• Timeline
• Votes
• Speeches
• Tweets
• Contact

Tom Tugendhat's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 9 Parliamentary debates in which Tom Tugendhat has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 1 Apr 2025: West Papua Critical Minerals: Human Rights

  11:55

  I am delighted to hear that the Minister has been raising human rights concerns with the Government of Indonesia about critical minerals. Would she perhaps have a word with her colleague the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero about the human rights concerns over other critical minerals conversions in China? It is going into a green energy economy that is supposed to have environmental, social and governance accords, yet somehow or other it fails on all of those: it fails because of its coal-powered production, it fails because its products are made by socially undesirable slave labour—I hope she agrees about that—and it fails on governance because there is no oversight. Will she have those same conversations within her own Government?

  [Source]

• 22 May 2023: Interpol General Assembly 2024

  Interpol and the UK have agreed that the General Assembly will take place between 4 and 7 November 2024 in Glasgow. The city brings experience of hosting COP26 in November 2021, the largest event of its kind that the UK has ever hosted. The agreement followed consultation with the NCA, Scottish Government, Police Scotland and other delivery partners and stakeholders.

  [Source]

• 16 Jun 2021: G7 and NATO Summits

  The Prime Minister knows that treaties can occasionally be negotiated and not quite make it through the House of Commons. In the interests of ensuring that we deliver what we need to deliver at COP26, building on the impressive work in the G7 and NATO statements, as well as on trade deals such as that with Australia, will he commit to ensuring that this House is informed well in advance of COP agreements, so that we can assist, advise, and perhaps even ensure that those agreements pass easily and smoothly through the House, and encourage others to do the same?

  [Source]

• 10 Mar 2021: COP26

  00:05

  It is a great pleasure to be in the Chamber today talking about COP26, because it really is the absolute key event this year. We are going to get through covid, and we are already well along in the right direction due to the brilliance of various people in Government, in science and in the NHS, and many, many thousands of volunteers around the UK. That will free us and the world to focus on the real existential threat that we face, which is, of course, climate change.

  I am delighted to follow my friend the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), under whose chairmanship the BEIS Committee has begun to expose some of the questions that we need to answer in the coming months. I am also delighted that we are working together on that, because one of the things I have discovered since taking the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee is how little of our international reach is exercised by the FCDO. I thought that the largest and most seminal conference absorbing our diplomatic network and shaping our diplomatic output for this year would be run by the FCDO, but it is not: it is run by the Cabinet Office, and run very ably by my right hon. Friend the COP26 President; I am delighted that he is supported so well by the FCDO. It was a bit of a surprise to me, but then again, I suppose I should not be surprised, because our Europe policy is also run by the Cabinet Office, and not even in this House, so perhaps I should expect our Americas policy and our Africa policy to be run by the Cabinet Office. Eventually, perhaps only our Scottish policy will be run by the FCDO, but that would be a great shame. Maybe that can bring us back to talking about the importance of focusing on the joined-up policy that we need to see.

  While the Select Committees have come together and have been working together, it is also worth pointing out how well the Government have begun to work together. When the French started their process, it resulted in the Paris COP21 that everybody remembers. That was not only a success at the time, but with the election of President Biden, it has become a renewed success as Paris has just been signed up to again by the United States. It took them two years, hundreds of diplomats and a former Prime Minister to bring all that together. That work was really, really tough. What my right hon. Friend has picked up on is that he started later with fewer staff and in the middle of the covid pandemic, and that makes it really difficult. However, I can report from, if he will excuse me, spies in other camps that the pace at which he is producing results is already very well received. I am delighted to say that in conversations I have had with representatives from other countries—I am not going to name them, but they are people who have spoken to him in recent days and weeks—they have reported that he is certainly well on the way to delivering a result.

  This year, the World Food Programme was rightly awarded the Nobel peace prize— a well-earned prize. I was fortunate enough to speak to its director general, Governor David Beasley, who is an amazing individual and a great friend of our country. He pointed out what I think is well worth remembering: if we think that the migration crisis that we saw in 2015 out of Syria was something serious, just imagine the crisis that would be caused if my right hon. Friend the COP26 President and his friends and partners around the world were to fail in Glasgow. I hope he knows that he will have the support of the whole House, and he will certainly have the support of the Committees, as we try to help him to shape and achieve the results that we all need.

  [Source]

• 30 Dec 2020: European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

  00:08

  Wars are not won by defence but, as NATO doctrine puts it, by offensive action. We need to be bold if we are to chart a different future, and we need to build on the Prime Minister’s coming visit to India and the wider alliance that is coming together in the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-pacific partnership. We would be welcomed hugely, and I have been told clearly by many, particularly the Pacific democracies. We have a chance to renew international co-operation and commit ourselves to the environmental revolution that is so essential as we chair the G7 and COP26. This Government have the chance to set the agenda that the world needs to protect democracy at a time of autocracy and to defend the rule of law. We can make Glasgow the next milestone after Paris in the path to a greener world. Britain will succeed if we remember our friends in Europe, the Commonwealth and the world, if we renew our alliances and build new partnerships, and if we develop new, greener markets and industries, innovate and invest in ourselves. This is a new beginning and we alone are responsible for seizing it.

  [Source]

• 26 Nov 2020: Official Development Assistance

  I supported the Foreign Secretary taking over the DFID portfolio because I knew that the rigour he would bring to ODA spending would mean that it was always in the British national interest. Indeed, the way he has spoken about it this morning reassures me of that. He has spoken quite rightly about girls’ education, not just because it is good for girls in other parts of the world but because it is good for Britain. He has spoken about climate change, not just because it is good for the poorest and most low-lying countries around the world but because it is good for Britain. He has spoken about vaccination, not just because it is most important for the most vulnerable in the world, but again, because it is good for Britain. So does he understand why so many of us are disappointed that, knowing how well he will spend this money, not only in the interests of others but in the British national interest, we hear that it has been cut? I am sure that he feels that, too.

  [Source]

• 4 Feb 2020: Topical Questions

  12:24

  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has touched on the COP26 preparations. Will he talk a bit about the strategy that the FCO will take on the Kunming biodiversity conference and the UN ocean conference in Lisbon, because clearly, climate change diplomacy will be absolutely front and centre of his agenda?

  [Source]

• 1 May 2019: Environment and Climate Change

  15:03

  I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. As he spoke about the regional aspects of the issue, may I ask him to work more closely with his colleague who is currently in the Sahel? There are areas of land, such as Vietnam, with paddy fields that are only about 1 metre above sea level. We are talking about the possible salination of agricultural area, and the consequent massive population movements caused by climate change. I very much welcome the efforts that the Secretary of State is making domestically, but how much is he doing with the embassy network around the world?

  [Source]

  16:59

  The local infrastructure starting to emerge in west Kent is extremely impressive, and the work done by our local councils in greening the areas where we live is fantastic. This is not just a domestic debate, however. In fact, it is particularly not a domestic debate. As we declare a climate change emergency today, it is essential that we remember that. Privileged as I am to chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is important to look around the world and see where the threats appear. For example, when we look at the low-lying fields of the Mekong and the threats to rice production, which feeds so many millions—indeed, billions—in south-east Asia, or when we look at the south-east of China and see many intensively inhabited areas of that country at threat, it is important that we talk about this question not just for ourselves but for the whole world.

  Many Members will have heard me being critical of one aspect of China this morning, so they will perhaps forgive me if I reflect on a different aspect. China’s work on reforestation and changing and reversing the desertification of many areas of land is inspiring. What that country has done to promote better green policies in certain areas is in many ways an example to all of us from which we need to draw very important lessons. The threats we see are not just problems for south-east Asia; they affect us here in the west. For example, when we look at some of the triggers—I do not mean all—of the Syrian civil war, which has led to mass migration and very severe political repercussions in Europe, it is impossible not to look at the challenges of climate change in that country and the impact they have had on farmers. Talking about the rise of al-Shabaab in the Maghreb and the Sahel without talking about climate change is just impossible.

  As we talk today about climate change, we are talking fundamentally not just about the environmental security of our homes and the dreadful curse of fly-tipping poisoning some of our waterways, which we see in west Kent and, sadly, probably in other areas too, but about how we structure a world to deal with the inability to address those threats unless we reverse some of the impacts of climate change. I welcome this debate very much and I agree that this is an emergency.

  [Source]

• 4 Apr 2019: FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

  14:05

  China is seeking a role in the world commensurate with its growing economic power, and the UK should welcome its desire to take part in global governance. We do not believe that China wants to jeopardise the benefits that it has reaped from a stable, rules-based international system. However, it has consolidated power in the hands of the Communist party under President Xi, and the UK’s China strategy needs to reflect that. On many issues, China is a viable partner for the United Kingdom. The threat that environmental degradation, for example, poses to the Communist party’s legitimacy has led China to join international efforts on climate change and sustainability.

  [Source]

See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate