regards paragraph (c), on requiring an energy efficiency standard above that required by building regulations, ODPM officials argued that that was a matter for building regulations only, not for planning. My advisers argued that part L of the building regulations was the minimum and that the new clause could be used to allow local planning authorities to use their discretion, depending on local situations, to set higher standards as appropriate. Again, however, the ODPM officials were totally immovable.

My advisers pointed out that the current legal situation was as follows. Planning authorities can impose conditions regarding renewables but not regarding extra energy efficiency, which the Government have said is the cheapest way to save CO2 and achieve energy gain. Authorities can impose conditions on microgeneration, but cannot impose energy efficiency. That is madness. Local planning authorities can use planning to promote more expensive solutions, which are still important, but not to promote what everyone recognises is the most efficient, quickest, easiest and cheapest solution. That is plainly absurd, but ODPM officials still remained opposed to the new clause. In short, they seemed to take an “absolutely nothing to do with me, Guv” attitude. They simply had no ownership of the ambition that the Prime Minister and the Minister articulate on combating climate change.

I know that that is not the attitude of any member of the Committee and that everyone will be disappointed, although not completely surprised, by the roadblock that we seem to be encountering at the ODPM. I know that it is certainly not the attitude of the Minister. He is the fall-guy for the ODPM’s appalling handling of those Bill negotiations. He would like to help, so I urge him to go back to the ODPM and knock a few heads together. However, I am not at all confident that if we simply ask the Minister to have another go at trying to move the ODPM, he will be any more successful than he apparently was last time. There is a real roadblock in the Whitehall machinery and only we, as legislators, can do something about it.

We have all read the newspaper reports saying that the public are increasingly losing faith in politics because people in Parliament seem to have very little control over what happens down the road in Whitehall—that the real decisions on what influences their lives and what influences the big decisions in the world are being taken in Whitehall, not at Westminster. We have a small opportunity—a real opportunity, nevertheless—to take a stand, and I hope that, without making party political points but on a cross-party, consensual basis, we can all say that this is  not an issue of politics; it is about asserting the will of the elected legislature that the Executive must get on and take climate change seriously. This is a small measure, but we could all take that important stand. I say this particularly to Government Members, in the spirit of cross-party co-operation. The problem is not the Government’s fault as represented by the Minister. We are talking about something that is very real, but is represented deep inside the ODPM, and a cultural change is required. We need to send the important message that we, as Members of the House of Commons, will not accept the situation.