Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate State of Climate and Nature.
16:34 Mary Creagh (Labour)
With permission, I would like to make a statement about the nature and climate crisis. Nature is the monopoly provider of everything we need to live. We are living through the Anthropocene, an age where human activity is now the dominant influence on our planet’s climate and ecosystems. We are seeing its consequences: pollution, climate change and mass extinction. Last year, the Energy Secretary gave the first ever statement to this House on the crisis. One year on, I am here to set out the Government’s commitment to tackle those challenges.
Climate change drives nature loss, and nature loss drives climate change. We must tackle both. Droughts and floods are disrupting harvests, straining supply chains, and pushing up costs. Our nature security assessment published in January shows that if the current rate of biodiversity loss continues, every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse, from the coral reefs that protect our coastlines to the peatlands that store carbon and prevent floods.
The UK’s climate is getting hotter and wetter, with more extreme events—2025 was the UK’s hottest year since records began. In the heatwaves in May and June this year, the Met Office reported that as many as 2,700 people may have died, railway tracks buckled, over 1,000 schools closed, and the London ambulance service had its busiest day on record. Since 1901, the UK’s sea level has risen by about 20 cm, but that rate is accelerating, because two thirds of this rise has happened in just the last 30 years. That is why this Labour Government are stepping up, leading globally on nature recovery, climate mitigation and adaptation. In the UK, we are working in partnership with local communities, businesses, conservationists and farmers. Before the Paris agreement, the world was on track for around 4° of warming; now, national commitments put us on course for around 2.5° degrees. There is so much more to do, but this represents real progress.
Last October, we published the carbon budget and growth delivery plan to set out how the UK will continue to reduce emissions in order to lower bills for consumers and secure good jobs for British people. Last month, the majority of Members in this place voted to cut emissions by almost 87% from 1990 levels for the carbon budget 7 period, which runs from 2038 to 2042. Under this Government, more than £100 billion of private investment in the net zero economy has been announced.
We have done much on mitigation. However, following advice from the Climate Change Committee, we are setting stronger objectives for climate adaptation. We are building our resilience for a minimum of 2° of warming by 2050 and supporting combined authorities to increase their resilience to climate change, too.
In 2024, we saw a single year exceed 1.5° of warming, which is why we are committed to working with our domestic and international partners to keep the Paris agreement goal of limiting temperatures to a rise of 1.5°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5° in around 2030, but 1.5° is and will remain the right limit. Every fraction of a degree of warming reduces the severity of impacts on people and nature worldwide. Every species saved reduces the risk of losses to the ecosystems we rely on—pollination, disease prevention, and food and climate regulation.
The key to delivering our nature and climate goals is how we use our land and seas. Our land use framework shows that we have enough land to achieve our priorities across economic growth, housing, food production, climate and nature recovery. However, we must make better decisions about how we use our land. We are moving from paper-based systems to making land digital and opening up the Land Registry free for all. Today, we have published an interactive story map of our spatial evidence to support decision makers to use their land more effectively.
This is a whole-of-Government effort. This weekend, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office ratified the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement to create marine protected areas on the high seas, covering nearly two thirds of the world’s oceans. Funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency is investing £81 million in its forecasting tipping points programme. The Ministry of Defence is developing climate security analysis and critical emerging technologies to support energy resilience for the UK and our armed forces. The Department for Education is investing £710 million out to 2030 to improve the condition of school and college buildings, reducing their emissions and bills, and increasing their resilience to climate change so that they last for decades to come.
[Source]
Toby Perkins (Labour)
I welcome the Government’s statement. My hon. Friend the Minister is right to say that climate change drives nature loss and nature loss drives climate change—we must tackle them hand in hand. I met this week with Moors for the Future, who spoke about peatland and the importance of working with land managers. I have to say, they were very much more of the view of my hon. Friend than of the shadow Minister, who we just heard from.
[Source]
18:06 Mary Creagh (Labour)
My hon. Friend asked me about the national adaptation plan. We are committed to an ambitious fourth national adaptation programme in 2028. I have requested advice from the Climate Change Committee on appropriate planning assumptions to inform our approach, but we are investing in those flood defences through £104 billion in private investment for new water infrastructure and, crucially, the launch of the local authority climate service to support local authorities to respond to flooding and, now, heatwaves.
[Source]
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat)
On my way into Kendal this morning, before I came down to Parliament, I observed the jarring reality of fields yellowing in the dry heat and the River Kent so low that I could see the bedrock. Alongside it, defensive walls were being built on the banks of the river in the aftermath of devastating floods—a reminder that climate change has brought extreme weather. It has brought different threats at different times, but they have been equally challenging and dangerous. I am afraid that those who continue to deny climate change look more foolish by the day. We see the danger of climate change especially in the terrifying wildfires in the Peak district—a reminder that we do not protect nature if we completely remove livestock and the human beings that manage nature.
[Source]
Mary Creagh (Labour)
We are committed to maintaining food production and supporting thriving farm businesses. But, as I said earlier, land managers and farmers have an increasingly important role in reducing the risk of flooding and coastal erosion as we adapt to climate changes, and eligibility criteria for natural flood management funding has widened to include them for the first time. We want them to do more on soils, so that they can hold the water as well, buffer strips, to slow the flow, and run-off attenuation features to store and release water.
[Source]
Kerry McCarthy (Labour)
We know that we can meet our climate and nature goals only if we catalyse and incentivise private sector investment. I point to the example of Bristol, where through our strategic energy partnership city leap we have mobilised finance for city decarbonisation, and where the West of England combined authority has just launched a £5 million nature fund to help kick-start nature markets. What more are we doing at a national level to support nature and carbon markets and to incentivise that private sector investment?
[Source]
Adrian Ramsay (Green)
I welcome the statement from the Nature Minister, and thank her for recognising the crucial link between nature restoration and tackling climate breakdown. Does she recognise that whatever action is taken—we need to see far more action taken both on nature restoration and on decarbonisation—if large-scale new oilfields are granted at Rosebank or Jackdaw, for example, there could be emissions equivalent to 28 low-income countries from just one oilfield, which would undo all the good work that she and all of us in the House want to see?
[Source]
Chris Vince (Labour)
As you will be aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, Harlow is full of some incredibly beautiful areas of natural beauty, from Hatfield forest and Harlow town park to Parndon Wood nature reserve. I am determined that these beautiful areas will be protected not just for this generation but for generations to come, which is why I am concerned when I hear voices in this Chamber that deny the climate emergency. It is not just an emergency for the future; it is an emergency now. Will the Minister confirm that she will ensure that we do everything we can as a Labour Government to protect nature and the environment and to tackle climate change?
[Source]
Mary Creagh (Labour)
My hon. Friend is right to say that we have seen a big flip-flop from the Conservatives. I am old enough to remember when, back in 2019, they put net zero into law under Theresa May and she described it as a Conservative mission. Now their leader says that the very same target is “impossible”, so which Conservative party are the voters supposed to believe: the one that legislated for net zero or the one that now instructs its MPs to vote against it?
[Source]
Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat)
I declare an interest as the chair of the local nature recovery all-party parliamentary group. As Britain endures another summer of extreme heat, droughts and devastating wildfires, this nature and climate statement is crucial, and I only wish that those on the Conservative Benches felt the same about it. I welcome the focus in the 30 by 30 delivery plan on the network of local nature recovery strategies, because they tackle climate change, improve resilience and hit our nature targets, but we need more than a plan, a map and warm words. We need a commitment to make it work in practice, including through weight in planning and public funding to leverage private finance—
[Source]
Afzal Khan (Labour)
This weekend, I joined constituents in Hulme for a screening of the “People’s Emergency Briefing” on the threats to British life from ongoing damage to nature and our climate. My constituents want to ensure that everyone across the country is properly informed about the causes and impact of climate change, so will the Minister commit to holding a prime-time televised emergency briefing on the climate and nature crisis?
[Source]
Jonathan Davies (Labour)
The Minister was right when she said that climate change drives nature loss, and nature loss drives climate change. We are seeing the effects of that on people’s health, the economy and global security, so I welcome the work that the Government are doing to address that. There has been a national security assessment on global biodiversity loss. May I encourage the Minister to put as many as possible of its findings into the public domain, so that people understand the threats to our security? May I also invite her to give us some information about the relationship between the report’s findings and the new climate security taskforce?
[Source]
18:30 Mary Creagh (Labour)
The climate security taskforce is part of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s remit, so I can ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero to talk to my hon. Friend about that. The report that he mentions says that analysis shows there is “high confidence” that
[Source]
Sojan Joseph (Labour)
This morning, I visited the Churchill school in Hawkinge and had a good interaction with the young children. Most of their questions were about protecting nature, and they repeatedly asked how we can support them to plant more trees. Children care about our environment, so how can we encourage members of the public, and especially Members of the Opposition, to talk about nature and net zero in the same way as those children?
[Source]
18:33 Mary Creagh (Labour)
We are having a triple-COP year. We will be setting out our approach and our achievements as we move towards the biodiversity COP in Armenia and the climate COP in Turkey. There is also an important desertification COP taking place in Mongolia, which is on the frontline of the climate crisis as the permafrost there collapses. We are looking to ensure that every £1 we invest in climate also delivers for nature, because the era of £1 for one thing and £1 for another thing and Governments being asked to do this on their own is emphatically over.
[Source]
18:35 Mary Creagh (Labour)
As I mentioned before, we are more than doubling the funding for tree planting through the trees outside woodland fund. Climate change is sexist: it seems to be that women are particularly affected, and because of our body composition, we are less able to reduce our core heat, so we need to look at specific policies to protect particular members of the community, including the under-fives, the over-65s and those with heart and lung problems. We look to our health service to do that, but it cannot do that if the hospitals are heating up beyond 28°C.
[Source]
Lizzi Collinge (Labour)
A couple of years ago, I went to Spain at the end of a severe heatwave, and what I saw devastated me. There were fields and fields of blackened crops. Now farmers in my constituency are increasingly experiencing drought, flooding, extreme heat, and a change in the seasons due to climate change. Does the Minister agree with me that acting on climate change is vital for securing Britain’s food supply, and farming’s future as an essential industry for our country?
[Source]
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Labour)
The latest heatwaves have been really unsettling; kids have been unable to learn in schools, and care homes have been unable to keep residents cool. One of the GP practices in my constituency had to shut its waiting area because the temperatures were dangerously high. We have heard the Minister talk about adaption and resilience measures. We are in this climate emergency, so can she say more about how those measures will help my constituents in Aylesbury?
[Source]
14:30 Samantha Niblett (Labour)
Coton in the Elms in my constituency hit the national news for having recorded the UK’s highest temperature on Friday of 35.2°C—a reminder of the realities of climate change and the need to transition to renewable energy. Most of my constituents support that transition, but they are concerned that South Derbyshire is being asked to shoulder more than its fair share, particularly through the Castle Way energy proposal, and the concentration of battery storage linked to Willington and Drakelow grid connections. Will the Minister reassure my constituents that the burden of hosting solar and battery storage infrastructure, and of nature protection, will be shared fairly across the country?
[Source]
14:30 Mary Creagh (Labour)
I commend my hon. Friend on getting through that quickly. She tempts me to go beyond my brief, and on to the subject of battery and solar energy. Solar installations can result in biodiversity net gains of up to 300%; there can be farmland, sheep-grazing grassland and solar alongside each other, and that can provide extra income for the farmer. On battery energy storage, I feel like that is a question for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
[Source]
14:30 Brian Leishman (Labour)
Climate change is upon us, and it is costing lives. We must change society to try to stop the situation from getting even worse. Even with the smallest amount of analysis, we know that extreme weather hits the poorest in Britain the hardest. What steps are the Government taking to close inequality gaps, as an essential way of improving our resilience to climate change?
[Source]
Mary Creagh (Labour)
My hon. Friend asks a great question. I said earlier that climate change is sexist; it also hits the poorest harder—a point he makes well. As we look towards the future, as well as thinking about offering warm spaces through our local government colleagues and councils, we also need to start looking at offering cool and air-conditioned places, such as this Chamber, where we can all go for a bit of relief from the heat.
[Source]