Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate National Security and Investment Bill (Fourth sitting).
15:02 Matt Western (Labour)
Q Going back to my previous question, do you think that we should think about areas such as climate change and other things that are perhaps not necessarily of immediate urgency—some would say, of course, that climate change is urgent—as matters of national security?
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Chi Onwurah (Labour)
Q Welcome, Mr Butler, and thank you for sharing your expertise with the Committee. Your expertise is considerable, given that you have advised on policy issues such as climate change, national resource security, global health security and economic security. There are clearly many aspects of security. Are both the distinction and the links between national security and economic security appropriately reflected in the Bill, or could they be better reflected?
There are other aspects of economic security, such as having a major industry in AI, renewable energy or something of that kind, that could be relevant to broader security in the future. You may well want to have a strategic intervention to ensure that the UK has that kind of industry, but I do not think this is the Bill for doing that. I think there are other tools you would want to use, including competition policy, strategic investments, contracting, R&D and so forth. That is one of the points I wanted to make.
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15:32 Matt Western (Labour)
Creon Butler: In my view of economic security broadly, the biggest existential threat is climate change, frankly. We are going through a ghastly pandemic. Fortunately, it looks like we can see the way out of it, but I do not think that at any point we felt that this particular virus was an existential threat to mankind more generally. My view of climate change is that it is, and it is very close. In any broad assessment of national and economic security, I would put climate change as one of the most important issues. That is why the accelerating efforts both within Governments and in the private sector to deal with it are crucial.
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