Getting back on track: Strengthening the accountability and delivery of the UK’s carbon budgets

This report compares and contrasts the UK’s fiscal and emissions budgeting processes and recommends ways to strengthen the process around emissions to improve the ability of relevant authorities to hold the Government to account on setting policy to meet its emissions targets. In particular, it recommends establishing an annual parliamentary event and surrounding processes to improve the salience of the Progress Report assessments produced by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and to focus policy effort where delivery gaps have been identified.

Main messages

• As the transition to net zero becomes ever more challenging, it is a concern that successive governments have failed to correct course when their climate plans have been formally assessed as inadequate, off-track, or subject to significant risks.
• Comparing and contrasting the fiscal and emissions budgeting processes can be used to find ways to strengthen the process around emissions to improve the ability of relevant authorities to hold the Government to account on setting policy to meet its emissions targets.
• There are potential adjustments to the emissions budgeting process that would help to increase its salience in wider government decision-making, so that government is better held to account on progress towards emissions targets.
• This report’s comparison of the fiscal and emissions budgeting processes concludes that the process around setting policy to meet carbon budgets and to be on a pathway to net zero would benefit from an annual set-piece event in Parliament, with equivalent status to the Budget for fiscal policy, to improve the salience of the CCC’s Progress Report assessment and focus policy effort where delivery gaps have been identified.
• To ensure that such a change had the desired positive impact, there are several ways in which the institutional set-up that supports the emissions budgeting process can be enhanced, in particular the use of quantitative forecasting to inform the policymaking process. The report thus recommends: improving the availability and comparability of emissions data; improving emissions forecasting; improving the emissions policy costings process and associated ‘scorecard’; and introducing a ‘forecast evaluation report’-style process for emissions.