Baroness Parminter (LD)

My Lords, I thank the Minister at least for the consistency of his reply with that given in the Commons. I thank all other noble Lords who have spoken in this brief debate. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, made the point well: time is not on our side, and local authorities have a critical part to play in meeting our net-zero targets. The Government cannot do it on their own and we as individuals wanting to drive electric cars cannot do it if local authorities have not put in place plug points or if the houses are in the wrong places. They are pivotal. At some point, you have to start creating the overall conditions to show that the Government and local government are acting in partnership to achieve the legally binding targets which this Government are signed up to and which I am sure they wish to keep to. To pick up the point from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, what will this Government do if the big local authorities start refusing to take these responsibilities seriously? They will have no chance of getting to the targets that they want to achieve and which this country needs unless they start biting the bullet now and putting some target statutory duties in, as the previous Government gave local authorities statutory duties to promote growth. Without that, they will not get there. I ask them urgently to think again on this. I suspect that we may well return to this on Report. I beg leave to withdraw.