Before I go on to what I say, can I - because I am somewhat of the grit in the oyster - explain my own position? I studied physics at Cambridge, before I went on to become an economist, and I fully accept the existence of the greenhouse effect. Without the warm blanket provided by greenhouse gases, notably CO2 and water vapour, the Earth would probably be a frozen, uninhabitable rock.

However, I voted against the Climate Change Act, not on the basis that the science is still so uncertain, but on the evidence provided to Parliament by the government about the costs and benefits of the Act. The government published an impact assessment of the Climate Change Act - it's always obliged to publish an assessment of the costs and benefits of any piece of legislation - in order that Parliament should know that the benefits substantially exceed the costs and it's worthwhile doing.
I got a copy of the impact assessment. I was the only person to do so - I know that because when I went to the vote office, they said "Oh, we can't find that, no-one's asked for it." But they did eventually find it. And I read it. And this is the government's assessment of the costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act, the most expensive piece of legislation probably introduced in this country since the Welfare State.

And they said the benefits - that the costs of introducing the Act - excluding the transitional costs of the first 20 years, which could be 1% of GDP, excluding the costs of driving business overseas, if other countries didn't do likewise - was, potentially, over £200 billion, equivalent to a down payment of £17,000 for each household in the country - or, sorry, a little lower, about £15,000. The costs were over £200 billion. The maximum benefits, according to the government's assessment - and these are the benefits of reducing climate change worldwide, so most of those benefits accrue to other people - was put at £105 billion.

The feed-in tariffs the government subsequently introduced were even worse. There the government's impact assessment was that the benefit of reduced global warming was some £400 million, as a result of the substitution of fossil fuels by solar power reducing the amount of global warming worldwide. That would save the world £400 million. However, the costs to consumers and taxpayers was put by the government was put at £8.6 billion - 21 times the benefits that they assessed of the measure. Again, that seemed to me good reason for not doing it.