The Government's Climate Change Bill has been delayed, with ministers forced to confirm that the measure will be downgraded to a draft Bill when it is published in March 2007, rather than the full legislation as was hoped. This means that there will not be enough time for the Bill to complete its passage in the current Parliamentary session and is now unlikely to be passed until 2008. The Bill would have provided a legal requirement for the Government to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60% from 1990 levels by 2050, with targets set at regular intervals, possibly every five years, to monitor the situation.
This delay will be embarrassing for Environment Secretary David Miliband, who had pushed for the law to come into force as soon as possible. Environmentalists will consider this a sign that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are not as committed to climate change as they have claimed. Any Bill introduced towards the end of the Parliamentary year would have to be carried over to next year's session to become law, and would then require the support of the new Prime Minister. In February 2007, a court ruling in a case brought by Greenpeace stated that the public consultation process the Government had carried out regarding plans for new nuclear power stations had been "inadequate and misleading." Ironically, the future of nuclear power in Britain, and the fate of the Climate Change Bill, could now fall to Gordon Brown, who is believed to be strongly in favour of a new nuclear power generation.
