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Daniel Zeichner's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 79 Parliamentary debates in which Daniel Zeichner has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 14 Oct 2025: COP30: Food System Transformation

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. Ahead of COP30, I want to make a brief contribution to the discussion, my first since leaving the Government.

  In my 14 months as Minister for Food Security, I became increasingly convinced that transforming the food system is one of the biggest challenges, and indeed opportunities, that we face. I note that the third of the six thematic axes set out for COP30 by the Brazilian Government is transforming agriculture and food systems. I had the privilege of representing the UK at the G20, which was hosted by Brazil in Cuiabá just over a year ago. I was very impressed by the seriousness with which the Brazilian Government take the interaction between their food system and global environmental challenges, particularly their emphasis on land restoration, so I have no doubt that they will seek to make substantial progress at COP30. We should support them in that endeavour.

  There is growing understanding that food system transformation is vital to tackling both climate and nature challenges, as we saw with initiatives at COP28 and COP29. What I noted at every international event I attended, and in key bilaterals, was the interest in what we are doing here in the UK.

  The wider world watches with interest the course that we have chosen, which was embarked upon by the previous Government, as I have always acknowledged, and was accelerated by this one. I urge the Minister and his colleagues at COP30 to speak proudly about what we are doing. We have a brilliant food system in this country, from farmers and fishers to the primary producers and through to manufacture and sale, but we need to make it work better for our health and our environment. It will be a key discussion at COP30. I wish the ministerial team well.

  [Source]

• 4 Sep 2025: Climate Change: Food Security

  00:00

  Let me start by acknowledging just how tough it has been for so many farmers this year, having been faced with the very extreme weather conditions. We have had very hot weather, following on from last year, when many suffered from floods. It is undeniable that we are seeing our climate changing. The Government are responding by tackling flooding, investing a record £8 billion in flood defences to protect homes and farms, helping to tackle problems in rural communities such as mine in the fens through our £91 million internal drainage board fund, and investing in nature-friendly farming, which boosts climate resilience, enhances farming profitability and secures food production.

  [Source]

• 22 Jul 2025: Gene Editing

  11:19

  However, that is a problem because this is a growing global sector and Europe is falling behind, so investment is going elsewhere—only 5% of venture capital investment in the sector currently comes to Europe. With the new regulations, we have the potential to be at the forefront across Europe and to be a major global competitor in this rapidly growing industry. We need to invest in this sector now, in order to realise the opportunities of precision breeding for tackling issues around climate change and food security. We do not have time to delay.

  [Source]

• 3 Jun 2025: Animal Welfare in Farming

  16:27

  On the animal health and welfare pathway, I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Epping Forest and his colleagues in the previous Parliament on this important point. Improving animal health underpins the welfare of farmed animals, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, slows the rise of antimicrobial resistance, better protects farmers and the public against the economic impact of disease, and helps to demonstrate a commitment to rising standards of animal health and welfare to our current and future trading partners across the world. It is really important, and we are good at it—we should be proud and celebrate it.

  [Source]

• 26 Mar 2025: Draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2025

  16:39

  The new countryside stewardship higher tier offer will open for applications from invited farmers and land managers this summer. The stand-alone capital grants will also reopen this summer after a short pause. We are investing in about 50 landscape recovery projects, which were awarded funding through rounds 1 and 2. We recently announced increased payment rates for higher level stewardship across a range of options from this year. We are also extending the farming in protected landscapes programme until March 2026. That extension will support farmers in protected landscapes in transitioning towards profitable food production at the same time as delivering nature recovery and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

  [Source]

• 13 Mar 2025: Farming

  15:31

  We will consult on national planning reforms this spring to make it quicker for farmers to build new buildings, barns and other infrastructure to boost food production, and we will ensure that permitted development rights work for farms to convert larger barns into whatever is required or suits their business planning, whether that is a farm shop, a holiday let or a sports facility. We are working with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero so that more farm businesses can connect their own electricity generation to the grid more quickly, so that farmers can sell surplus energy and diversify income.

  [Source]

• 12 Mar 2025: Sustainable Farming Incentive

  12:39

  We stand on the edge of an unprecedented global transition for British farming. From leaving the European Union to the challenges of climate change and geopolitical events, we are asking more of farmers than ever before: to continue to produce the food that feeds the nation and to protect the environment on which our long-term food security depends. We are determined to create the conditions for farm businesses to be profitable and succeed. We are proud to have secured £5 billion for farming over two years: the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history. That is £1.8 billion for customers already in agreements, £1 billion for farmers now in SFI agreements and a further £150 million for farmers in the SFI pilot.

  [Source]

• 22 Jan 2025: Public Services: Rural Areas

  16:41

  Rising energy costs also pose a challenge to rural communities and businesses, and I am all too aware that fuel poverty rates are higher in rural communities. We also have many homes that are off grid. My party’s manifesto was clear: we are determined to lower bills, boost energy security and protect our environment by setting up Great British Energy. GB Energy will also support local and combined authorities and community energy groups to roll out small and medium-scale renewable energy projects, with the goal of increasing local generation across the whole country by up to 8 GW of capacity by 2030.

  [Source]

• 19 Dec 2024: High-grade Agricultural Land

  We all know that food security is national security, and most of us also recognise that the impacts of climate change and nature loss pose a significant risk to domestic production, so it is very important that we use our land carefully. Consequently, the Government will be introducing a land use framework to ensure that we protect our most productive agricultural land.

  [Source]

• 11 Dec 2024: UK Food Security

  Food security is national security. Food security is also complex and exposed to many different variables globally and domestically such as the weather, markets and trade. It is therefore vital that the Government monitor food security trends, and even more so in a world facing increasing challenges from geopolitics and climate change.

  [Source]

• 4 Dec 2024: Biosecurity

  10:28

  Biosecurity is vital. It underpins safe food, protects animal and plant health, and supports a prosperous economy and trade. It is a joint endeavour: Government, animal keepers, horticulturists and the public must do everything we can collectively to keep disease out. As we have heard from Members this morning, the costs are significant. Plant diseases alone are estimated to cost the global economy over $220 billion annually, and up to 40% of global crop production is lost to pests each year. Those are huge numbers, and are sadly unlikely to reduce as climate change drives the geographic expansion and the host range of pests and diseases. Healthy plants and animals are not just an important tool in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, but contribute directly to many of the UN’s sustainable development goals—in particular, ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture.

  Pests and diseases know no borders. New and emerging threats are often the result of trade and globalisation, and are then further exacerbated by climate change. Safe trade is essential to food security in a thriving economy. We want healthy trade to support food security and the economy, but at the same time we need to protect ourselves from risks. That is why DEFRA is a key delivery Department of the UK biological security strategy, which takes a UK-wide approach that strengthens deterrence and resilience, projects global leadership and exploits opportunities for UK prosperity. In parallel, the environmental improvement plan sets out how we will improve our environment at home and abroad, including through enhancing biosecurity. I can assure the House that we have in place robust measures to maintain and improve our ability to understand, detect, prevent, respond and recover from outbreaks that affect animals and that affect plants.

  [Source]

• 14 Nov 2024: Budget: Impact on Farming Communities

  The changes we have made this year are the biggest boost to sustainable farming that this country has seen—that is the agricultural transition. The Liberal Democrats have always been flaky on this issue, and they have never been able to make up their minds what they think about it. We are determined to tackle the extreme climate crisis globally; they seem to think it is not happening.

  [Source]

• 28 Oct 2024: Agricultural Land: Protection

  22:17

  My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury raised the important issue of planning reforms. The Government are determined to transform the planning system to ensure a win-win for house building and for nature. Nature recovery is a top priority, alongside the need to overhaul the planning system, grow the economy and reach net zero. It is not a matter of choosing one of these priorities over another. Sustained economic growth depends on a healthy natural environment.

  To restore nature, we need to create, restore and connect wildlife-rich habitat at scale, reduce pressure on species, including from pollution and climate change, and take targeted action to recover specific species. The Government will deliver for nature, working in partnership with civil society, communities and businesses to restore and protect our natural world. Working with farmers and landowners to deliver nature recovery will be crucial, which is why we are fully committed to the environmental land management schemes.

  [Source]

  Our work to protect nature will include action to restore our protected sites, which are vital wildlife havens facing increasing pressures from climate change, pollution, and invasive non-native species. Natural England is working to get protected sites into favourable condition. That includes piloting new powers to put in place protected sites strategies to deliver improvements in partnership with others and working with the SSSI major landowners group to develop landscape-scale approaches. Natural England is also working with farmers through the catchment-sensitive farming programme to improve water and air quality on farms around protected sites. That includes helping farmers to secure funding to make management changes to improve their condition.

  [Source]

  Meeting our ambitious targets on nature restoration, alongside our priorities on food security and accelerating to net zero, will require careful thought about how we use our land, which is why the forthcoming land use framework for England will consider cross-governmental issues such as energy and food security, and how we can expand nature-rich habitats such as wetlands, peat bogs and forests.

  [Source]

• 8 Oct 2024: Farming and Food Security

  18:55

  Farmers are the backbone of rural communities, our environment and our economy, but they face multiple challenges from flooding and droughts to soaring input costs and rural crime. We need a proper long-term strategy that works. We will do away with the sticking-plaster approach that we have seen for the last few years and replace it with a new deal for farmers that genuinely will boost farmers’ resilience in the face of climate change and wider external shocks.

  [Source]

• 4 Sep 2024: Sheep Farming

  15:44

  Finally, DEFRA supports the sheep sector through conserving valuable genetic resources to help to increase sustainable food production and help breeders to adapt to climate change and new diseases. DEFRA research is also exploring how genetics can help farmers to increase productivity while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

  [Source]

• 30 Jul 2024: Food Security

  19:21

  Frankly, climate change is one of the most significant threats to our food security. We have seen it this year in the extreme weather events that farmers are having to deal with. It is absolutely the case that taking the difficult decisions now to address climate change will enhance, rather than threaten, our food security. We have to face up to the challenge of an energy transition to achieve that, and in doing so must plan how we will use land in this country to ensure a proper balance between food security, restoring and preserving nature, and clean energy.

  Credible external estimates suggest that ground-mounted solar used just 0.1% of our land in 2022. The biggest threat to nature, food security and our rural communities is not solar panels or onshore wind; it is the major climate crisis, which itself threatens our best farmland, food production and, indeed, the livelihoods of farmers. The Government will absolutely proceed on the basis not of hearsay and conjecture, but of evidence.

  One of the Government’s five missions, which I am sure people have heard much about, is our commitment to making Britain a clean energy superpower. That is part of a wider ambition to deliver on existing net zero emissions targets. Farming has a big role to play in contributing to net zero; 70% or so of UK land is used for agriculture, and farmers are custodians of the natural environment. They absolutely work hard to manage their land responsibly while providing the food we all need.

  [Source]

  19:26

  The right hon. Member tempts me into a level of detail that I am afraid I am not prepared to go into this evening. We are examining all these issues and will come to a considered position. We want to get the balance right and that is what we will do, because the transition to more climate-friendly practices does not need to come at the expense of food production or farm profitability. In our view, net zero can absolutely support economic growth, including by accelerating the uptake of innovative technologies to increase productivity and efficiency in the agriculture sector. That, in turn, will support net zero food production, the efficient use of land and nature recovery.

  [Source]

• 16 Apr 2024: Food Waste and Food Distribution

  10:34

  Nobody wants to see good food wasted, but the scale of food waste in the UK is shocking, as many contributions this morning have outlined, with 3.3 million tonnes of UK food wasted on farms every year and 2.9 million tonnes of farm produce that could still be eaten going to landfill, incineration or waste treatment plants. UK on-farm food waste alone is estimated to use an area of agricultural land half the size of Wales—we have heard lots of similar comparisons this morning—and that land could be used to help sustainably feed the UK and restore nature to address the biodiversity and climate crises.

  After leaving the farm gate, the UK food supply chain and households currently waste 9.5 million tonnes of food every year, 70% of which could have been eaten. This annual waste has an approximate cost of £19 billion and causes emissions of 36 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent—a point made very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). That means that over a quarter of all the food grown in the UK is never eaten, and this wasted harvest counts for between 6% and 7% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, this is at the same time that 2.1 million people in the UK are living in a household that has used a food bank in the last 12 months.

  [Source]

• 4 Mar 2024: Farming

  20:44

  As Members have said, we still have a supply chain contract system that we all know does not work for too many farmers. Stakeholders tell me that things are actually getting worse. I was in Hexham at the northern farming conference last year, where a point was strongly made that Labour’s Joe Morris recently reinforced to me: we have too many buyers taking too long to consider cost price increase requests, taking too long to pay invoices, failing to honour their original order and rejecting perfectly good produce because it does not quite fit some aesthetic criteria. That leads to appalling waste; one producer told me that he had to throw away 50% of the lettuces he grows. That is terrible for the environment, an insult to farmers, and deeply problematic when working people all over the country are struggling in a cost of living crisis to get a meal on the table. More than a quarter of all the food grown in the UK is never eaten, and this wasted harvest accounts for between 6% and 7% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions. That waste has been made worse by severe and persistent labour shortages, which the Government have been too slow to address.

  We are committed to making the environmental land management schemes work. Frankly, the Government simply do not have a strategic approach to ELMS, or to the crucial challenge of balancing producing nutritious food, protecting nature, mitigating climate change and upholding animal welfare standards. They are failing on all these important fronts. The Government’s failure to deliver on their environmental targets means that their promise to protect at least 30% of our land, waters and ocean by 2030 is in serious doubt. The Climate Change Committee’s latest report makes grim reading for the Government. Emissions from agriculture are going in completely the wrong direction; they actually rose last year.

  [Source]

• 14 Dec 2023: COP28

  One of the key themes at COP28 was food system transformation. Given the Climate Change Committee’s damning criticism of this Government’s failure to make progress on cutting emissions in the agricultural sector, could the Minister tell us what changes he expects to see in UK domestic policy as a result of the agreements reached in Dubai?

  [Source]

• 6 Jul 2023: Food Security

  Last week, past failures caught up with the DEFRA ministerial team. First, the Climate Change Committee castigated them for lack of progress on agriculture and land use, and then the report they had commissioned from John Shropshire and his team detailed the crop losses and lost productivity and production caused by their failure to address labour supply issues. This week, could the Minister tell the House if he knows whether the UK is more or less food-secure than this time last year, and will he explain how he has reached that conclusion?

  [Source]

• 18 Apr 2023: Farming on Dartmoor

  15:33

  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Hosie. I, too, congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) on securing the debate, as it gives us an opportunity to discuss the crucial challenge of balancing our objectives with regard to food production, conservation and mitigating climate change. It is also an excellent opportunity to talk about a place as unique and exceptional as Dartmoor.

  Farmers have plenty to cope with—eking out what is in many cases a very modest living from what they do. It is not an easy job, and the mental health pressures are well documented. I think that it has been made harder by the very rocky transition from basic payments to ELM schemes, particularly for the uplands, with all the attendant uncertainty, instability and delay. They are also having to work within a system that does not yet seem to provide the right balance of incentives. That needs to change. We need a system that properly rewards hard-working farmers for all their efforts to conserve nature and help in the battle against climate change.

  Another approach is to develop a much more strategic, finely tuned and proportionate plan regarding land use—a strategy that takes much more account of the qualities of land and the nation’s overarching objectives regarding food production, climate change and conservation. Government should then incentivise activities that are most appropriate for the land in question and that can help achieve those broader goals. I very much echo the comments made by a number of earlier contributors that a one-size-fits-all approach is hardly likely to work, but that is what we have now. I am grateful to Dustin Benton and his colleagues at Green Alliance, who have developed a compelling argument along those lines, and I thank him for his advice. What could that mean for Dartmoor? Green Alliance has calculated that if farmers were paid a fair price for the carbon value of their land, average incomes could rise by at least 20%. In cases where a farm is on actively eroding peat, farm incomes could rise by a factor of two.

  In conclusion, the time has come to grasp the nettle and develop that proper land use strategy. It is too precious a resource to leave to chance. Farmers, and particularly commoners on Dartmoor, have not only intimate knowledge of the land but considerable experience of agri-environment schemes and innovations. They are certainly not resistant to change, as the Dartmoor test and trial revealed. We have seen the positive outcomes for nature when farmers take on environmental stewardship. As long as the Government can provide the right framework of incentives and support, there is exciting potential for all stakeholders to work together to achieve our objectives on food production, climate change and conservation, rather than fall short on all of them, which I fear is the danger if the Government continue to get it wrong.

  [Source]

• 8 Feb 2023: Climate Change and Biodiversity

  17:10

  We also understand the importance of doing our fair share to cut UK emissions, in order to try to keep global heating down. Our shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), has been clear on this, and the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), has pledged an investment of £28 billion every year until 2030 to tackle the climate and nature crisis, and to create clean, green and secure jobs for people in the UK.

  In conclusion, we recognise that this is a cross-Government challenge that needs focus from all of Government, so we have committed to a robust net zero and nature test for every policy, to create certainty for business and provide leadership to seize the opportunities for the UK, while protecting nature here and abroad. It is a historic challenge, one that we absolutely have to meet, and Labour is determined to do just that.

  [Source]

• 23 Jan 2023: DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (BIODIVERSITY) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (WOODLAND AND TREES OUTSIDE WOODLAND) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (WATER) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRO...

  18:10

  Let me turn to the detail of this biodiversity SI. There is much to be done, because the UK has the lowest remaining levels of biodiversity among the world’s richer nations. Last year, the Environmental Audit Committee lambasted the Government’s approach to nature—specifically, the failure to stem huge losses of plant and animal species. Globally, we have seen a massive decline in the number of plant and animal species—up to 1 million species are currently under threat of extinction. Closer to home, we are at risk of losing many beloved species. Puffins are projected to decline across Britain and Ireland by nine in 10 within 30 years, 14 seabird species are regarded as being at risk of negative climate change impact, and there has been a two thirds decline in flying insect numbers in England in just 16 years.

  [Source]

  18:32

  Biodiversity is inextricably linked to trees, so we move on very nicely. Tree planting is an important natural solution to the nature and climate emergency, helping to decrease CO 2 emissions by storing carbon in the soil and to mitigate the effects of the climate emergency that we are already seeing by preventing flooding. It is disappointing, therefore, that DEFRA is proposing a tree canopy cover expansion target one third lower than the one it consulted on. The draft 17.5% target was proposed by DEFRA and agreed by the Department’s own expert group. Will the Minister explain why the Department lost confidence in its own consultation proposals and its expert panel’s recommendations for a higher target, as well as overlooking the responses to its consultation?

  [Source]

  Healthy seabeds are home to many species and drive richer marine ecosystems, but sadly, marine protected areas currently fail to protect them adequately. We need to see a broader programme of ocean renewal. Globally, saltmarsh and seagrass beds alone can store up to 450 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. That is almost half the emissions of the entire global transport industry. Restoring these key marine ecosystems could lock up billions of tonnes of carbon each year; that is 5% of the savings needed globally. A sustained programme of ocean renewal must be part of any plan to tackle the climate emergency.

  [Source]

  19:12

  A study by Imperial College London shows that an annual mean concentration of 10 micrograms per cubic metre can be achieved across 99% of the country by 2030 using policies already proposed by the Government, coupled with those set out in the Climate Change Committee’s sixth carbon budget, and a similar conclusion was reached in DEFRA’s clean air strategy in 2019. It is therefore a matter of regret that the Government, thorough this SI, have essentially ignored the wishes of the people and the businesses that responded to the consultation. Will the Minister explain why the target is less ambitious than that sought by 90% of the responses to the Government’s consultation?

  [Source]

• 14 Dec 2022: Cost of Food

  17:29

  “comes from climate change and other environmental pressures like soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity.”

  [Source]

• 31 Oct 2022: Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

  18:56

  On Friday, we once again saw why the Conservatives cannot be trusted on the environment. They are breaking their own law by failing to come up with critical air, water and biodiversity targets on time. On the same day, the Prime Minister gave up on the UK’s leadership role on climate change by ducking COP27.

  [Source]

  19:03

  Let me turn in detail to the public interest test and our amendment 3. The potential benefits of gene edited crops include creating plants resistant to extreme weather conditions and diseases, which could reduce the need for pesticides and create higher yields to address rising food insecurity driven by climate change and other factors. Genetic editing could also be used to improve the nutritional quality of food. For example, giving farmers the tools to beat virus yellows without recourse to neonicotinoids is a prize worth having.

  Amendment 3 would therefore require that a gene edited organism has been developed to provide one or more of the public benefit purposes listed, if it is to be released into the environment. The amendment neatly recycles much of the wording in section 1 of the Government’s own Agriculture Act 2020, which lists the public goods that can be funded. We are simply applying the same approach to the development and use of gene editing technologies. We believe they should be used only where that is clearly in the public interest, including, for instance, in protecting a healthy, resilient and biodiverse natural environment; mitigating climate change; improving the health or welfare of animals or plants; and supporting human health and wellbeing.

  [Source]

• 27 Oct 2022: National Food Strategy and Food Security

  15:07

  When we look at the whole area of food policy, the conclusion that we come to is that there is a series of unconnected initiatives, whether in farming, fishing or food, and a lack of an overall plan. In particular, as Lord Deben has commented in the other place, there is no overall plan to meet the vital climate targets, which are so important given the issues we face.

  [Source]

• 12 Jul 2022: Cost of Living: Support for Farmers

  15:31

  Although the Conservatives may be unwilling to support British agriculture, Labour takes a different view. On ELM, we have supported the NFU’s calls for basic payment reductions to be paused for two years to provide more time. Frankly, we think that it will take that time to get it sorted out. We do not want to see more stewardship agreements rolled out so that people get paid for doing what they are doing already. We want genuine environmental gain. We would reprioritise ELM to secure more domestic food production in an environmentally sustainable way as part of our plan to support farmers to reach net zero. That plan is conspicuously lacking in DEFRA.

  On seasonal labour, through our five-point plan to make Brexit work, Labour will deliver on the opportunities Britain has, sort out the poor deal signed by the—I was going to say previous, but he is still in place—Prime Minister, and end the Brexit divisions once and for all. We will seek new flexible labour mobility arrangements for those making short-term work trips. On inflation, Labour will support struggling agricultural businesses through our plan to make, buy and sell more in Britain, invest in jobs and skills and use the power of public procurement. There is another away: a fresh start to get us to net zero; a fresh start for our food system; and a fresh start for our farmers. That is what support for farmers looks like.

  [Source]

• 7 Jul 2022: Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Eighth sitting)

  14:36

  The Environment Act was heralded by the Government as “World-leading”—remember that? The Prime Minister hailed it as the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth, neatly timing Royal Assent to the Bill with the COP26 summit hosted in Glasgow. However, a raft of policies in this sphere and specifically in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have been brought forward that will have significant impacts on the environment, before the Government have fulfilled their obligations under the Environment Act.

  [Source]

• 5 Jul 2022: Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fifth sitting)

  10:33

  (ii) growing and managing plants or animals in a way that mitigates or adapts to climate change;

  [Source]

• 30 Jun 2022: Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fourth sitting)

  16:46

  Public confidence should also be triggered by a recent study on the socioeconomic impact of plant breeding, run by HFFA Research, and which studied all of Europe. It showed that over the last 20 years in the UK alone, breeding development has saved 1.8 million hectares from agriculture and delivered about 16 million tonnes fewer CO 2 emissions than the same production at the same level 20 years ago. That is with no more fertiliser, no more crop protection and no more land use, so there is a huge benefit to the public. Can we keep pace with climate change, and with pathogen development on stripe rusts in wheat and so on, without going faster? We must go faster. Without new technology and innovation, I do not feel very safe. The world gets warmer, we get hungrier and we need innovation—and we need to do it fast.

  [Source]

• 28 Jun 2022: Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Second sitting)

  14:55

  Professor Napier : I think it was mentioned earlier that with innovation, it probably needs to be developed as a public-private partnership, which sort of implies that there needs to be a market pull. Using the term “market” can be slightly perturbing because, in reality, the drivers for what we want to see translated are much bigger than the economics. They are things like global climate change, food security and all the global pandemics associated with malnutrition and overconsumption. Those are the challenges enshrined in sustainable development goals and things like that. Those are the things that we should be occupying ourselves with. We need to use everything we can to try to fix those challenges. Rothamsted and other places like that—in fact, everybody—should be working towards those goals and overcoming those challenges.

  [Source]

• 16 May 2022: Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

  21:08

  It is right that when the Government bring forward their programme, the Opposition criticise it, but it is slightly surprising that the Government make it so easy for us. When the world is quite obviously struggling, and the country is struggling with rising prices and a climate emergency, there are obvious measures that any Government could be taking, whether that means introducing a windfall tax or insulating our homes. The question I find myself asking is: why on earth are the Government not doing any of those things?

  [Source]

• 1 Feb 2022: Environmental Land Management Scheme: Food Production

  10:44

  Of course, the Government have not only managed to upset a huge part of the farming sector. They are also failing to satisfy the environmental sector. I will not go into the internal dispute in the Conservative party, but let us look at some of the outcomes. I commend the House of Commons Library for its excellent briefing. The fact that it is such a lengthy briefing and many people struggle to get through it tells us something about the nature of these schemes. If we look at the ELM outcomes on page 34—we are finally beginning to see something from the Government on what this might lead to—we see that it mentions 6 megatonnes of CO 2 and just 10% of agricultural emissions. If we are trying to tackle a climate crisis, that is not nearly enough.

  [Source]

• 15 Dec 2021: National Food Strategy and Public Health

  10:37

  The Food Foundation and Sustain made those points powerfully in their briefings. The Agriculture Act 2020, the Environment Act 2021 and the Fisheries Act 2020, which some of us have been involved in over the last couple of years, would have made much more sense if they were not just a post-leaving-the-EU fix, but part of an overall strategy for how we feed ourselves in a fair and sustainable way. It has all been done the wrong way round—it is back to front. Tomorrow we will see the Government sneak out their report on food security on the last possible day that they are allowed to under the Agriculture Act. How much food we wish to produce should have been a key starting point, not an afterthought. As the Climate Change Committee points out, there is still no plan from DEFRA on how we get to net zero. So it is muddle, muddle, muddle—perhaps the Prime Minister is in charge after all.

  [Source]

• 1 Dec 2021: Food and Drink: UK Economy

  17:54

  In the interest of time, I will not make any further points on farming and environmental land management, but we are hoping for some more information soon. Finally, I praise and thank all those in the British food and drink sector. We are fortunate to have a sector that can produce food to such good standards and to such excellent quality, and we cherish it. That is why we want a plan from the Government. We have repeatedly called on the Government to produce a plan for the sector: a plan for food, a plan to get to net zero and a plan to buy British. If the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings were here now, I would tell him, “There is a party that will do that!”, if he is dissatisfied with his own side. We want to get to a situation where people can buy our food with confidence as part of that strategy, but that strategy must also improve conditions for the workers throughout the sector who have given so much. There is plenty to celebrate, but much to be done.

  [Source]

• 15 Nov 2021: COP26

  17:38

  The review commissioned by the Treasury and carried out by Professor Dasgupta of the University of Cambridge highlighted the importance of nature-based solutions to the tackling of environmental challenges. Will the Prime Minister tell us what the UK Government did at COP26 to pursue those conclusions and whether they will be pursued at the COP15 biodiversity talks?

  [Source]

• 15 Sep 2021: Back British Farming Day

  10:38

  We have heard a number of Conservative Members attempt to big up the Government’s shaky position on trade. I think that in their heart of hearts they know that no one trusts the Prime Minister on this. They know full well that the Australian trade deal has sold out British farming, just as it sold out the climate talks, and just as any future trade deals they make are likely to.

  [Source]

• 8 Sep 2021: Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate

  00:06

  The first directly elected mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, James Palmer, was an often controversial figure, and I do not think that he would mind me saying that he was not too unhappy about having that reputation. Between us, we had perhaps predictable areas of disagreement, but on establishing the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate, he made an important and bold move. Persuading Baroness Brown, renowned for her national work with the Climate Change Committee, to chair it gave added gravitas to a highly impressive panel charged with the work. Its first report earlier this year came shortly before Mayor Palmer was replaced by my friend, Dr Nik Johnson, the new mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and I am delighted that Dr Nik has picked up the recommendations with enthusiasm.

  We are fortunate in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire to live in a truly beautiful region of the UK, with fenland, nature reserves, peatland restoration projects, and more, but as the impacts of climate change become more apparent, it is clear that we must act to protect those things that make Cambridgeshire and Peterborough so special. Our environmental assets not only enrich our lives and, we hope, the lives of future generations, but provide habitats for wildlife, clean air, and the basis of our local food supply. The work that the combined authority and local councils as well as many companies and voluntary organisations are doing to protect all of this is crucial.

  Led skilfully by Baroness Brown, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate published an initial report in March 2021, with a series of 31 recommendations for local and central Government. The recommendations were grouped into four key themes, covering transport, buildings, energy, and peat. The commission will publish a second report, which I am told is due next month, covering other important themes such as waste, water, business and industry. As trade unions have rightly argued, the requirements for a just transition are critical—there must be social justice alongside environmental justice—as is the role of nature in helping us to adapt and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Their conclusions on these issues will be important in guiding actions from a range of local organisations, but will also need support from Government, and I shall return to that point.

  That first report highlighted the scale of the challenge. The region is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with low-lying topography, some of the UK’s highest quality farmland, but it is farmland that has been worked hard over many years, complex systems of water management, and flood and very real drought risks. Worryingly, emissions in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area are 25% higher per person than the UK average, so there is much to be done.

  It is easy to be dismayed by the scale of the challenge, but it is also important to recognise work already in place. It will not surprise the Minister if I reference work being done by local councils, including the excellent Cambridge City Council. While councils provide leadership, it is the wide range of organisations, businesses and individuals working together that will make the difference. I was proud, but not surprised, to read that the commission’s survey of local residents showed a strong appetite for climate action. Many have signed up to a Cambridge climate change charter, developed by the admirable Cambridge Carbon Footprint, as we all work to make Cambridge net zero by 2030.

  Let me return to the recommendations of the report, which are extensive. For example, on transport, the commission recommends that all new residential and non-residential developments in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough with parking provision be fitted with charging points for electric vehicles, and that buses and taxis should be net zero by 2030. That is quite a short sentence, which, in itself, is a major and costly task. I do not underestimate what we are asking, particularly of taxi and private hire drivers, who have been hit hard by the pandemic.

  The market does not deliver. It needs regulation and intervention. It needs intervention in the electricity distribution system. It is too hard to get these systems connected at a cost-effective price, so will the Government review arrangements for network access and connection charges to allow rapid take-up and delivery of local decarbonisation projects? Lack of capacity is now a real constraint, so will the Government support operators to invest more in the distribution network to head off future capacity constraints?

  The commission recommends that the combined authority decarbonises housing by adopting a net zero standard for new homes, and improving funding and incentives for home retrofitting. It also advises that new properties have better drainage systems and flood defences—again, short sentences, but big challenges, and I am just summarising.

  On peatlands, the commission recommends investing in climate change mitigation and biodiversity enhancement schemes for the fens. That in itself is worthy of a debate in its own right, with great work being done by a range of partners on the fen restoration projects through Fens for the Future.

  As well as committing to reducing its operations to net zero by the end of 2030, Dr Nik has appointed Councillor Bridget Smith, leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, to a lead role championing climate and the environment. A report commissioned by a Conservative, implemented by a Labour Mayor, working with a Liberal Democrat council leader—it can be done.

  The combined authority is undertaking a review of its local transport plan in the context of the commission’s recommendation, with a focus on active travel and low carbon solutions, and is bringing forward proposals to reform bus services. As a former shadow Transport Minister and lifelong bus enthusiast, I can say that this is another sentence worthy of a whole debate in itself. The reimagining of our bus system will be central to a more sustainable future. I am pleased that the authority has recently been successful in advancing to the next stage of bidding under the Government’s zero-emission buses competition, which would kick-start the transformation of the local bus fleet serving the Cambridge area.

  Looking briefly beyond Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, I am grateful to the House of Commons Library for drawing my attention to the recently published report by the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport entitled “Recognising local authorities as key partners in the Net Zero Strategy”. In this report, it says very clearly:

  Many local authorities across the country are undertaking pioneering and innovative work to address the climate crisis. The Local Government Association estimates that 230 councils have declared a climate emergency, and Climate Emergency UK believes that 81% of councils have a climate plan. Whether it is Telford and Wrekin’s Labour council building a publicly owned solar farm that powers over 800 homes or Mayor Sadiq Khan’s ambitious climate plan for London, local authorities across the UK are doing their bit, and so it is time for the Government to do their bit. Polly Billington of the UK100 network of local authority leaders across the country committed to tackling climate change has said that local authority leaders hold the key to net zero, but “two key hurdles remain”. She argues that one of these hurdles is that the Government simply do not have a plan for reaching net zero, saying:

  “The reality…is that the UK’s current rules do not enable local authorities to do what they need to get to Net Zero locally…Put simply, the UK government won’t be able to achieve what they want to do unless they work with local authorities and change the rules”.

  [Source]

• 14 Jul 2021: Topical Questions

  Will the COP26 President join me in congratulating the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Dr Nik Johnson, on pressing ahead resolutely with the recommendations of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate, which was established by the Mayor’s predecessor and chaired by Baroness Brown? It is a fantastic example of what can be done locally in the run-up to COP26.

  [Source]

• 7 Jun 2021: Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

  00:04

  I spent much of last week reading Professor Dieter Helm’s book on net zero, which I commend to hon. Members. He is quite influential on the Government, I think, but it is pretty depressing reading regarding where we are on achieving net zero. We are nowhere near doing what is needed. One of the key areas is science, innovation and research, so it would not be unreasonable to suggest putting our great scientific minds to work on the great challenge of our times: what to do about the climate crisis.

  It is important to support amendment 12, as well as the other amendments. What a difference it could make, and what a political opportunity for the Government as we head towards the G7 this week and COP26. Unless something like this is adopted, frankly, we will not get where we need to.

  [Source]

  21:14

  Finally, it seems slightly curious that the Government continue to pursue a scheme that, basically, was pursued by a now discredited former adviser. I just hope that they will reflect, take the opportunity to change course, give this new idea a real mission, make that mission the climate emergency, and make something of it.

  [Source]

• 28 Apr 2021: British Meat and Dairy Products

  15:44

  Let me finally mention our biggest challenge of all: climate and nature. We very much welcome the National Farmers Union’s commitment to reach net zero by 2040, and we want to see more support for farmers to reduce their emissions. That is why it is so important that we get ELM right and make it accessible in good time. British agriculture has to be on the front foot and continue to demonstrate positive progress. We will work with farmers to do anything that we can, and we recognise the efforts that are being made. Be it the dairy road map or Arla’s climate checks initiative, we can see people working hard throughout the farming and processing sector to get the advances that we all need.

  [Source]

• 20 Apr 2021: Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fourth sitting)

  16:07

  The first point to make about the amendment is whether to have a mission or not. Do we do it in the way that might work? It is clear that we have to. The second point, which follows, is that if we are to choose something, what should we choose? Witnesses pointed out that there a number of choices. Unsurprisingly, climate change came up on a number of occasions, as it is obvious we should seek to address it. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central has made all the points on that.

  We have an extraordinary situation in that we have COP26 coming up in a few months. Would it not be wonderful if we had this new agency established to address those huge challenges? I fear we are not going to have it, though. We might have the agency and someone sitting around scratching their head saying, “What shall we do today?” when it is entirely obvious what they should be doing.

  [Source]

• 17 Mar 2021: Research and Development Funding

  14:31

  Those projects are aimed at tackling some of the world’s major problems, such as climate change, antimicrobial resistance and poor health and nutrition across the world. Projects that were previously funded through the global challenges research fund and the Newton fund, which usually receive official development assistance, have seen UK universities take centre stage in efforts to address plastic waste management, develop renewable energy and clean water technology, improve worldwide labour laws and roll out 5G networks in lower and middle-income countries. In the past year alone, lessons learned from ODA-funded projects have enabled UK universities to support the national effort against covid-19 through enhanced virus detection technology and online rehab services to help those suffering the long-term effects of the disease. I am grateful to Universities UK for its advice. As I said, the Minister will have seen its letter this week, which I thought was an unusually strong warning and intervention.

  It is shocking that the Government are punching a hole in such important research, particularly in a year when we are recovering from a global pandemic and, of course, hosting the G7 leaders summit and the crucial COP26 climate summit. Frankly, in terms of diplomacy, how inept does it get?

  [Source]

• 12 Jan 2021: Waste Incineration and Recycling Rates

  17:05

  “The government has made big promises to match environmental standards from Europe and to ban plastic waste exports. There can be no dither or delay. The British people expect to see these exports banned, more recycling of materials at home and faster action on the climate crisis. It is up to ministers to deliver on their promises and fast, but this does not look good.”

  [Source]

• 24 Nov 2020: Environment Bill (Twenty First sitting)

  On this occasion, I am afraid I will have to disappoint. The Minister has wheeled out a veritable forest of aspirational opportunities, but we think that the Bill needs to be clearer in its ambition. If that were the case, we would be in a stronger position going into COP26 next year. I suspect this debate will continue over the coming months, but in the meantime we would like to put our position on the record by forcing a Division and—who knows?—perhaps a great victory.

  [Source]

• 19 Nov 2020: Environment Bill (Eighteenth sitting)

  It comes back to the very basic point that it depends on how important one thinks any of this is. We think it is really important. I will gently say that, in the lead-up to COP26, where nature-based solutions are going to be a key theme, we could be setting a lead here by showing how we are pushing nature and biodiversity up the agenda—not at No. 9 on the 10-point plan, but much higher up, which is certainly where we would put it. I think it is a missed opportunity.

  [Source]

  We are helping the Minister here; she could win many brownie points by pointing out to her colleagues that, given that COP26 is nature-based, this is an opportunity to absolutely deliver on nature recovery. I am offering her an early Christmas present, really, and I am afraid that on this occasion we will divide the Committee, because it is a perfect opportunity for her to show that she wants to join us in strengthening her very own Bill.

  [Source]

• 17 Nov 2020: Environment Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

  00:04

  That is essentially the issue: we are talking about the long term. I am sure the Minister will explain in a moment the logic for the Government’s 30-year proposal, but this takes us back to the basic point about how serious and ambitious we are about embedding these changes for the future. There will be little point to the provisions if they do not work in practice. For instance, if someone gets rid of a pond that has been in place for hundreds of years, with all the richness in biodiversity it has developed, and replaces it with another pond nearby, that replacement could be let go after 30 years. Our concern is that the provisions do not give the necessary strong support. The danger is that too short a period could simply see the biodiversity gains swiftly lost. Thirty years sounds like quite a long time, but when one bears in mind that we are already two years down the line from the 25-year environment plan and that politics does not always move at a frightfully great pace, it is not hard to imagine things moving quickly and those gains being quickly lost. If biodiversity gains are to properly contribute to the 25-year environment plan commitments to a nature recovery network and to provide carbon sequestration, which is so crucial to our net zero targets, these areas must be secured and maintained for the long term, because only through that kind of approach will we secure long-term nature recovery.

  [Source]

  14:58

  Perhaps I was overly gushing in my praise for the 25-year environment plan at the beginning, but I was seeking to make a broader point, which is that in too many cases we have stepped back. This is a case in point. The Minister, in explaining the logic behind the 30 years, has raised more concerns in people’s minds than she might have allayed. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test for linking this issue to sequestration and our necessary attempts to achieve net zero by 2050. He seems to me to be absolutely right; we need these improvements.

  [Source]

• 3 Nov 2020: Environment Bill (Ninth sitting)

  There has been a glorious range of opinions, including those of one or two notorious climate change deniers, so there would have been a completely different view on things that were happening internationally, depending on which part of the spectrum of opinion was held by the office holder at the time. Clearly, there can be a change of Governments in the future when this legislation is in place. Surely having an objective set of criteria for how this is done is far better than just having a subjective view, with it depending on whether something is deemed to be significant by the office holder and Government at the time.

  [Source]

  16:16

  The schedule gives us no confidence that the Government even have a plan for where we are going with this. I hope the Minister can give us some reassurances, because many of my constituents—and, I suspect, many constituents of other Members—are really worried about these issues. At a time of climate crisis and biodiversity emergency, how can we possibly be setting an example to the rest of the world as we approach COP26 when we are in this shambolic position, with the suggestion that this so-called independent agency should effectively be run by the Secretary of State?

  [Source]

• 3 Jun 2020: Direct Payments to Farmers (Crop Diversification Derogation) (England) Regulations 2020

  That raises a further question. As I say, the three-crop rule was a blunt instrument, but today we are approving a derogation that potentially undermines the greening intent in parts of the country that were perhaps not so badly affected by floods, with the purpose, absolutely rightly, of helping those who were badly impacted. Will the Minister tell us what plans there are to avoid this kind of situation cropping up in the future? In a spirit of constructiveness, I suggest that a more regionalised approach in England could be helpful, or could even achieve the baseline environmental standards that Labour argued for in the Agriculture Bill. The greening intent of the greening measures was to tackle some of the very causes of the extreme weather we are suffering from. We have a climate crisis, and we should be careful that, in dealing with the immediate consequences, we do not undermine the very tools we are trying to put in place to minimise the risk of such occurrences in future.

  I conclude by observing that this all seems very slow; it takes many months to do simple things. That seems to be a problem that the Government have in other areas as well. We have a climate emergency; we do have extreme weather, and it is of course important to help where we can, which is why the Labour party supports the derogation today. However, we must also be careful to not undermine environmental measures that are designed to tackle that crisis.

  [Source]

• 13 May 2020: Agriculture Bill

  17:13

  This Bill has been a long time coming: almost two and half years since it was started, with three Secretaries of State and two Prime Ministers. It seems a world away from when it was launched back in October 2018. Some things have not changed, however. The climate crisis, finally properly recognised by this Parliament last year, remains more than pressing. There is much in this Bill on which we can all agree. We welcome the improvements on the first version, but, as the debate this afternoon has shown, we still think that there is room for improvement and that there are some fundamental points of disagreement.

  [Source]

• 5 Mar 2020: Agriculture Bill (Twelfth sitting)

  Let me explain what our worry is. We are here discussing major, flagship legislation for the future of the sector, and to us it would seem sensible to ensure that there was provision for this very important part of the sector, particularly when there was such an opportunity, through the local authorities, to deliver a range of public goods, including land management practices that mitigate climate change; public access; and even the promotion of innovative food production systems, such as vertical farms or city farms. If local authorities were to build into their management practices for their smallholdings the aims of aiding nature recovery and carbon sequestration and of promoting biodiversity, county farms could be a very useful tool for local communities, particularly in areas such as mine, where we have such interest in environmental issues being promoted.

  [Source]

  14:17

  In recognition of the key role that local authorities can play in incentivising these farms to be environmental public goods, we would also require local authorities to submit proposals on how they intended to manage their smallholdings in a way that contributed to those various public goods, including the mitigation of climate change and reducing gas emissions. As discussed, our new clause would also limit the continued disposal of farms by stipulating that no local authority smallholding would need to have its ownership transferred unless that was clearly in accordance with those purposes.

  [Source]

  15:50

  Carbon emissions: net-zero

  (a) within six months of this Bill receiving Royal Assent, publish greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for agricultural soil, livestock, peatland and machinery, for the year 2030, which are consistent with an emissions reduction trajectory that would eliminate the substantial majority of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and

  This new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for the agricultural sector.

  [Source]

  15:51

  I think everyone will be pleased that we are getting towards the finishing straight, but, in the meantime, we believe that the Bill needs to have far stronger net zero commitments. As I have said, it is essential that the climate crisis should be front and centre of the Bill, which will be one of the most important pieces of legislation we have had in the past decade to help to meet the climate emergency. Yes, the Government have said that they are committed to reaching net zero by 2050, but the National Farmers Union has demonstrated much more ambitious leadership by setting a closer target—for the agriculture sector to reach net zero by 2040.

  Sadly, we know that the Government are currently not on track to meet their carbon emission goals in the 2030s, let alone to reach net zero by 2050, and the 2040 target remains a voluntary one for the agriculture sector. The fact is that the Committee on Climate Change’s 2019 progress report has shown that UK agriculture is not on track with any of its indicators, and there has been little progress in reducing emissions from agriculture since 2008. As only 30% of direct payments are currently secured through meeting greening requirements—an improvement on the previous system, but still not good enough and way short of what is needed—we can see that a lack of financial incentives or legal requirements for farmers to adapt their practices to reduce emissions is part of the problem. That is why it is so important that the Bill should set out clear targets and a proper plan for how agriculture will be expected to reduce its emissions and by what date.

  As things stand, all that the Bill does, effectively, is stipulate that the Secretary of State may—not even “must”, to go back to where we started—provide financial assistance under clause 1 for the purposes of climate change and adaptation, as well as other public goods that will have positive impacts on carbon storage, such as good soil management. We have no assurances about how much priority those clause 1 elements that could deliver reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be given by the Government when funding the measures in the Bill. There are no guarantees that farmers will even take up the new environmental land management schemes in the first place to deliver those vital agricultural adaptations to reduce carbon emissions, and there is no plan for how agriculture is expected to meet any net zero target, be that by 2050, 2040 or earlier.

  For the Government to say that they are truly committed to transforming our agricultural and land management systems in order to reduce emissions and avert climate catastrophe, the Bill needs to be much strengthened with a coherent, joined-up approach. That has been the purpose of many of our amendments, which we have discussed over the past few weeks. I think I am correct in saying that, sadly, they have been rejected in their entirety by the Government—so far: there is always hope, right to the end. [ Laughter. ] I do not think there is—but anyway.

  The Bill needs binding emission targets for all the key areas of agricultural emissions—soil, livestock, peatland and machinery—for a given date, with clear direction from the Secretary of State on how it is intended to reach them. The NFU suggests 2040. We believe that the target should be in line with that, but that it has got to be even more ambitious if we are to properly address the climate emergency. We propose setting targets that are in line with eliminating the substantial majority of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

  We heard of the need for proper targets in the Bill from numerous witnesses in the evidence sessions. That would be the best way to give the legislation some teeth and proper direction and ensure that the Government’s proposed aims for the Bill of reducing agricultural carbon emissions are actually delivered to a timescale that will make those emission reductions effective for averting the climate catastrophe. The urgency of the climate crisis is too real and too important for any less than that.

  New clause 29 would align agriculture with the emissions reduction trajectory that would eliminate the substantial majority of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. It would require the Secretary of State, within six months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent, to publish emission reductions targets for agricultural soil, livestock, peatland and machinery for the year 2030 that are consistent with this aim, to publish a statement within 12 months of the Bill becoming an Act of the policies to be delivered in order to meet the emissions reduction targets, and to ensure those targets are met. The new clause would also ensure that, in providing financial assistance for the clause 1 purposes, the impact of that funding is compatible with the achievement of the target of reducing the substantial majority of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

  There can be no more important point on which to conclude our deliberations today. It is a simple test for the Government: are they up to tackling the climate crisis or not? I fear we are about to hear a lot of noes.

  [Source]

  15:59

  So, we come full circle, back to where we started. I listened closely to the Minister and I end up being disappointed, sadly. I point out that the Government were dragged unwillingly to the 2050 target. It was the Leader of the Opposition who led on that, and it will be Labour in the future that will deliver us from the climate emergency. I did hear a “yes” at one point in the Minister’s speech, and I hope she might just be able to say yes in a moment, when we come to the vote.

  This all comes back to the balance between cost and possibility. I kept hearing the words “lowest possible cost”. This is not something that can be done at low cost. The climate emergency is absolutely real, immediate and urgent. There is a fundamental difference between the two sides here on how we approach it. The Minister mentioned environmental land management schemes. We talked much about that last week. There are no guarantees in the Bill that they will achieve the uptake or the outcomes that we are looking for.

  There has been a clear division of opinion throughout the discussions on the Bill. It does too little. It is not strong enough. It does not guarantee the way forward that we need. Agriculture is still a major contributor to the climate crisis. We need to find a way of taking the sector to a much better place. This new clause would help us to do that.

  [Source]

• 3 Mar 2020: Agriculture Bill (Ninth sitting)

  10:07

  Going back to the food security report itself, the danger in that, under this clause, we will not even see the first one until after the next election, when we will have been out of the EU for half a decade. To us, it seems extraordinary that we would wait so long. We believe it needs to be done much more frequently. Given the kind of dramatic changes we are seeing around the world with the climate crisis, flooding and so on, we think that having reports on our food security annually would be a vital tool in the Government’s toolkit, enabling them to react to trends as they develop year on year and to address them. A further weakness of the food security report approach is that we can have a report, but we then need some tools to respond to what the report is telling us.

  [Source]

• 3 Mar 2020: Climate Protests in Cambridge: Police Response

  15:53

  The hon. Member is making a powerful legalistic argument, but I put it to him that this is actually a political argument. There are many people in my constituency who think we face a climate emergency so serious that it justifies what would in normal times be considered extreme action. Does he understand how strongly people feel about this? The police have used these powers on the A14 diversions, and there has been less disruption for my constituents over the past few years than was suffered the other week.

  [Source]

  16:03

  Strong points have been made about the law needing to be enforced, but the Government are continually dragged through the courts for failing to meet their air quality responsibilities, so when are we going to see Ministers pursued by the police to tackle the climate emergency? There cannot be one law for one set of people; surely it has to be the same law for everybody.

  [Source]

• 27 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (Seventh sitting)

  (d) the management of land, water or livestock in a way that mitigates or adapts to climate change;

  [Source]

  12:24

  There is an irony in that. The Committee on Climate Change issued a report in January titled, “Land use: Policies for a Net Zero UK”, which is a useful document to inform our discussion. It includes a handy chart on page 80 that outlines the current proposals for the replacement of the common agricultural policy. If people want a one-pager, it is pretty good. The only problem is that its opening line says that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs proposes:

  We need to make sure that across all our agricultural land, the baseline is land management that recognises the huge challenge of climate change, protects our soils, guards against flooding, encourages resilience in biodiversity and prioritises high animal welfare. We believe that we have to set minimum standards across the board, so that the Bill—this goes back to a point I was making earlier—genuinely incentivises those that go above and beyond. I still think that that is probably what the Government want to do, but the contradictions and difficulties are being glossed over at the moment.

  [Source]

• 27 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (Eighth sitting)

  15:49

  As I have said, our view is that the Bills have been introduced in the wrong order, which puts us at something of a disadvantage. However, if the prime, driving purpose of this legislation is to tackle the environmental crisis, as we think it should be, we do not think that the proposed structure—welcome though it is, and it is an improvement—quite matches that sense of urgency. I perhaps should have said more on this earlier. Seven years is a long time for a transition. While we understand why that is beneficial from the industry’s point of view, from my constituents’ point of view, some want it next week, frankly. People are pushing very hard. At the general election, my party committed to a much earlier net zero date, and we know that the NFU is pushing for a much earlier date than the Government’s. However, there is not that sense of urgency, which our amendments would help to bring forward.

  We understand that there is tension because the Department wants flexibility; I am sure that if we were running the Department, we would want the same. It is our job as the Opposition, however, to remind the Government that they voted to acknowledge the climate crisis and to try to hit net zero in 2050. In every piece of legislation that is brought forward, we want to see a real commitment to making that happen. We think the amendment would contribute to that.

  [Source]

  16:10

  We would be worried about a further pause, because as I have said we just cannot afford it. We are in a climate and ecological emergency. There is no pause button there. The Bill has already been delayed. If we are to reach net zero more quickly than 2050—my suspicion is that the Government would like to do so, although that date is what they are committed to—we will have to move more quickly, so any pause or delay to a more sustainable and environmentally supportive system of land management is disappointing.

  We would want to go more quickly— [Interruption.] The Minister enjoys the fact that I am in the privileged position of being able to say that in opposition, but basically this entire institution should be bending itself, at every opportunity, to find ways of moving more quickly to challenge the climate crisis. That is what we would be doing.

  [Source]

• 25 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (Fifth sitting)

  09:30

  It is precisely because changes have been made to the Bill, and because the climate and ecological crisis has become ever more pressing in the year or more since the Bill was last in Committee, that it is so important that we have returned to scrutinise this new version of the legislation. Our amendments are intended to strengthen the Bill—to give it more bite and deliver greater certainty to our farmers, to tackle the health and climate crises, and to fill in some of the gaps and missed opportunities.

  [Source]

  09:35

  The shift that we need to see in our agricultural systems towards producing food in a way that is less destructive to the environment and that reduces agriculture’s contribution to climate change is too important to leave to the optional discretion of Secretaries of State. Under the current wording, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position whereby current and future Secretaries of State will be under no actual obligation to provide financial assistance to address agriculture’s contribution to climate change, despite that supposedly being a key driver of the Bill.

  If the Government understand just how important the environmental and climate crisis is, it really is not such a tough ask for them to back up their commitments with stronger wording in the Bill. Others had the same discussion about the previous iteration of the Bill, so I am well aware of the current Secretary of State’s arguments against the change—that by keeping this as a power and not a duty, the Government are following a legislative tradition—I am sure the Minister has been given appropriate examples to make that point. I will not re-rehearse the point, but she will note that it was not only the Opposition who expressed that concern last time. She may find that some Members on her side of Committee care and worry about this issue. I would gently point out that the circumstances are really rather different now; in fact, the case has been strengthened since the previous discussion, given the climate emergency that we are facing. We hardly need look very far around the country to see the evidence of that.

  [Source]

  10:17

  We have had a good discussion pointing out some of the interesting trade-offs and tensions that we face as we look ahead. I was struck by the point made by the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, because it seems there are potentially many unintended consequences of the changes that we are about to make. I absolutely understand his point about oversupply. All I would say is that if we are trying to tackle the climate crisis, we will have to manage the transition. That is one of the great challenges of the Bill.

  [Source]

  On that point, the concern shared by many of us since the previous Agriculture Bill is that the climate emergency seized all of us and yet there is no net zero target. The National Farmers Union say 2040. What is the Government’s view?

  [Source]

• 13 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

  11:35

  “In addition, nothing in any agreement will undermine the Government’s commitment to tackling climate change.” —[ Official Report , 6 February 2020; Vol. 671, c. 15WS.]

  We lead the world with our commitment to net zero by 2040, so we look to that being honoured. That is an absolutely key statement to us going forward.

  Dr Fenwick: In clause 36, which relates to organic products, subsection (5) makes it clear that it is possible to restrict or prohibit the import of organic products. That will be legislated for once the Bill becomes an Act. We would have expected an equivalent paragraph or provision relating to other production standards to have been incorporated in the Bill. It is there for organic, yet it is not there for all these other issues and in particular the key issue that John raised—our environmental and climate change obligations.

  [Source]

  12:24

  Q Since the earlier iteration of the Agriculture Bill, there has been wide acknowledgment that we face a climate crisis. As part of that, although clearly different in different parts of the country, there is a crisis around our soil, is there not? Could you say a little about how intense that is?

  [Source]

  12:25

  Gareth Morgan: I absolutely agree with the latter point. We may come on to the issue of trade equality later in the discussion, I imagine. There is simply no point in us exporting our production by forcing up standards here when we are importing products that are produced to low environmental and climate-change standards from other places. We urgently need to find a way to address that, because the tsunami of change that is about to hit farming in this country will not be able to withstand that, so we have to find a way of addressing that issue.

  [Source]

• 13 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)

  Q Good afternoon. Since the Bill was introduced a couple of years ago, the world has moved on in some ways. There is greater awareness of the challenge that we face, and the Government have conceded that there is a climate emergency. Do you think that the Bill is up to the task and, if you started with a blank sheet of paper, what would you do?

  [Source]

• 11 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (Second sitting)

  16:07

  Q Since the previous Agriculture Bill started, obviously the world has changed in some ways. There is a greater understanding of the climate crisis that we are facing. More work has been done by the Government’s Committee on Climate Change, including very detailed suggestions for land-use management released only a few weeks ago. Would you expect to see some of those proposals begin to make their way into a Bill such as this, and are you surprised, as I am, that there is no aspiration within the Bill to hit a net-zero target at some point?

  I think that the situation has changed, and therefore what the Agriculture Bill is able to do, and the amount of funding that comes forward to deliver on those targets, is critical. Clarity about the long-term funding arrangements is therefore very important, as well as how those would seek to address the climate change issue.

  [Source]

  16:08

  I suspect that if you had sector targets for agriculture you would argue for targets for other sectors. I am not sure whether those are in place. In the agriculture sector, I think that there will be ambition, given the right funding, to do a lot more on climate change, certainly in terms of locking carbon up in soils, where it belongs, rather than losing it to the air. There is great potential for that.

  [Source]

• 11 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill (First sitting)

  09:39

  Caroline Drummond: I agree. There needs to be the policy documentation, so we can identify what this is going to look like and how the knitting all joins up—there are lots of balls of wool, but what are we trying to knit at the end of the day? Not much has been left out of the Bill, which is really key, but we need to know how it will be interpreted and how the ELMS projects will be carried out. There are a lot of them going on, and we need to know how they will be brought together to demonstrate the delivery against metrics, outcomes and, ultimately, impact. Ultimately, the Government have to deliver against the global and national targets around the sustainable development goals, the Paris agreement, and so on, but the farming sector has the opportunity to support us in demonstrating that we are helping on issues around climate change, biodiversity, soil improvement and those matters.

  [Source]

  09:59

  Caroline Drummond: I think potentially farmers will walk away from supporting them ultimately, if the marketplace is not delivering against the requirements expected of the imported produce and farmers are increasingly required to deliver against goods that are costing them from a business perspective. That is one of the big dangers. A bigger issue is offshoring, and the fact that we have nine years to deliver against the sustainable development goals. We have the Paris agreements. We have a fantastic opportunity with the conference of the parties talks on climate change being held in this country later this year to herald our ambitions for delivering and demonstrating leadership in environmental delivery and in climate change mitigation delivery.

  [Source]

  10:41

  The letter not only touched on a defensive ask, but pushed a more aspirational agenda around a role for the UK to set out a world-leading trade policy that takes account of societal demands such as climate change, biodiversity and all those sorts of issues, which are not reflected in modern international trade policy, and certainly not at the World Trade Organisation.

  [Source]

  11:20

  Q I should like to take you up a level, in the sense that since the initial iteration of this Bill, we have become very aware of the climate crisis and Parliament has declared a climate emergency. Do you think there is enough in this Bill to reflect that need for urgent action, particularly given the recommendations from the Committee on Climate Change on policies for net zero referred to earlier? If the NFU can look for a target for 2040, should there not be something in this Bill referencing that?

  Thomas Lancaster: We have supported in the past, and would still support, a sector-specific target for net zero by 2040, to reflect the ambition of the NFU and others. We would support an amendment to that effect in Committee and beyond. As a statement of intent and clarity on the role that the sector could play in that climate emergency, it is still a really useful thing to look at. We would also stress that, although this is the Agriculture Bill, in the climate change world there is a lot of talk about nature-based solutions such as peatland restoration, coastal habitats and woodland creation, and the Agriculture Bill, particularly through the land management schemes that flow from it, will be the central mechanism for delivering those nature-based solutions and the aims of the Environment Bill.

  Thinking about how public money for public goods can support more sustainable food production that is also carbon and climate friendly, it has an important role to play in building soil carbon, potentially supporting minimum tillage systems, cover crops and other land management interventions that build resilience to climate change in the future. We see climate change running through public money for public goods, from farmed and non-farmed landscapes, and the Agriculture Bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have had in the past decade or probably will have for decades to come in helping to meet the climate emergency that we all face.

  [Source]

• 3 Feb 2020: Agriculture Bill

  21:44

  There we have it—an Agriculture Bill that is not really about food or public good; without public voice; an open door for our food producers to be sold out in a trade deal with Trump; and English farmers put at disadvantage compared with other nations in the UK, while doing too little to tackle the climate emergency. No wonder farmers will be here in droves on 25 March. I hope that Government Back Benchers heed that last call and wake up to the problem, because the Opposition are not prepared to sell out English farmers, workers and our countryside.

  We have heard seven maiden speeches tonight, and a number of Members had the delicate task of paying tribute to somewhat troublesome predecessors. It is quite a list they had to deal with—Ken Clarke, John Bercow, Heidi Allen and Oliver Letwin—but they all managed that delicate task with great tact and grace. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) paid full tribute to her predecessor, Albert Owen, which is much appreciated by the Opposition. She invited the Secretary of State to the Anglesey show. The right hon. Lady is unable to attend, but I am sure that shadow Ministers are willing to oblige. The hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) had the best line of the night, about fake shoes. The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) had a list of sporting heroes that any constituency would be proud to borrow, especially Cambridge United, which could do with Jimmy Johnstone or John Robertson. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) delivered a speech that was probably every Cambridge leftie’s nightmare, but we could agree on one point: we do not want the Oxford-Cambridge expressway. The hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) took us on a tour of the most beautiful parts of the west country, and tactfully reminded the Government of the NFU’s ambition to achieve net zero by 2040. My near neighbour, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), highlighted the hugely important role of life sciences, and many of the wonderful institutions that abut the city of Cambridge. We have a slightly different take on the European Union, but I am sure that we can work together on the future of life sciences. Finally, the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) gave a delicate account of the status of the Cerne Abbas giant, and it was deftly delivered.

  For all its faults, the CAP was at least focused on ensuring stability of food supplies and prices. All this Bill does is require the Government to have regard to encouraging the production of food in an environmentally sustainable way. We have to ask whether the Bill actually matches up to the scale of the environmental and climate crisis that we are facing. At the moment, I think the answer is no. There is no duty for Ministers to do anything, and crucially there are no targets for the agriculture sector to reach net zero emissions—points powerfully made by my hon. Friends the Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) and for Nottingham East. There are no provisions to secure the high baseline standards of farming and land management that we are going to need, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) powerfully stated in a particularly thoughtful speech. That is particularly important if we are going to tackle the ecological crisis that we are facing, including standards for those agricultural actors who choose not to engage with the environmental land management schemes.

  [Source]

• 28 Jan 2020: Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

  13:37

  The Opposition, of course, support this Bill and the direction of travel, because there is a clear funding gap between the ending of direct payments to farmers under the CAP and the Government’s considerably delayed Agriculture Bill, which will set out the new system of payments from 2021. We fully appreciate the need for financial security for farmers in the interim, but we have several continuing concerns about this Bill, because it has been rushed to make up for the fact that the Government have lost the last 14 months to delays and wrangling and have reintroduced the Agriculture Bill just days before we leave the European Union. Unsurprisingly, farmers are anxious, and of course the urgent environmental action that we need at a time of climate crisis is also being delayed.

  [Source]

• 21 Jan 2020: Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

  15:12

  Before raising a few points of detail about the Bill, let me say that people across the world know that we are facing a climate emergency and environmental crisis. It may be an unfortunate add-on for some Members, but we also know that modern destructive agricultural practices are, in some cases, contributing to this. In the past year, oceans have recorded the hottest temperatures on record, and insects and farmland birds have continued to decline. The result of the Government dropping the ball on this is that we are still years away from moving to a system in the UK where farmers are paid and supported to protect our environment, and we are now legislating for another stop-gap year of the CAP, which, as has been acknowledged, was simply not designed to address these important environmental issues.

  [Source]

• 28 Oct 2019: Restoring Nature and Climate Change

  16:32

  That this House has considered e-petition 254607 relating to restoring nature and climate change.

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and an honour to introduce the petition on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is timely because of the climate crisis we face, but also because it is a hot topic in Ambridge at the moment, for those who listen to “The Archers”. That is always a useful barometer for a certain part of public opinion.

  The petition, which calls for natural climate solutions, such as rewilding, to be enacted to tackle the climate emergency, has been signed by around 110,000 people, including over 650 from my Cambridge constituency. It makes a series of important points and reads:

  “Restore nature on a massive scale to help stop climate breakdown.

  To avoid a climate emergency we need to act fast.

  We need to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate breakdown. To do this we need both to reduce carbon emissions and to remove carbon from the atmosphere. By drawing down carbon, nature’s recovery can help us reach net carbon zero.

  I doubt many—or even any—of us here would disagree with much in that statement. It is a topic that chimes with the public mood over the last year. From the school climate strikes, the Extinction Rebellion protests and many more related campaigns, it is clear that stopping climate breakdown is at the top of the agenda for many people.

  [Source]

  16:42

  To return to the subject of the oceans, the securing of no-fish zones in oceans can allow marine habitats to recover from the effects of bottom trawling and scallop dredging. An example is the no-take zone in Lamlash bay in Scotland. That is beautifully outlined by Rewilding Britain on its website. The issues are not always straightforward. In my area, the Cambridge Independent reported last week that Cambridgeshire County Council’s goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions is going to be more challenging than originally thought, as peatland emissions will be included in Government calculations from next year. Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange, which strongly advocates nature-based solutions, identified—as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out—that peatland is a significant contributor to CO 2 emissions in Cambridgeshire. Adam Barnett of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds tells me that that is a crucial issue. Consequently, the RSPB and other organisations rightly want to ban the burning of peat bogs, which releases carbon and is extremely damaging to the atmosphere. I hope that we shall get a response on that from the Minister. I know that questions have been put to Ministers about it before.

  [Source]

  16:45

  Cambridgeshire is not as flat as all that, if you cycle around. However, in answer to the intervention of the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald)—yes; some important leadership, and extraordinary plans and ideas, are coming from such places as the University of Cambridge, about the dramatic interventions we might make to tackle climate change.

  Almost as we speak here, discussions in the main Chamber will have an impact on the ways forward. The Environment Bill and our wider future relationship with our European partners will both have a significant impact on the issues that we are debating. A point that has been much stressed in the many recent debates is that, were we to leave the European Union, that should not lead to the potential regression of existing environmental standards. Dr Clements emphasised that to me and, as Members would probably expect, there is near-universal agreement among those who are expert in the field. The combined power and influence of 28 states acting together should not be lost. It is a global climate crisis and we must tackle it collaboratively.

  [Source]

  “Secondly, our wildlife is endangered by the plastic in the sea and us cutting down their homes. We also need to stop littering around our environment, fields and especially on the beach! To sum up, I need you to tell the government that they need to act now and my question for the government is: do you want to keep ruining animals’ lives, or do you want to save the animals and our world from climate change?”

  [Source]

  18:29

  That this House has considered e-petition 254607 relating to restoring nature and climate change.

  [Source]

• 7 Oct 2019: Amazon Deforestation

  16:31

  “Demand the EU & UN sanction Brazil to halt increased deforestation of the Amazon. The government of Brazil led by Bolsonaro favour the development of the Amazon rainforest over conservation, escalating deforestation. Deforestation threatens indigenous populations who live in the forest, loss of a precious and complex ecosystem and a vital carbon store that slows global warming. Indigenous people have called for the EU to impose trade sanctions on Brazil to halt the deforestation because they fear genocide. Also, the UK parliament has recognised a climate emergency. Since the Amazon rainforest is an important carbon store, absorbing huge volumes of CO2 each year, its deforestation is of global significance. The intrinsic value of the rainforest should also be recognised. Trade sanctions are used elsewhere for important issues as an effective means to force action.”

  [Source]

  16:34

  Climate change and environmental issues have shot up the political and public agenda this year—we should all be thankful for that—due in no small part to young people, the school climate strikes and Greta Thunberg, and to various campaigns that have led to long-overdue media attention. In my city of Cambridge, some 3,000 people took to the streets a few weeks ago to support the school children, and today thousands are taking part in the Extinction Rebellion protests. Protecting our natural environment has captured the public consciousness and cannot—indeed, must not—be ignored by politicians.

  [Source]

  16:33

  That brings me to President Bolsonaro—clearly a controversial figure, although by no means the only controversial figure on the world stage at the moment—whose attitude to climate change is worth highlighting. Back in December 2018, at the 24th conference of the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change, the Brazilian Government promised that their carbon emissions would decrease by 37% by 2025, and by 43% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. However, since President Bolsonaro took office in January there has been a clear change. He is widely considered to be sceptical of actions to curb climate change, and in his election campaign he said he would take Brazil out of the Paris climate change accord—a note, I fear, from the Trump playbook. He has back-peddled a little and has argued that he may not do that so long as Brazil’s control over the Amazon remains intact. I have to say that I do not think these are issues to be negotiated. We should all be working to preserve such an important part of our environment.

  Remember the scale of the challenge that we face. The Government’s actions hardly equate to the “rapid”, “unprecedented” and “far-reaching” transitions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for in its report last year.

  [Source]

  16:48

  That is the important point: the sense of urgency. Of course, this Parliament has declared a climate emergency, not that one would necessarily guess that from the Government’s actions, and actions are what count.

  Many would argue that there is no need for self-inflicted harm. Greenpeace tells us that indigenous groups across Brazil are calling for global support to protect their rights in their struggle to safeguard the forests that they have inhabited for centuries. Greenpeace argues that environmental governance bodies in Brazil have been dismantled and weakened. For instance, the Climate Change and Forests Office and the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Climate Change have been closed, which has impacted policies and deforestation prevention, as well as resourcing. Minister Salles has slashed the budget and staffing of the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, or IBAMA. Highly trained units have reportedly been grounded, and the value of fines imposed for environmental offences has dropped by 43%. In August, the director of Brazil’s National Space Research Institute was forced out of office after the President refuted data on rising deforestation.

  People will make their own judgment, but at the centre of the issue is the fact that we are in a climate crisis. If Brazil rejects the chance to reform its practice, recommit to stopping the fires and return to anti-deforestation policies, and if the Brazilian President continues to take Brazil down such an environmentally damaging path, it is right that the international community thinks hard about how to proceed to best protect the environmental jewel that is the Amazon rainforest.

  [Source]

  16:59

  That seems to be over-optimistic at best and complacent at worst, but we will await the Minister’s response. If the situation remains as difficult as it currently appears to be, I have to say, I am with Greenpeace. The Amazon rainforest is sometimes said to provide 20% of our terrestrial oxygen, or one in five of each of our breaths. Most of us now recognise that we are in a climate crisis, and that it is time for action and urgency in our approach to both domestic and international policy.

  [Source]

• 25 Jul 2019: Topical Questions

  10:05

  Improving the energy efficiency of our homes is one of the best ways to tackle climate change, yet since 2012 there has been a 95% fall in home insulation programmes. What has gone wrong?

  [Source]

• 25 Jul 2019: Priorities for Government

  Optimism is one thing, but pantomime is quite another. On what is likely to be the hottest day on record for the UK, it is astonishing that the Prime Minister is seeking to outsource tackling climate change to the private sector. Can he tell us one thing that his Government are going to do in the next month to tackle the climate emergency?

  [Source]

• 24 Jun 2019: Unsustainable Packaging

  16:30

  What an uplifting petition. The sentiment behind it speaks for itself. It has been signed by 247,048 people—nearly a quarter of a million people—illustrating the strength of feeling. That includes nearly 1,000 people from my Cambridge constituency, where this is a matter of great interest and concern. It is clear that the public mood about packaging, whether it goes to landfill or pollutes our oceans and rivers, has changed over the past few years. We have woken up. There is genuine public recognition of the climate crisis and concern about the natural destruction caused by non-recyclable waste.

  [Source]

  16:47

  At the roundtable in Cambridge last week, Seigo Robinson and others were concerned that reducing non-recyclable plastic packaging was not necessarily compatible with the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. For example, it was said that “carting around loads of refillable jam jars” would use “loads of CO 2 ”; we may not have been precise or measurable on this occasion, but hon. Members will get the point. Alternatives to plastic packaging, such as paper, steel, wood and glass, could sadly have far worse carbon footprints. People said that plastic pollution of the oceans and carbon emissions needed to go hand in hand, and argued that recycling ought to be a last resort; people should look at using reusable containers for many years before thinking about the need for recycling.

  [Source]

  16:53

  The drink stirrer announcement grabbed headlines, but we need to seize this moment to make the “rapid”, “unprecedented” and “far-reaching” transitions that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report called for in October. In evidence to the EFRA Committee’s inquiry, the Green Alliance recommended moving away from piecemeal action and approaching plastic, packaging and resource use in general in a much more systemic way. This means viewing plastic as just one resource among many used in our economy, all of which have environmental impacts of some sort.

  [Source]

• 21 May 2019: Fuel Duty Freeze

  12:04

  That is not the view of most people who actually know about these things. This Government have gone from climate emergency to climate complacency in just three weeks. There is 4% extra traffic on the roads because of the scrapping of the fuel duty escalator. What fiscal mechanisms is the Treasury contemplating to deal with climate change?

  [Source]

• 1 May 2019: Environment and Climate Change

  We can all talk about climate change, but seeing the evidence at first hand makes a real difference. I was fortunate to visit the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge last week, where Dr Huw Griffiths, who I was paired with in a Royal Society scheme and who was just back from the Antarctic, and Professor David Vaughan showed me their extraordinary ice cores. Ice cores are dug down deep into the ice, forming a pathway back into the past, with little bubbles from centuries past captured from the atmosphere. They are able to chart the rises and falls in temperature and emissions in the atmosphere and show exactly what has happened to our climate over the last few millenniums. The chart shows temperatures going up and down, up and down, and we should be entering the cooling period, but the chart shows that temperatures are going up. That graphic representation makes it all clear.

  That is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was so right last year to demand “rapid”, “unprecedented” and “far-reaching” transitions. We are not seeing that from the Government. For example, we have not seen cuts in road transport emissions, so why were the Government so pathetic in their response to suggestions that they look again at the fuel duty escalator? For goodness’ sake! It was introduced by a Conservative Government. Why was there such a negative response to Labour’s brave suggestion to restore our bus services by transferring money from vehicle excise duty? Those are the kinds of things that will make the difference—not honeyed words, as we heard from the Secretary of State, but rapid, unprecedented and far-reaching transitions. That is what we need.

  [Source]

• 21 Feb 2019: Topical Questions

  10:11

  Last week, as we have heard, thousands of young people, including hundreds in Cambridge, showed that they recognise that we are facing a real climate emergency. Would the Secretary of State like to meet some of them so that they can impress that sense of urgency on him? He might even meet some Sheermanites.

  [Source]

• 13 Feb 2019: Prosperity Fund

  11:49

  Climate change will hit the world’s poorest people hardest, so why on earth is 29% of the energy component of the prosperity fund being spent on oil and gas extraction, including supporting fracking in China?

  [Source]

• 16 Oct 2018: Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  10. What his policy is on achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

  [Source]

• 10 Oct 2018: Kerala: Summer Floods

  11:42

  Members of the Keralan community across the UK are understandably aghast at recent events. Will the Minister say whether, in the light of this week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Government will heed the advice of the world’s leading climate scientists to enable us to make the rapid, unprecedented and far-reaching transitions that will be needed to avoid similar crises in future?

  [Source]

• 21 Nov 2017: Topical Questions

  12:29

  T2. The Foreign Secretary will be aware that despite last week’s climate change talks, the world is still not on track to limit global warming to less than 3° C. What steps is he taking to ensure that we get back on track?

  [Source]

• 12 Jan 2016: Airport Expansion: East Anglia

  Once the Government set out their expansion recommendation, we will be able to examine its relative merits properly based on four tests that the Labour party has set out, including commitments to meet our legal climate change obligations and mitigate local environmental impacts. Only then can we truly assess the impact that expansion will have on the south-east, the wider Anglian region and the rest of the UK.

  [Source]

• 7 Dec 2015: Neonicotinoids on Crops

  The reasons for the problem are complex and many. They include habitat change, the spread of pests, diseases and invasive species, and climate change. The list goes on, and its breadth is intimidating to lay people. Those multiple pressures and stresses are sometimes linked and interrelated, so our responses must be sophisticated, but there is one contributory cause that could and should be tackled now: the use of pesticides, and in particular of neonicotinoid pesticides.

  [Source]

• 25 Nov 2015: Clean Energy Investment

  Does the hon. Gentleman share my astonishment at the fact that there appears to be no consultation between the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Communities and Local Government regarding the impact of the cuts on councils? In my city, those cuts prevented the installation of a thousand solar panels.

  [Source]

• 19 Nov 2015: Paris Climate Change Conference

  I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this debate. In my experience, if we ask most people what they want politicians to do, we find that they want us to work together to tackle the really big challenges, and that is quite hard in this place, as any newly elected Member soon comes to appreciate. However, there was one moment a few years ago when this place really did come together; as my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) pointed out, the Climate Change Act 2008 was supported by almost everyone in this House, and rightly so. It was groundbreaking legislation, setting out the structure we need to tackle one of the key problems of our age. The Climate Change Committee, by setting out the carbon budgets—we anticipate the next one soon—creates the framework within which investors and innovators can operate with some certainty, and without which we would not be able to make progress. It is a model of how a modern competitive economy can operate, with markets regulated in the interests of the common good. It is good for citizens, good for the environment and good for business; this is the model of how a modern economy looks to many of us in the Labour party.

  How disappointing, then, that even with this excellent model, recent actions by the Government have taken us backwards. Their erratic U-turn on renewable subsidies; the selling off of the Green Investment Bank; the green deal disaster and binning of the decade-long zero-carbon homes plan have left the green energy sector infuriated and non-plussed, and left investors nervous. We are already lagging behind Germany, India, Japan, China and the United States in green investment, and cutting our commitment to renewable energy is hardly likely to improve matters.

  Yet, what an opportunity we have. There is huge interest in these issues in Cambridge, and I commend to the Secretary of State the Cambridge climate message, which is supported by an impressive array of local organisations. They are clear that they want COP21 to be a success, not a cop-out. Cambridge and the wider East Anglian region is at the forefront of the clean-tech revolution, with more than 1,000 businesses already active in the sector, ranging from product development specialists to multinational enterprises with global reach. Some 10% of the UK total of low carbon and environmental goods and services companies are in the region, which means that the per capita concentration of companies is twice the national average. That emerging cluster is supported by a network of world-class universities and research centres, a highly skilled workforce and some of the world’s leading technical consultancies. Growth there can be built upon to bring about a halo effect for similar success outside our region, but it depends upon attracting investors. At the moment, these investors are scratching their heads and closing their wallets when faced with the Government’s constantly shifting policies on green energy.

  [Source]

  Let me return to talking about Cambridge Retrofit, which I commend to the right hon. Gentleman. Led by Professor Doug Crawford-Brown at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, it is helping the UK to meet its CO 2 emission reduction targets, while helping the community reduce energy bills and supporting local businesses. When completed, the project will make a massive 20% to 30% reduction in carbon emissions in the Cambridge area. This shows that it can be done; it is about political will and political leadership, and that is what we need in the run-up to Paris.

  We need—in fact, the wider world needs—to hear from this Government a clear assurance that they intend to prioritise innovation and reinstate long-term policies that will demonstrate their confidence in clean, green energy and technology. Attracting investment to this sector will help us deliver on our national energy, economic and environmental ambitions, and help the UK meet its international obligations and achieve a just transition. This House has shown before that it can rise to the challenge to come together to meet the great challenges of our age. My question is: can the Government?

  [Source]

See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate