Science & Technology Committee
Press Notice

PUBLICATION OF GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO SCIENTIFIC ADVICE ON CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT

The Science and Technology Committee today publishes its Fourth Special Report of Session 2001-02 (House of Commons Paper No.493) containing the Government’s Response to the Science and Technology Committee’s Third Report, Session 2000-01, Scientific Advisory System: Scientific Advice on Climate Change, together with a response from the Met Office.

Dr Ian Gibson, Chairman of the Committee, said—

“We are pleased to be publishing today the Government’s Response to our Report on Scientific Advice on Climate Change. We have been waiting for it for some months—our Report was published in March.#

Our Report concluded that climate change was an area where, broadly speaking, scientific advice to Government was working well, though we noted that there was some concern that Government did not receive a sufficiently wide range of advice. In particular, we commended the way in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operated, and recommended that the IPCC model of advice be adopted in other policy areas.

The Government’s Response to our Report is broadly positive. The Government agrees to promote the IPCC model in other areas of global significance in which there is scientific uncertainty, for example in relation to endocrine disrupters. It accepts that the formula used by the IPCC to communicate degrees of uncertainty could usefully be adopted in other scientific advice. It agrees that the Hadley Centre of the Met Office (the Government’s main source of scientific advice on climate change) might benefit from having more in-house staff with expertise outside meteorology. Most importantly, it accepts that climate change is an area where policymakers must follow the precautionary principle, and not hide behind scientific uncertainty, in order to avoid introducing the very great changes required to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations significantly.

On the other hand, the Government rejects our suggestions that it is over-reliant on the Hadley Centre for advice, and that the UK’s national research programme on climate change lacks overall coherence and breadth. Nor does it accept our recommendation of a new independent advisory committee on the science of climate change.

Most disappointingly, the Government has failed to respond directly to our recommendation that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs publish its analysis of the changes required to reduce CO_² emissions by 60 per cent. to inform the public debate on climate change. We intend to press the Minister on this point.”

Copies of the Special Report can be obtained from TSO outlets and from the Parliamentary Bookshop, 12 Bridge Street, Parliament Square, London SW1A 2JX (020 7219 3890) by quoting House of Commons No. 493. The text of the Report will also be available on the Committee’s internet home page.