EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK - 24th February 2026

Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK.

Full text: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2026-02-24/debates/289121C1-51B8-482E-93E4-D6DA895539D8/EUMembershipReferendumImpactontheUK

16:52 Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat)

After a decade of working internationally with communities and economies devastated by climate change, I became much more politically active when I realised that Brexit would threaten our environment. Nature knows no borders. Wildlife mates and nests in one country while feeding in another, and the habitats and water framework directives were hugely effective in respecting that. However, we are now diverging from those protections of the nature and wildlife that we all hold so dear. The Institute for European Environmental Policy has found that since Brexit the EU has introduced 28 new or strengthened pieces of environmental legislation that the UK has not adopted. Meanwhile, we have weakened protections in areas such as habitats, pesticides, forever chemicals and fisheries. We must be bolder, rejoin, closer to the EU and—

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16:59 Catherine West (Labour)

To realise our full potential in tackling global challenges such as climate change, the UK needs to play a fuller part in the latest iteration of the EU’s research and innovation framework programme, FP10, as we did with Horizon Europe 2024. I would welcome an update from the Minister on that point.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate