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Douglas Alexander's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 12 Parliamentary debates in which Douglas Alexander has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 14 May 2026: Government’s Legislative Programme: Scotland

  We will continue working with the Scottish Government on legislation, providing a legislative framework to support the hosting of future major sporting events across the UK, so we can see more big events like the Euros and Commonwealth games in Scotland in the future. Following the establishment of the Aberdeen-based GB Energy announced in the last King’s Speech, the Government will go further by bringing in new legislation which will lower bills, secure our energy systems and set out a clear path to net zero.

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• 15 Apr 2026: Economic Growth

  11:51

  This is an incredibly difficult time for the Alexander Dennis workers and their families, many of whom face an uncertain future through no fault of their own. It is, alas, yet another example of failure on the part of the Scottish Government, who sent the majority of a £45 million funding pot for zero emission buses to China, blocking comparative bids to build and invest in Falkirk. While Labour mayors have shown what is possible across the rest of the UK, stepping forward with bus orders and backing British manufacturing when it mattered, that is an example not so much of being “stronger for Scotland”, as of being stronger for China.

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• 15 Apr 2026: Energy Prices

  11:44

  I see that the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), is on the Front Bench with me. I will write to the hon. Lady on exactly that matter.

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• 14 Jan 2026: Economic Growth

  11:57

  I was last in touch with the Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary about an hour ago. I talked to him after the Cabinet, and I discussed these issues with him in the Cabinet. It is a very serious question, and it deserves a serious answer. The choice is not whether to build, but what to build, and our answer is clean home-grown power that the United Kingdom controls. Our answer is that we should build new renewables, because they are cheaper to build and to operate than gas.

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• 26 Nov 2025: New Nuclear Sites

  11:35

  This at least seems to be an occasion for which there is genuine cross-party consensus. Not only have we urged a different approach from the Scottish Government—and I do so again—but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has already asked Great British Energy Nuclear to begin assessing Scotland’s capability for new build nuclear sites.

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  I find myself in agreement with my hon. Friend. This is not just an anti-jobs measure by the Scottish Government; I would argue that it is an anti-science measure. Let us remember that nuclear power is carbon free. Given the climate change challenge we face, why would we want to resist a technology that can provide reliable, safe and cheap carbon-free energy for decades to come?

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• 30 Jun 2025: UK-Taiwan Enhanced Trade Partnership

  I am pleased to announce that the three pillars under the UK-Taiwan enhanced trade partnership, on investment, digital trade, and energy and net zero, were signed on 30 June. The signing took place between the UK representative at the British Office Taipei, Ruth Bradley-Jones, and the Taipei representative to the UK, Vincent Chin-Hsiang Yao. I witnessed this signing alongside Executive Yuan Minister without Portfolio Yang Jen-ni during my trip to Taipei where I also co-chaired the 27th UK-Taiwan trade talks.

  The digital trade, investment and energy and net zero pillars are available on www.gov.uk.

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• 3 Dec 2024: UK Supply Chains: Uyghur Forced Labour

  13:56

  I am not sure that I am in agreement, notwithstanding the high degree of consensus in the House, with the hon. Lady’s opposition to solar farms. We believe that the essential transition to a net zero economy requires not only onshore wind but, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business and Trade has made clear, offshore wind, on which the United Kingdom is rightly a leader, as well as onshore solar. We are simply in disagreement if the hon. Lady’s argument is that we should oppose solar farm development. That being said, she is entirely right to recognise that the net zero transition should not be at the cost of any latitude on the clear provisions of the Modern Slavery Act. It is mandatory rather than voluntary. That legislation was introduced by our predecessors, and we are considering it carefully in the light of change in other jurisdictions, but it none the less places clear obligations on those seeking to import to the United Kingdom.

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• 30 Jan 2013: Europe

  13:58

  Whether in economics, trade, defence, foreign policy or the global challenges around development and climate change, Britain’s interests are strengthened by being part of the EU. It gives us a weight collectively that on our own we would lack. It is not a matter of outdated sentiment or even of party ideology; it is a matter of simple arithmetic. In an age when countries are the size of continents, our membership gives us access to, and influence over, the world’s biggest trading bloc, prising open new frontiers that would otherwise be unreachable by the UK. In an age of common threats that permeate national borders, membership gives us the power of collective action and pooled resources.

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• 12 Jul 2012: Balance of Competences

  12:32

  The Opposition have no objection to a proper, thorough and factual analysis of what the EU does and how it affects us in the United Kingdom, and we welcome the involvement of a wide range of external stakeholders in the exercise announced today. We are also clear, however, that we support a future for Britain within the EU. To cut ourselves off from a market of 500 million customers would imply not just that we had lost faith in Europe, but that we had lost faith in the ability of British companies to out-compete their European rivals. In an era of billion-person countries and trillion-pound economies, we need to find ways to amplify Britain’s voice on the world stage. Where we have shared goals—from climate change negotiations to tackling cross-border crime and human trafficking—working together in Europe makes global agreements more likely.

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• 15 May 2012: Foreign Affairs and International Development

  17:05

  The threats that we in the United Kingdom face today transcend borders—threats to do with global security, climate change, terrorism, and food and water supplies—and they all require international co-operation to an extent that was not previously required. Later this week, as leaders of the G8 meet at Camp David, they will be contemplating the need for international consensus in the face of many of these global challenges. Co-operation requires leadership, and yet we heard little from the Foreign Secretary about what this Government hope to achieve and plan to deliver as a result of the G8 summit that is only a few days away, and even less about what their agenda will be when they take the leadership of that grouping in 2013.

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• 1 Jul 2010: Global Poverty

  The last decade of delivery in the fight against global poverty has been regarded by some as a golden age, from the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief through to Make Poverty History and Gleneagles. But we now face far more turbulent and testing times, and new challenges confront us. The world has been engulfed as never expected by the greatest financial and economic crisis for generations, thrusting millions of our fellow citizens back into poverty and creating pressure for donor Governments across Europe and the world to turn inwards and slash aid funding. At the same time, the urgency of tackling the climate crisis has become ever more evident, and yet the capacity of the international community to take the necessary action still remains elusive.

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  There is the question of where and how our aid money is allocated across Government, and on what it is spent. We believe that the majority of our overseas development assistance should naturally be programmed and allocated by the Department for International Development. We were joined in that view by the Secretary of State’s now Cabinet colleague the Scottish Secretary, who warned during the recent general election campaign of the danger that Conservative plans could mean large sums ending up being diverted from the aid budget—for example, to count as climate finance in due course.

  However, I am glad to say that it appears that the differences between the Conservatives and the Liberals have been resolved—in the same way that a python resolves its differences with a mouse. In the coalition programme for government, we see no mention of additionality in climate finance, despite the fact that climate finance is such a crucial issue, as has been recognised across the House today. In contrast, we made it clear in government that from 2013 we would ensure that additional sources of climate finance would be provided, with no more than 10% of our aid spending being allocated to that purpose. The Liberal Democrats had also called for additional climate finance, but alas, like their promises on VAT, this now appears to have been another promise that has been conveniently forgotten. Will the Minister of State therefore tell us whether the Government intend to make any form of additional climate finance available, from what point, and from what sources? If he answers that none will be provided, perhaps he can tell us what he feels the prospects are for the climate negotiations in Cancun later this year, in the absence, as yet, of post-2013 commitments from the Government.

  I therefore ask the Secretary of State: what is the clear forward agenda, beyond the re-packaging of existing policies? With just weeks to go, where are the Government’s clear and concrete proposals and red lines for the UN millennium development goals summit in September? Where is the detailed vision about how we tackle climate change and promote development, and how those can be effectively aligned? Indeed, where are the serious commitments on issues such as climate finance?

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• 20 Jan 2010: Ministerial Meeting (Sweden)

  I last met my Swedish counterpart, Gunilla Carlsson, on 14 December at a ministerial meeting at the Copenhagen climate change summit, where we discussed co-operation between the European Union and developing countries in support of an agreement that meets the needs of the poor and most vulnerable people.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate