Barry Gardiner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Oct 2024 · Gaza and Humanitarian Aid · Hansard source

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  As politicians, we talk of the international rules-based system, by which we mean the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations, but often we do so only when it suits our position. When it does not, we ignore it. That is why it is crucial that we grasp the legal implications of the decision promulgated on 19 July this year by the International Court of Justice. It settled the law in its advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory. The opinion came from a request by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2022, and I believe it carries immense weight. It is the interpretation of our world’s highest court of law as it relates to the occupation of Palestine. The court ruled that the occupied Palestinian territory is to be considered a single territorial unit, which means that the failure to recognise Palestine as a state is now out of step with international law. On 10 September, Palestine took its seat at the 79th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is not yet a full member, because it has been blocked by the United States, but it has the right to submit proposals and amendments. The Government of the UK still does not recognise the Palestinian state, and I believe that that is now incompatible with international law. The court ruled that settlements and outposts in the west bank and East Jerusalem were unlawful. It does not matter that Israeli law considers settlements to be lawful; they are not, and they should be evacuated. The court ruled that Israel’s exploitation of natural resources in settled land was also unlawful. The court ruled that Israel occupied Gaza. It ruled that it occupied the west bank and East Jerusalem. It ruled that that occupation was unlawful. It ruled that the occupation must be brought to an end. That also means that, in its actions, Israel must behave not as a warring nation state against another warring state, but as an occupying force, with all the obligations that entails about its conduct, including ensuring that aid can get through to all who need it. Israel ought to cease its unlawful activities, halt all new settlement activity and provide full reparation for the damage caused by its wrongful acts, which includes returning land, property and assets seized since the occupation began in 1967 and allowing displaced Palestinians to return to their original places of residence. The court made it clear that other states also have obligations. It emphasised that all states are required not to recognise the illegal situation created by Israel’s actions in the occupied territories. That means that they should not engage in trade, investment or diplomatic relations that would entrench Israel’s unlawful presence. The advisory opinion is a landmark in the legal and political struggle over the fate of the Palestinian people and the integrity of international law. It highlights the obligations of all states, including the United Kingdom, to ensure that the rule of law prevails. We are all duty bound not only to act in the interests of justice and human rights, but to uphold the very principles of international law. That is the law. It is clear. It has been authoritatively stated by the court. What is not clear is whether Governments will abide by it. The law can state, the court can rule, but none of it brings about anything unless the power of enforcement lies behind it. In the UK we are very fond of saying that we respect the international court and the international rules-based order. My challenge to the Minister is this: show it.

• 7 Oct 2024 · Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage · Hansard source

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  I had rather hoped that my right hon. Friend was going to start his statement by saying, “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—”. I have waited so long to hear a Secretary of State make such announcements from the Dispatch Box, and I am delighted. However, my right hon. Friend knows that carbon capture technologies reduce the energy intensity of fossil fuels by up to 25%, which makes such electricity much more expensive than that produced from renewables. Can the Secretary of State confirm that CCUS will be used not simply to allow the continued extraction of fossil fuel for our power sector, but only for the hardest-to-abate heavy industries and for the production of green hydrogen, thereby keeping domestic fuel bills low and delivering on this Government’s commitment to decarbonise our power sector by 2030 through much cheaper renewables and nuclear, not more expensive gas with CCUS? Finally, may I caution him against swallowing too much of the hype around blue hydrogen?

• 7 Oct 2024 · British Indian Ocean Territory: Negotiations · Hansard source

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  On the penultimate day of the last Labour Government, the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, created the marine protected area around the British Indian Ocean Territory. At that time, it was the largest protected area anywhere in the world. As my right hon. Friend knows, the last time a prosecution was brought for illegal fishing in that area was in 2020, four and a half years ago, and the way in which that prosecution was conducted meant that a £10,000 fine—a mere slap on the wrist—was levied against the vessel. Such vessels take hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish out of that marine protected area. Who is going to pay? How committed are the Government to ensuring that that marine protected area continues to exist, and how will they ensure that the minimal level of protection that is currently in place is increased?

• 11 Sept 2024 · Building Safety and Resilience · Hansard source

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  On regulation, my hon. Friend will know that Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report made very strong statements about the difficulty of reconciling the role of maintaining standards with the competitive environment. It was when building control ceased to be the responsibility solely of local authorities and became privatised building control functions that things started to go wrong. What action will my hon. Friend and the Government take to ensure that one set of standards is applied in one particular way and is not subject to trading? Saying “We will give you a shortcut if you come to us” is what went on, but it is wrong and needs to stop.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Building Safety and Resilience · Hansard source

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  It is troubling that many owners, who, according to the Act, are responsible for fire safety in these blocks, are seeking to establish themselves in foreign jurisdictions, often in tax havens. How can the Government take action to ensure that those who are responsible—often those who were responsible for the defects in the first place—and who are now seeking to evade jurisdiction in this country, can be brought to justice? Will the Government have to appropriate these buildings to do the remediation work that is so badly needed, and not at residents’ expense?

• 4 Sept 2024 · Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 Report · Hansard source

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  I do not think I have ever heard my right hon. and learned Friend speak more powerfully, more personally or more movingly than he did in this statement. I know that the more than 20,000 residents in my constituency who are still living in high-rise blocks with the nightmare of fire risk constantly upon them will welcome what he said about the Government taking a consistent and measured view of the recommendations, and moving to implement them systematically. They will also welcome what he said about the prosecution of those responsible for what Sir Martin called “systematic dishonesty” and “deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes”. I reinforce what the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) said about remediation. Many of the owners of these blocks have sold on to further owners, and to further owners beyond that. The Prime Minister spoke about subcontracting, but there has also been on-selling. Some of those owners live in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, and they are simply not complying. They are not even applying to the building safety fund to get this remediation work done. Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider very carefully what powers the Government can take in order to take control of these buildings, get the work done and then recover the costs, if necessary by acquiring and selling the buildings themselves?

• 26 Jul 2024 · Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady said that Members should not quote only from sources that they feel are friendly to them, so I will not quote from the International Energy Association, but perhaps she might accept a quote from the World Economic Forum, which stated: “Renewables are now significantly undercutting fossil fuels as the world’s cheapest source of energy”, according to its report.

• 26 Jul 2024 · Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. On the issue of undergrounding power lines, although that may in some cases be necessary for communities, does she not accept, given that it is 10 times the cost, that it is possible to screen the power lines and, in doing so, create biodiversity corridors that can connect biodiversity from one part of the country to another, so that biodiversity can cope with climate change?

• 26 Jul 2024 · Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend, very importantly, mentioned the role that carbon capture, usage and storage has to play in the decarbonisation of our economy. I am sure he will have seen the latest National Audit Office report on CCUS and will therefore be aware that the Department has increased its reliance on CCUS substantially since this was first mooted. The NAO is clear in its report that uncertainty remains about the funding available for future stages of the CCUS project proposals; that the previous Government were behind in agreeing support for track 1; and that future progress on the programme is dependent on reaching financial investment decisions for at least some of the track 1 projects very swiftly. Will he give us an update—if not now, at some point later—on how this essential part of the programme will be handled?

• 25 Jul 2024 · Convention on Biological Diversity · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to have given way to the hon. Gentleman, who makes a fair and important point. The way that we are incentivising farmers and land managers, and the financial resources that we put behind that through the environmental land management scheme and others, is vital. The previous Government put a number of objectives in place for the environment. I always commended their work on natural capital, the Environment Act 2021 and the Office for Environmental Protection. The Minister will know, however, that although the objectives were commendable, the implementation was often lacking. Indeed, the Office for Environmental Protection’s latest assessment of 40 individual environmental targets, which were set under the 2021 Act, is that we are on track to achieve just four. We are partially on track to achieve 11; we are off track for achieving 10, and 15 others lack sufficient evidence to make an assessment. Let me outline some of what I hope to see in our revised NBSAP when it is published. Although our commitment to COP15 is to protect 30% of our land, seas and inland waterways by 2030, only 5% of our land is effectively protected for nature. At sea, only 8% of the network has effective management measures in place. All four UK Administrations need to act on the recommendations of the latest special protection area review to protect threatened bird species. At sea, a special protection area sufficiency review is required to ensure that the current gaps in our marine protected area network are filled. The previous Government did well to set legally binding targets to increase species abundance and decrease extinction risk. However, all the devolved Administrations need to do so too. Most important, those targets must be matched by costed delivery plans, which should be published to support the UK NBSAP. A nature positive, net zero future can be delivered only if actions for nature and climate are hardwired into decision making. All public bodies must have a legal duty to help recover the natural environment. We must ensure that Government and industry take a strategic approach to planning for new energy infrastructure, which puts nature at its heart, and introduce mandatory reporting against the taskforce on nature-related financial disclosures aligned with global nature preservation and restoration targets. In the new Government’s first spending review, I would like a new UK nature fund to corral private sector funding to address the finance gap for nature. The Government should also commit to pressing forward with the forest risk commodities regulation and the renewal of important species recovery programmes such as Darwin Plus and the species survival fund. The UK is highly unusual in the United Nations in that 93% of all the biodiversity for which it bears international responsibility lies not within the UK itself, but in its overseas territories and Crown dependencies. Those regions—incredibly rich in biodiversity though they may be—do not have the financial resource to effectively conserve their own biodiversity, yet only 5% of the money that the UK spends on biodiversity actually goes to them. That is 5% of spend for 93% of the biodiversity for which we are the international guardians. That cannot go on and must be addressed in our NBSAP and the long-awaited publication of the UK overseas territories biodiversity strategy. It is crucial that the NBSAP be published before the COP16 deadline, and ideally before of the 1 August deadline, which comes up next week, for inclusion in the COP16 documentation. That is important to show that the UK is taking its commitment to implementation of the global biodiversity framework seriously. The plan must not be a ceiling on ambition and it should be open to revision, always in an upward direction. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister what steps the UK is taking to ensure that our NBSAP is submitted by the early deadline of 1 August and is a robust and ambitious contribution to the delivery of the global targets. The Nagoya protocol and access and benefits sharing are now encompassed in the convention by the work on digital sequence information on genetic resources. The truth is that the pace of discussion is unacceptable. We are now a decade on from Nagoya and there is almost no agreement. There is agreement only that a fund should be set up to share a tiny fraction of the benefits made by sectors such as pharmaceutical and food production. The fact that the co-chairs can find agreement among the parties only to such a fund contributing to target 19 is a joke. Target 19 talks of $200 billion a year by 2030 being mobilised to support biodiversity conservation. That is in six years’ time, yet at this point—10 years on from Nagoya—we cannot agree whether the trigger for payment of such moneys should be at the point of access of the genetic data, the point of use, or the point of commercialisation. There is no agreement as to how the scale of contributions to the fund could be determined—whether they should be 1% or 0.1%, or whether the levy should apply to profits, turnover or revenue. It is an absolute mess. I hope that the Minister will make progress on digital sequence information, a signature of the UK’s work at COP16 this October. But more than that, I hope she will speak with our Chancellor and our Secretary of State for Business and Trade to arrange for a high-level summit to haul in the chief executives of big pharma who are dragging their feet on this issue and encouraging their sponsor Governments to do the same. We have four years in which to deliver this target. It requires a whole of Government commitment to ensure that we succeed. The issue links to one of the specific features of COP16 in Cali, where I know the Colombian Government wish to make greater progress. Framework target 22 aims at ensuring the full, equitable and inclusive representation and participation of indigenous peoples and local communities in decision-making processes that are related to biodiversity, and it aims to foster inclusive, participatory and rights-based approaches to conservation. I am extremely grateful to the Colombian ambassador, who joined us on Tuesday evening and spoke movingly about the need to ensure that those peoples who have, for eons, been the guardians of so much of the planet’s biological diversity should not find that their traditional knowledge is commercialised for others’ gain as they are left impoverished, their territories polluted, and their way of life stolen from them. I hope the Minister will make space in her diary at the COP to meet the leaders of those communities in Cali. That brings me to the question of who in Government will be attending COP16. I know the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers have been invited. What an amazing signal it would send to the rest of the world that the UK is back, seriously engaged on the international stage with the most critical threats facing our planet, if the Prime Minister were to lead our UK delegation and if not only the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs were to attend, but the Foreign Secretary. The CBD has sometimes been seen as the Cinderella COP to the Climate Change Convention. In truth, they are twin crises in which each turbocharges the other. The loss of biodiversity will deplete all of the provisioning resources and ecosystem services on which human life depends. This is not just an environmental problem, but an economic and a security problem. I have another reason for wishing that the Prime Minister would go to Cali. I hope he will announce that the UK is willing to host the next CBD COP—COP17—in London in 2026. The fourth goal that was set in Montreal at COP15 was the goal of finance and resource mobilisation. Where better to make progress on the financial framework for delivering our 2030 and 2050 targets than the City of London—the world’s financial centre? Governments cannot do everything on their own. The role of the private sector in mobilising the resource of business and industry is vital. I refer the Minister to the “Financing Nature” report produced by Henk Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary. He talks of the “clear and compelling economic case” for financing nature conservation. Although it is important that business recognises the value of ecosystem services, it must appreciate that it is far cheaper to prevent environmental damage than to repair it afterwards. That is why it is important that the Government make it mandatory for companies to report against the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures. London is the centre of the green bond market. It is the right place and this is the right Government to mobilise the financial flows on which the sustainability of our planet depends. COP17 will take place mid-way through the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—possibly the most important moment for taking stock of progress towards 2030, and a chance to work in partnership with all 196 countries that are party to the CBD to ensure that we are moving at the necessary speed and scale to meet our 2030 goals. The Government were proudly elected on a promise to ratify the global ocean treaty, improve access to nature, expand nature-rich habitats such as wetlands and peat bogs, take steps to clean UK waters, meet UK Environment Act targets, and improve animal welfare by banning trail hunting and the import of hunting trophies. We should be proud of that ambition. As we make good on those promises, we can proudly resume the global leadership role that so many around the globe are urging us to take by hosting COP17. By doing so, we will become even better placed in the future. We often think that rights are things that apply only to people. That is not true. Companies have rights. Trusts and institutions have rights—rights safeguarded by their guardians and trustees. At the heart of the convention on biological diversity is the idea that nature has rights, and we are but the guardians and trustees of those rights. I am confident that the Minister will be an exceptional guardian for nature, and I look forward to her response.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Convention on Biological Diversity · Hansard source

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  May I add my voice to the concatenation across this House welcoming you to your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker? I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh) back to this House. I am delighted to see her at the Dispatch Box as the Minister for nature. She was a most distinguished Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, and I look forward to supporting her and our Government in championing nature in this critical decade for the natural world. I thank her for joining, just a day and a half into her new post, the meeting of the international conservation caucus, which I chaired in Parliament on Tuesday. Her enthusiasm for her brief, and for all that we hope this Government will deliver for the environment, was an inspiration to the dozens of MPs and campaigners who crowded into what was, I am afraid, a much too small room on a very hot evening. Nature is the source of life. It is the foundation of everything we have and everything we value, yet some economists talk as if the natural world is a subset of the economic one—something to be accounted for separately. In fact, the opposite is true: the economists’ world is a subset of the natural world. When did we last receive an invoice for pollination services from a bee? When did the forest last invoice us for its flood protection? However, a decline in our forest cover can affect everything from our food security to the destruction of our homes. A decline in insect populations can affect the yield of our crops. We use nature because it is valuable; we abuse nature because it is free. Because classical economics treats the services that nature provides as externalities, it fails to properly represent either the non-market benefits of ecosystems or the environmental costs of growth. More than a decade ago, I gave a speech at the Berlin summit on natural capital. I said then that the time when the Earth could support human communities without difficulty was coming to an end. The truth is that it has ended. We live in an age of planetary boundaries and tipping points. Natural capital has been eroded to such an extent that the complex mechanism of ecosystem services that nature provides has been compromised, and we now need to repair and restore the Earth’s ability to support us. In simple terms, that is what the convention on biological diversity has sought to do since it opened for signatures at the Earth summit in Rio in 1992. It has been ratified by every member state of the United Nations, with the appalling exception of the United States of America. Its aims are the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. It has two supplementary agreements: the Cartagena protocol, adopted in 2000, which seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms created by modern biotechnological practices, and the 2014 Nagoya protocol, which aims to share the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way. If the CBD was established 40 years ago, why on earth is our biodiversity in the state that it is? The most comprehensive report ever compiled on biodiversity and ecosystem services by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services told the United Nations: “Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history—and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating”, and that the impacts for people around the world are grave. We have not made the progress that we need to. The CBD set important goals and targets to halt this frightening state of decline. I pay tribute to the Canadian Government who, at short notice, hosted COP15 and established the global biodiversity framework. It set in place four goals: to halt human-induced species extinction, to use biodiversity sustainably, to share its benefits equitably, and to implement the finance of $700 billion a year necessary to achieve the first three goals. It also agreed 23 vital targets, including the 30 by 30 target to conserve and protect 30% of the planet’s land, seas and inland waterways by 2030, and the reduction of perverse subsidies by $500 billion a year. Talk is cheap. Targets are easy to set, but difficult to implement and even more difficult to police and enforce. That is why every country needs a plan—specifically, a national biodiversity strategy and action plan, or NBSAP. Revised NBSAPs must be submitted in advance of COP16 in Colombia this year. The UK Government originally committed to publishing the NBSAP in March and then May, but I am glad that they did not, because the change of Government should have afforded officials in the Department time to radically revise the draft. It was intended by Conservative Ministers to be merely a restatement of what the UK was already doing, not the urgent and transformative action plan that is required to deliver on the four goals of the GBF.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Convention on Biological Diversity · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her response. She will know that the reason for the 1 August deadline is to show our intent for the UK to be back out there at the forefront of this debate, which is precisely what she is talking about. I urge her to publish the plan by that date, so that it gets out with the other documents, even if it has to be revised later on—it is an iterative process and something that we can revise upwards—because it really is important that we show that intent.

• 22 Jul 2024 · Economy, Welfare and Public Services · Hansard source

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  I heartily applaud what my right hon. Friend is saying about the renewed windfall tax. Will she also look at the fact that, in this country, we have the lowest basic rate of tax on oil and gas companies anywhere in the world? The average is 74%; in this country, it is 38%.

• 19 Jul 2024 · Israel and Gaza · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend was absolutely right to speak of the need for an immediate ceasefire and the need to restore funding to UNRWA. I welcome both those moves. He also spoke of the Government’s needing to make an assessment of Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law in Gaza, but the question then arises: after that assessment has been made, what is going to happen? He said in his statement that the horror must end now, and indeed it must, but he has just explained to the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) that to cease supplying arms to Israel would cause, as he sees it, a greater problem. What is the leverage that he has? If the horror must end now, and it must, then this Government must be able to take some actions once they have reviewed and received the legal assessment that he has called for. I am prepared to give him time to get that assessment, but I want to know what he is going to do once he has got it.

• 19 Jul 2024 · Covid-19 Inquiry · Hansard source

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  The Minister spoke of resilience. He is aware that Northwick Park hospital in my constituency was the epicentre at the start of the pandemic, and the lack of resilience meant that nurses there had to wear bin bags to protect themselves. I noted that he spoke of Grenfell in his statement. That was fundamentally important, because this is not simply about resilience in health. In that regard, I ask him to look at the issue of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. The same RAAC that caused problems in our schools was used in many housing developments at the time. We need to be resilient to any potential disasters in that respect, too.

• 17 Jul 2024 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  Could the hon. Gentleman explain to the House why the SNP Government in Scotland, who have the power to do that, have not?