Government to table Climate Change Bill

The government has set out details of a Climate Change Bill to be tabled in next month's Queen's speech.

Speaking after the launch of the report into global warming by economist Sir Nicholas Stern, both the chancellor and environment secretary David Miliband outlined plans to commit in law to cut the UK's carbon dioxide emissions by 60 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Gordon Brown confirmed the bill will form part of the Queen's speech less than a week after the prime minister told the Commons he could not discuss the contents of the speech.

Last Wednesday at prime minister's questions Conservative leader David Cameron asked Tony Blair if the Bill would be introduced, demanding a "yes or no" answer.

Blair said: "The reason why I cannot give commitments on that is that we have not yet published the Queen's speech.

"I would have thought that [Cameron] would be aware that it would be in the Queen's speech that that would be announced."

By convention ministers do not officially announce the contents of the speech so the Queen is the first person to do so.

Announcing further details of the Bill in the Commons later on Monday, Miliband said the government would also consider "appropriate interim targets" in addition to the 2050 target.

And he said the government would set up an independent "carbon committee" to judge and advise on progress.

"Our climate change legislation will provide a clear, credible, long-term framework for the UK to achieve its long-term goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions," he said.

He said the Stern report "should be a cause for alarm, but also a cause for action".

"It is action that the whole government is determined to deliver at home and abroad."

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth welcomed the report, and said: "The secretary of state has finally stopped playing hard to get over our calls for a climate change bill and said that we will have one."

He asked Miliband to confirm the legislation would appear in the Queen's Speech, a question Miliband did not answer.

The Tories have backed annual targets for carbon reductions, which the government has argued are too difficult to deliver.