Barry Gardiner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Paragraph 7.36 of “Erskine May” states the process for setting out the ratification of international treaties. The Government’s treaty tracker says the global oceans treaty that the Leader of the House referred to earlier has not been ratified, and yet the BBNJ treaty—the global oceans treaty—was laid before this House on 16 October 2023. It appears the Government are misleading themselves in believing that they have to introduce legislation implementing the treaty before they can ratify it. Would she meet me to discuss the conundrum that appears to be stopping us going to the UN oceans conference next week and laying the instrument of ratification so that the treaty can come into force?

• 8 May 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Yesterday I spoke with colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the progress of the treaty on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction—sometimes known as the global ocean treaty. I was assured that, as far as the Department is concerned, the matter had been dealt with and was all done, and I was assured that was also the case with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, but when I spoke to colleagues from the Cabinet Office, they had not heard of it. The Leader of the House will know that the United Nations ocean conference will take place next month, and it is really important that we get ratification of that treaty for the conference. The world is looking at us, and if we want to take leadership on this issue, we need to act.

• 8 May 2025 · Environmental Audit Committee · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to speak in support of the Committee’s report, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee on the way in which he has led the Committee and on how he took up the remnant of this report from the last Parliament as the first report for our Committee in the new Parliament. He is right to recognise that natural capital is the foundation of our economy. With the spending review next month, does he agree that the Government should set out precisely how they have taken a natural capital approach to the evaluation of spending decisions? Does he agree that the new national wealth fund should be empowered to invest in the natural capital project, as highlighted in our report?

• 6 May 2025 · Trade Negotiations · Hansard source

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  Last week I had the pleasure of meeting representatives of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry when they came here with my old friend Piyush Goyal. I congratulate the Minister and his officials, as well as FICCI and the India Global Forum—under the leadership of Manoj Ladwa—and, indeed, everyone who has spent so many years laying the groundwork for this agreement. The Minister recognised the doubling of India’s service and IT exports over the last decade and the benefits that we can gain from engagement and co-operation in respect of the service and knowledge economy, but I think it important for him to outline further what the benefits of the double contribution convention on national insurance will be, and how they will facilitate that engagement and co-operation for our workers in India.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  No, it is not the Plate. It is not the River Nile, and it is not the Amazon, but if anyone thought it was the Amazon, they are getting close. The river I am speaking of is actually, for the most part, invisible and airborne. Every day, 20 billion cubic metres of water—that is 20 billion metric tonnes of water—is pushed up into the atmosphere by the forests of the Amazon basin. That water does not stay in the atmosphere; it is not like evaporation from the oceans. It is generated by a unique combination of the organic forest interacting with the inorganic atmosphere. It is seeded with microscopic spores of pollen and fungi. These make the Amazonian clouds heavy, which means that all that water rains back down across the continent, replenishing the forest and irrigating a land mass that otherwise would probably be a desert. The Amazon river as we know it—all 4,000 miles of it—pours just 17 billion tonnes of water into the Atlantic ocean every day, so the invisible river of transpiration beats it by 3 billion tonnes a day. Imagine the power it takes to push 20 billion tonnes up into the atmosphere. On Brazil’s border with Paraguay is the Itaipu dam, the second most powerful hydroelectric power station in the world after the Three Gorges dam in China. Itaipu’s capacity is 14 MW. That is about four and a half times the capacity of Hinkley Point C, if Hinkley ever manages to get built. We would need 5,000 Itaipu power stations to push the 20 billion tonnes of water up into the atmosphere that that forest does every single day. Forests are amazing. The Amazon is not alone, of course. The second lung of our planet is the Congo basin in Africa, and while we are talking about famous dams, it is worth noting that the Aswan dam, some 2,000 miles away, relies for 85% of its power on water that the Congo forest transpiration has deposited into the Ethiopian highlands, coming down through the Nile to Aswan. Forests are amazing, or, to be a little more scientific about it, forest ecosystems provide critical and diverse services to human society. They are a primary habitat for a wide range of species. They support biodiversity and conservation. Forest growth sequesters and stores carbon from the atmosphere. It contributes to regulation of the global carbon cycle and mitigates climate change. Healthy forests produce soil and conserve it. They stabilise stream flows and water run-off, preventing land degradation and desertification. Forests reduce the risks of natural disasters such as droughts, floods and landslides. They contribute to poverty eradication and to economic development by providing food, fibre, timber and other forest products for subsistence and income generation. They are a key genetic source for the pharmaceutical industry, contributing to global human health, and they even serve as sites of aesthetic, recreational and spiritual values in so many cultures. Forests may be home to 80% of land species, but they are also vital to the survival of our own. They produce 40% of the oxygen we breathe, support 1.6 billion livelihoods and play a crucial role in holding back a climate disaster on a massive scale. What about deforestation? That has been happening for a long time. In fact, since the end of the last ice age, the world has lost one third of all its forests—that is about 2 billion hectares, or two United States of Americas. But even though it has been happening for about 11,000 years, the rate of acceleration is rather recent and incredibly alarming. More than half of all the forest lost since the Pleistocene has gone in the last 125 years—1.1 billion hectares gone. The drivers of deforestation are well known. Agricultural expansion remains the single largest cause, and according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, is responsible for 88% of global deforestation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that it contributes 11% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Similarly, in its report on deforestation in January last year, the Environmental Audit Committee identified what we might call the seven deadly sins of deforestation—the seven commodities that are driving 90% of global deforestation: beef and leather, soy, timber, palm oil, paper, rubber and cocoa. However, the EAC was only picking up on the Global Resource Initiative taskforce’s recommendations from 2020. I commend the previous Conservative Government for establishing the GRI taskforce under the chairmanship of Sir Ian Cheshire as part of the 25-year environment plan. Sir Ian realised that if the market was to transition to sustainable commodity supply chains, it would need Government to adopt a strategic, co-ordinated approach to align and accelerate action. The Government’s response to the taskforce’s 14 recommendations showed real understanding of the issues. They said: “When nature’s free services fail, the poorest people suffer first and worst. Over a billion people rely directly on forests for their livelihoods—including indigenous peoples who look after around 80% of biodiversity.” They continued: “Protecting and restoring mangroves, forests, and peatlands could provide around a third of the most cost-effective climate change solutions we need, while supporting species and helping communities adapt to become more resilient. Shifting towards more sustainable forms of agriculture would not only protect the planet’s lungs, but it could add a further $2.3trn in productive growth to the global economy and create a further 200 million jobs by 2050…We know that there is no pathway to Net Zero emissions—or indeed the Sustainable Development Goals—that does not involve protecting and restoring nature on an unprecedented scale. But despite the huge contribution nature can make, it attracts just 3% of global climate finance.” I suspect that the excellence of that written response is directly attributable to the noble Lord Goldsmith. But an excellence of understanding requires an excellence of follow-through, and that was less excellent. It is true that in response to the taskforce’s recommendation to mobilise “a global call for action to tackle deforestation and build sustainable commodity supply chains in the lead up to COP26”, the Johnson Government did deliver a call to action—but a call to action and action are two different things. Yes, more than 100 global leaders signed up to the pledge to halt deforestation by 2030, and, yes, 30 financial institutions, managing nearly $9 trillion in assets between them, promised to disclose the “deforestation risk and mitigation activities in their portfolios” by 2023, and to eliminate harmful practices from their portfolios by 2025. But ’23 has come and gone. Today it is 2025, and we are still not eating the “guilt free chocolate…that’s carbon not calorie guilt free”, that Boris Johnson boasted about. We are nowhere near on track to halting forest loss by 2030. One of the things that fuels people’s disillusionment with politics is that so much fanfare surrounds policy announcements, but so little of the hard graft of delivery gets done after the announcements have been made. The public understand that our diets and supply chains are deeply entwined with this issue. We may not see the bulldozers or the farmers who are eking out a living with slash and burn, but the products we consume every day, from chocolate bars to cooking oils, link us directly to the deforestation that we say we want to stop. If we told the public that we had just destroyed the entire New Forest, they would be horrified, yet that is the area of forest that our failure to enact the due diligence recommendations has eradicated since 2021. With that knowledge comes the understanding that we are complicit. But there is only so much that people can do through their individual action and choices. That is why the taskforce’s recommendations about a due diligence obligation were so important. It said that the Government should “urgently” introduce “a mandatory due diligence obligation for companies that place commodities and derived products that contribute to deforestation on the UK market”, and that they should take action to ensure that similar principles are applied to the finance industry. That due diligence obligation would require companies to analyse the presence of environmental and human rights risks and impacts within their supply chains, take action to prevent or mitigate them, and publicly report on actions taken and planned. The financial sector would also be covered by a similar mandatory due diligence obligation, requiring it to exercise due diligence to ensure that its lending and investments do not fund deforestation. The taskforce demanded action, and in the Environment Act 2021 it got a pale version of it. The Act introduced measures to prohibit UK businesses from using commodities grown on illegally deforested or occupied land. At the COP28 summit in Dubai in 2023, the UK delegation announced the list of commodities that could be included in environmental law and explained that businesses with more than £50 million in global annual turnover that use more than 500 metric tonnes of commodities a year would need to source from land they could prove was not illegally deforested. Although well intentioned, by focusing on legality, the Act failed to hold out an absolute standard of whether the supply chain was in fact involved in deforestation. It ignored the fact that politicians such as Jair Bolsonaro would simply change their domestic legislation to grant legal status to what had previously been illegally deforested land, and so get round the Act’s intention. The failure to impose adequate due diligence on companies, banks and finance houses and institutions has meant that, since the Glasgow declaration, UK banks have provided more than £1 billion to companies that present a forest risk. Last July, UK investors still held £1.4 billion-worth of assets and shares issued by these companies. The largest 50 of those investors make up 99% of the total UK forest-risk investments, yet 18 of them were actually signatories to the net zero asset managers initiative. Sadly, just eight have made any clear public commitment to eventually removing deforestation from their portfolios. That leaves 42 that should be ashamed of themselves. Three names stand out, but for all the wrong reasons: HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered. Between them, those three banks have provided 97% of the £4.5 billion-worth of credit lines for forest-risk companies since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015. It is not just in government where there is a gap between policy and action. In 2017, HSBC committed “not to provide services to customers either directly or indirectly involved in deforestation”. In fact, it has provided credit lines amounting to £1.9 billion to forest-risk companies such as JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which, despite a record of corruption and forest destruction, just last week was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission to list on the New York stock exchange, giving it access to new sources of finance and capital markets. It is, of course, just a few months since JBS dropped its net zero by 2040 climate pledge, claiming, “Well, it was never a formal commitment.” The Environment Act was an important marker that the UK takes seriously its role in the global supply chain, and that it wants to lead the way and manage the responsibility that comes with it. But a marker only stands in place of action for so long. Four years later, it has become an ironic sign of failure. UK financial institutions continue to bankroll deforestation. Trade agreements lack meaningful environmental safeguards, and indigenous land defenders face daily violence and intimidation. Unsustainable logging fuels forest destruction; weak governance and corruption continue; and infrastructure projects and mining operations further encroach on forested lands, fragmenting ecosystems and threatening indigenous territories. Land tenure insecurity, poor enforcement and a lack of economic alternatives all conspire to make deforestation a systemic problem. There can be no one silver bullet but, my goodness, there must be a desire to start. With COP30 this November being hosted in Brazil, there is a compelling case to move from intention to delivery. First, the Minister knows only too well that we must urgently expand the due diligence regime to cover all forest-risk commodities, whether legal or illegal, under producer country law. We should introduce criminal liability for companies knowingly profiting from deforestation, and require UK banks and investors to disclose their deforestation risk. There will need to be a phased timeline, but my question is not when it will be done but why it has not been done already. If we understand where the blockage in the machinery is, perhaps we can help apply a bit of pressure to assist the Minister in getting it done. I know she will be keen to do so. Some say the blockage is in the Cabinet Office, some say Northern Ireland and the Windsor framework. I would point out to the Minister and her ministerial colleagues that the strong due diligence measures of the European deforestation legislation are due to come into force in December this year. It would be best if the regulation of the whole of the UK were consonant with that. Will the Minister set out a clear timeline for the full implementation of schedule 17 to the Environment Act? Secondly, the UK must champion a trade model that values environmental protection and human rights. As the UK is in advanced trade negotiations with the EU and India, and to a lesser extent with the USA, what discussions has the Minister had with her colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade about the need to embed deforestation safeguards and environmental standards in all future trade agreements? I immodestly recommend to her the blueprint set out in the Labour party’s green paper of 2018, entitled, “Just Trading: What would a just trading system look like?”, when I was shadow Trade Secretary. Thirdly, the tropical forests forever facility—TFFF—championed by Brazil, will inevitably assume centre stage as we progress towards Belém and COP30. By using arbitrage between the cost of long-dated Government bonds and loans and the returns of a more diversified portfolio, the TFFF fund seeks to provide a long-term payment for conservation and restoration of tropical forests. The facility would help to address a significant market failure, placing a value to the ecosystem services that those forests provide, and returning that to the forest communities that curate them. Will the Minister tell us how the UK will be involved in the TFFF? What conversations has she had with colleagues in international development? How will the fund prioritise and reward the role of indigenous and traditional knowledge partners in forest stewardship? She knows that indigenous peoples need specific legal protections, recognition and direct funding. Forests thrive when indigenous rights are upheld. Our aid and climate finance must prioritise those locally led solutions. That is fundamental, not just for nature and climate mitigation, but for justice, for addressing poverty and for human rights. The establishment at the convention on biological diversity COP16 meeting in Rome of the Cali fund, which commits 50% of its resources to indigenous communities, was an overdue recognition of their role as custodians of forests and the nature and biodiversity that make them. I ask the Minister to update the House about the steps our Government are taking to help operationalise that fund, and to ensure that its resources reach those local communities quickly and without loss. Can she tell us whether and how indigenous communities are represented on the fund’s board of management, and how the Cali fund will work alongside the TFFF? Is the UK planning to invest in the TFFF, and now with the 40% cut in official development assistance from 0.5% to just 0.3% of GNI, what will happen to the £11.6 billion that was ringfenced for climate in ICF3, and the £3 billion within that that was further ringfenced for nature? After years of declining indicators, we now have an opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation. I am proud of the direction that our Labour Government have taken since July, from creating a special envoy for nature to committing to deliver three new national forests. Domestically, the Government are investing up to £400 million in tree planting and peatland restoration over 2024-25 and 2025-26. However, if we are to lead globally we must also act globally, and that includes how we mobilise capital. Public funding is crucial, but on its own it is not enough. We need to unlock private finance to support conservation and sustainable development, especially in regions safeguarding the planet’s remaining great forests, and that means scaling up tools such as green bonds, blended finance and debt-for-nature swaps. The City of London can and should be a hub for that kind of innovation, not only for climate finance, but for nature-positive finance. We sometimes hear the environment and the economy pitted against each other, as if nature is a subset of the economy. Of course the truth is the other way round, because without nature and the ecosystem services that it provides, there is no economy, and the most vital part of that nature is our amazing forests.

• 23 Apr 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support · Hansard source

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  The taxation regime is critical to the ability of companies to make profits in the North sea. We have the lowest base rate of tax on oil and gas production companies in the world, and it is only because we have the windfall tax that we take the rate up to the average. The Minister needs to look at the investment that would be available were we not subsidising the operations from the public purse. It is not quite the zero-sum game that he suggests.

• 23 Apr 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady speaks about the way in which other countries have ended their windfall tax, but does she accept that the basic rate of tax that was being applied by the previous Government to the oil and gas industry in the North sea was the lowest in the world, and that it is only with the windfall tax that it comes up to the global average?

• 23 Apr 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support · Hansard source

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  I think this is the first time I have had the pleasure of speaking under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond; I am very pleased to have you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) on securing this important debate. It is said that if you remember the ’60s, you were not really there—but if you were there in the ’80s for the closure of the pits, you will never forget. You will never forget the violence; you will never forget the politicisation of the police; you will never forget the devastation of communities. That was an energy transition—I was not just picking up on the remarks of the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross). This debate takes place at a key point in the transition away from oil and gas production in the North sea. With the Government’s consultation on building the North sea’s energy future under way, and with the clean energy mission driving forward at some pace, securing clean energy generation and the wealth creation and jobs that will go with it is non-negotiable if we are not to repeat the same unjust transition as before. It is a simple truth that the North sea basin is in terminal decline. That is not a political choice; it is a geological reality. For too long, the previous Government buried their head in the sand and watched as jobs supported by the UK’s oil and gas industry more than halved over the past decade. That is why this Government are right to finally draw a line under new licensing and the illusion of endless new oil and gas. The stone age did not come to an end for the lack of stone, and the oil age will not come to an end for the lack of oil. It will be because energy can be produced more cleanly and cheaply by renewable technologies. The demand for hydrocarbons is expected to peak globally in the next five years, but energy companies are still adopting business models focused on growing output volume rather than on maximising shareholder value. Creating the stranded assets of the future is bad management, and failing to build the skills base for tomorrow’s future is bad business planning. The myth that North sea licences are the answer to our energy security is a dangerous one. Hundreds of licences have been issued over the past decades and there has been just 16 days’ worth of gas to show for it. We are lucky to have an abundance of renewable resources in the UK. That is the only route forward to deliver for the workers and communities who are tied to a declining oil and gas industry. The current North sea transition deal is not fit for purpose. It places far too much responsibility on the companies themselves. Those companies are not delivering what is needed: a mere seven out of the 87 North sea oil and gas operators are even considering investment in renewable energy by 2030. We cannot outsource the future of our workers and our energy security to the very companies whose current business model is failing. We need a radical shift. The time for a coherent deal for the North sea is now. It is vital that the Government commit to bringing forward a bold and ambitious plan with the urgency that this time demands. Beyond extraction lies an immense opportunity to build a world-leading offshore wind manufacturing sector here in the UK. Our existing wind farms, many of which are in Scotland, provide a fifth of global capacity. They prove what is possible. But it is a scandal—a scandal that the previous Government allowed—that the average North sea turbine is overwhelmingly built with material from abroad. We are exporting jobs and prosperity. Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund must be laser-focused on building up a thriving manufacturing sector. A properly resourced clean industry bonus is not just good policy; it has the potential to create 10,000 permanent, direct jobs and 13,000 indirect ones in areas that need it, such as the constituency of the hon. Member for Aberdeen North. Can the Minister confirm what conversations he has had with Cabinet colleagues about the clean industry bonus? Is there any scope to boost the funds behind the bonus to truly seize the moment? Our renewable ambition is crippled by outdated ports and dockside facilities. The £1.8 billion in the National Wealth Fund is a good start, but if we are to truly lead in home-grown energy, it is crucial that it be expanded. The funding must be safeguarded and expanded, and the Government should be taking equity stakes in ports as critical national infrastructure. The unjust transition at the refinery in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) and the situation in Port Talbot are warning signs that early Government intervention and investment are paramount if we are to secure the future of our workers. They deserve to experience a smooth transition. Over 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have transferable skills, but they report a lack of support for transitioning into other industries. The energy skills passport is a start, but workers are footing the bill for their own retraining, which often duplicates their existing qualifications. The Government need to commit to streamlining the process. Crucially, the Minister should meet with the Treasury to deliver the £335 million-a-year training fund that unions and climate groups are rightly calling for—a fund that provides paid time off for workers to retrain. We live in a volatile world. The era of relying on global fossil fuel markets is over. True energy and worker security lies in our own abundant renewable resources. The opportunity to create thousands of high-quality jobs in a new green economy is here. It is within our grasp. I urge the Minister to seize it.

• 23 Apr 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Workers: Transitional Support · Hansard source

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  The trade unions and others have made a case for £335 million a year to be invested in skills and training to ensure that workers are not unpaid on their training days, among other things. What conversations can the Minister have with colleagues to ensure that that happens?

• 3 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Land-based gambling shops represent a silent crisis up and down this country, targeting some of our most disadvantaged and deprived communities. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Muhammed Butt and Mili Patel, leader and deputy leader of Brent council, on their campaign, now supported by leaders of more than 30 other councils, to reform the Gambling Act 2005 to protect our high streets from rapacious gambling and betting shops? May we have a debate in Government time about the need to change the presumption that exists in the 2005 Act and states that councils to “aim to permit” such licences?

• 3 Apr 2025 · UK-US Trade and Tariffs · Hansard source

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  There is a threat, but there is also an opportunity. What measures is my right hon. Friend taking to combat trade leakage and the diversion of goods produced in countries hit by high US tariffs, which may dump their products in the UK, undercutting our domestic producers? What steps is he taking to encourage manufacturers based in those countries and, indeed, in the EU, to relocate to the UK and export from here to the US to take advantage of our lower 10% tariff?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I was proud to be in this House when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown established the Department for International Development, and when they established the Drop the Debt campaign. I was proud when the Leader of the House and I stood for election on a manifesto that committed us to restoring the international aid budget to 0.7% of GNI. May we please have a debate in Government time on how it might be possible to find a lost moral compass?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Could we have a debate on Thames Water, which provides water disservices to 20 million people in this country? We now know that the company received from bill payers money that was supposed to be spent on environmental measures such as stopping illegal discharges, and that that money has been used to pay bonuses and dividends. We need to discuss whether the people running Thames Water are fit and proper persons to run a public company.

• 11 Feb 2025 · US Steel Import Tariffs · Hansard source

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  Under WTO rules, any country can impose tariffs when it believes there is unfair subsidy of the exports presented by the other country, but so far I have not heard America put forward any argument that there is unfair subsidy of our steel industry. What discussions is the Minister having with the WTO about this?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Today, Lord Ericht has ruled that the consent for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields was granted unlawfully by the previous Government because they had failed to properly account for the effect on the climate of burning the fossil fuels that would be extracted. Can we have a debate on the future of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields and on the UK joining the countries that formed the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance?

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  From one old fogey to another, I presume. I have never enjoyed a speech by the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) as much as the one he has just delivered; he did not bore the House in any way. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for introducing the Bill; it has had a very long gestation, involving many Members on both sides of the House, but it is good that it has cross-party support. Indeed, the first thing I want to focus on is the importance of cross-party support. These issues had cross-party support in the House for many years following the Climate Change Act 2008, and that continued until about 2015. That was tremendously important in the progress that not only we but the world were able to make. People saw that it was possible for Parliament to come together and do things that were considered radical to tackle climate change. Latterly, unfortunately, that consensus has broken down somewhat, and it is important—it is the duty of all Members of the House—to try to repair that consensus and to build on it. Unless we do, we will face the sort of future that the hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich outlined. I am conscious that many people want to speak in the debate, so I will pick up quickly on just three issues in the Bill. First, clause 2(2) states: “The strategy must include annual interim targets consistent with the achievement of the objectives”. Those objectives are the climate and nature targets, and it is great that the Bill makes the link between the two; that is fundamentally important. However, I want to counsel against annual targets in this regard. As we know—it is well documented in the OEP report that the hon. Lady referred to, as well as in the Climate Change Committee’s reports—there is natural fluctuation annually in what happens around us. Sometimes that is because of the El Niño effect, and sometimes it is for other reasons—nobody in the House will be more familiar with the El Niño effect on the oceans than the hon. Lady. It is important that we understand that sometimes an annual target, to be consistent with the five-year targets and the overall long-term target, will look like it is going backwards. We need to look at that very carefully in the Bill. Another issue I want to pick up on is clause 3, on the establishment of the climate and nature assembly. In the last Parliament, six Select Committees came together to convene a people’s assembly on the climate. That was a wonderful moment for the House, because instead of our telling the people, “This is what you have to do,” the people were telling us, “This is what we want you to do on our behalf.” It was really important that that took place, and it is great that the hon. Lady has included that measure in the Bill. I gently point out, however, that the climate assembly disagreed with some of the things that the Committee on Climate Change told us were essential to do. The 66% figure in the clause is actually quite a low threshold. Sometimes the report from the climate assembly was clear that people were not prepared to go as far as the Committee on Climate Change and other nature organisations, such as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, believed was imperative. On who is in charge, there is a failure to connect things up, because the clause says that if something is recommended by 66% of the assembly, it must be included in the strategy. We will need to go through those areas in serious detail. Finally, it is important that the Bill talks about the impact of climate, biodiversity and nature on each other. I pick up on what the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich— the grandfather of the House, as he styled himself—said about Drax. We are going down the wrong road with Drax. I understand the reasons why: Drax power station provides 4% of UK electricity in the power sector. It seen as an important area, so the question is, if we take it away, how will we fill it? But we cannot allow the damage to old growth and to virgin forests that we know is happening in Canada. More than that, as has been said by the noble Lord Birt, who has also seen some of the whistleblowers’ accounts, as I have, those accounts make it clear that the Ofgem investigation was correct in saying that the sustainability of the feedstock had been not only misreported but deliberately misreported. That means that the people concerned in Drax are not fit and proper to run the company, and we should not be paying them—at the moment—£9 billion. We have now to decide whether we will subsidise that even further. The impact on biodiversity is disastrous, and although they say it is renewable, it is not within the timeframe to meet the 2050 climate target. It is salient that the previous Secretary of State, after she ceased to be the Secretary of State, said, “We knew all along that this was not sustainable.” If that is the case, perhaps she should have done something when she was Secretary of State, but it is this Government who must now act to ensure that no further subsidy is paid to Drax.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Environmental Protection · Hansard source

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  I commend the previous Government for much of the work they did. I commend the fact that they put in place the Environment Act 2021. I do so because it is really important that we adopt a bipartisan approach to these matters. When we are talking about the environment and climate change, yes in this Chamber we can have some political point scoring occasionally, but it is much more important that we create the bipartisan platform that means successive Governments can build and work from it. I commend the Minister for introducing the measure so quickly. It is long overdue, and it will make an appreciable difference. I would love to know by exactly how many kilograms of residual waste per capita it will reduce our output, but given that each of us is producing 577 kg of residual waste every year, which is over half a tonne—and some of that is toxic waste—it is very important that we get on with this job. Just a month ago we saw a report from the Office for Environmental Protection which showed very clearly that we are not on track to meet the targets set in the Environment Act 2021 by 2042. Although I commend the Government for the action that they are taking now and the urgency with which they have got on with this measure, I want to quote what the report said under the heading “Progress in the reporting period”, which was 2023-24: “The scale and pace of actions does not align with the challenge. While flagship waste management policies have been developed, their introduction has been delayed and they largely focus on end-of-pipe action. There is a lack of action focused on circular economy.” I am delighted that the Minister is introducing this measure and I commend the Government for doing so, but we need even more, and we need it more quickly.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The good news is that 185 apartments around Wembley Stadium in my constituency are ready to be occupied. The bad news is that nobody can move into them, because the Building Safety Regulator has sat on its gateway 2 applications for six months and its gateway 3 applications for two months. We have a housing shortage. Can the Leader of the House ensure that we have a debate on the delays and dysfunctionality of the Building Safety Regulator?

• 9 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The Government have said that by June, they intend to ratify the agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions, more commonly known as the global oceans treaty. They have also said quite correctly, and highly unusually, that before they do so, they intend to take steps to put in place the measures to implement the agreement. That will require primary legislation. Can the Leader of the House tell us when such legislation may be brought forward and what form it might take?

• 28 Nov 2024 · Fishing Industry · Hansard source

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  I am sorry if I have given the hon. Gentleman the impression that I think fishing communities would be against this; I do not think that. That is precisely why I welcome the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes and for South East Cornwall about the importance of consultation. Look at a case such as Lyme Bay: it was the local community, in consultation with the scientists, who produced the efflorescence that has taken place there. This must be done through the industry co-operating with the scientists. We should note that MPAs were designed specifically to protect the nature within them from human activity that damaged it, and that includes fishing. It should therefore not be considered a negative that those areas are being protected. The partial ban on destructive dredging and bottom trawling in MPAs has been a success, and I hope it will be extended to a complete ban once the due process and consultation have taken place. I wish the Minister and his team well in the upcoming negotiations. If he binds himself to the mast of science and turns an Odysseus-like ear to the siren voices urging him to allow greater quota, I cannot promise him popularity, but he would become a unique and respected first voice for common sense and a sustainable future for our industry. First-hand sales of UK-landed seafood were over £1 billion in 2022, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes said. That is a good reminder that wild-capture seafood is a national resource. It is remarkable that the UK Treasury does not benefit directly and that those that benefit the most are large businesses that have managed to aggrandise themselves via the poorly regulated sale of individual quotas over many years. Small-scale fisherfolk and non-sector vessels are left to fish from the pool that accounts for just 4% of opportunities. In addition, those big businesses that benefit the most by their control of quota also benefit from the free management of the resource via central and local government funding of the MMO, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Natural England and the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities. It is also clear that big businesses are best placed to make representations and influence policy in a way that a single-handed inshore fisherman simply cannot. A quick scan of successful Government grant applications demonstrates that it is also big business that benefits from grant schemes, with support being provided to companies with turnover in the millions. The impact of market forces on this national asset has left a handful of families and businesses benefiting the most via consolidation of beneficial ownership of quota, while small-scale fisherfolk and our coastal communities wither and are lost. Depleted stocks and limited funding for robust data collection of all commercial species, leading to precautionary management decisions, are by-products of the current system. I ask the Minister whether it is time for the UK to consider what alternative systems to manage this valuable natural resource could look like. I welcome the beginnings of transparency that have come about from the publication of quota holdings, but that is only part of the story of who benefits from the amazing national public asset that is our fisheries. We all know that in-year swaps and leases occur. Would the Minister look at completing the transparency exercise and requiring those swaps and leases to be published too? We need a system that is not based on the happenstance history of 40 years ago, when the current quota system was put in place, but that provides opportunity and certainty more equitably. We need a system that links opportunities to compliance with fisheries and conservation regulations and that helps to fund better data gathering and evidence to inform our fisheries resource management —one where a sustainable bounty from the seas ensures that the interests of our small fishing communities, the taxpayer and the planet are aligned. It has already been said that fishing is one of the most dangerous peacetime occupations. The marine accident investigation branch accident reports make sombre reading, but they also provide an excellent opportunity for learning and change. Multiple capsizes of small vessels over several years led the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to update its codes for small vessel inspections, but reports from around the coast demonstrate that those new regulations appear to be applied inconsistently, and in some cases they run contrary to the marine architect designs and tested vessel stability. The financial burden of being tied up by an MCA inspection and being required to make modifications to a vessel’s hull can be exceptionally heavy. Owner-operators are forced to sell their vessels and in some cases leave the industry, as they simply cannot afford to comply with an individual inspector’s request. I urge the Minister to speak with his colleagues at the Department for Transport to help convene a group of small-scale fishing vessel safety experts? They can help the DFT and the MCA to better understand the impact of their inspection regimes and to find a coherent approach to that vital work—one that provides a consistent set of outcomes, without the lottery of where a fisherman is based and which inspector they get producing different outcomes on similar vessels. The lack of MCA inspectors means that vessels can often wait weeks for an inspection slot. While a vessel is awaiting reinspection, the fisherman cannot earn. What should be a straightforward process can provide huge financial risk and strain, from which some of those microbusinesses simply cannot recover. Finally on safety, I draw the Minister’s attention to a simple fact that the last Government seemed to do little to address. The MAIB reports set out the circumstances surrounding each accident and the component elements that led to it. All too often, these accidents are highly predictable and could be prevented by simply conducting good maintenance, onboard training and safe operations. Here, I would interject that the question of English language skills, which we debated earlier, comes into play: English language skills and the ability to communicate with every member of the crew is vital for crew safety.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Fishing Industry · Hansard source

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  Before the Minister does that, could he look at what we might learn from the American fish management plans, which are gold standard and have had the clear management objectives that, I am afraid, many of ours lack?

• 28 Nov 2024 · Fishing Industry · Hansard source

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  I am, of course, well aware that it is headline advice and that other things come into play, but as the right hon. Gentleman himself mentioned in his opening remarks, the things that come into play—I think he called them the nuances—are often political—

• 28 Nov 2024 · Fishing Industry · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman missed out the United States of America from that list.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Fishing Industry · Hansard source

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  I think Hansard will record that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned that himself in his opening remarks. Overfishing means that the stock is driven down even further. There is no cure to a collapsed stock that involves continuing to overfish. The Celtic sea cod stock has declined by 95% since 2012, but last year the total allowable catch was set at basically the level of the entire adult population—it was actually set just 2 tonnes lower—and now the entire spawning population is lower than that. If we roll over that TAC, the catch limit would exceed the entire spawning population. The Irish sea whiting stock is currently about 9% of the level it is legally supposed to be. International commitments and the Fisheries Act 2020 commit the UK and the EU, which shares many of those populations, to maintain commercially harvested stocks at a level that can support maximum sustainable yield. The stock is at a mere 9% of that—not 9% of its natural size, but 9% of the already much lower level that is the legal minimum. That is another stock that has declined by more than 90% since the 1980s. Climate change represents a significant threat to marine life and the fisheries that depend on a healthy ecosystem, but it was not climate change that collapsed those stocks; it was heavy and constant overfishing. We sometimes hear big fishing interests blame climate change for the collapse, and it certainly makes the recovery of those populations harder, but the truth is that we consistently set catch limits above scientifically advised levels. That has crashed those stocks and will continue to do so as long as Ministers are prepared to go into the negotiations and ignore the science. In introducing the debate, the right hon. Gentleman spoke about climate change and cod stocks. In recent years, every time quotas for North sea cod have been set at sustainable levels in accordance with the science, the stocks of cod have increased. Every time quotas have been set out of line with the science, the stocks have declined. Our understanding of the additional pressures of climate change should be driving us to be even more precautionary in our approach to the protection of fish stocks—not to be pretending that it is the cause of their collapse. While I am thinking about cod and the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) about the processing industry, I should say that the cod that comes to Grimsby is predominantly from Greenland, Norway and Iceland, which have a much more precautionary approach to setting the quota. Many people here will remember the introduction of the discard ban or the landing obligation referred to by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). It is a ban on throwing away perfectly good fish that had been caught. What many people will not know is that this ban applies only to quota stocks of dab, flounder and gurnard. All other non-quota stocks can be thrown away at sea perfectly legally, and many are. About 35,000 tonnes of dab are discarded in the North sea every year—that is roughly 90% of the catch and equates to about 5 million fish. Remember that when we talk about the importance of food security. The irony is that dab actually used to have a quota, but the quota was removed when the landing obligation was brought in. The purpose of the landing obligation was to create a real incentive for fishermen to use gear types and fishing methods that reduced unwanted bycatch and led to more selective fishing. It was designed to reduce the choke problem by incentivising more selective gear that would avoid choke species. Unfortunately, that works only if it is enforced and all the evidence shows that the landing obligation is now being widely ignored. More worryingly, not only is it being ignored, but potential discards are not even being accounted for in the TAC-setting process. The only solution to discarding and improving scientific assessments is for the introduction of remote electronic monitoring—cameras, specifically. Without them it is impossible to know what is being caught and being discarded. Monitoring is essential for compliance. We currently have a system that literally incentivises bad behaviour. I was very taken by what the hon. Member for St Ives said about his fisherman and pollack. A fisherman who, like the one the hon. Gentleman mentioned, spends money on more selective gear, abides by the landing obligation and avoids certain areas because of higher bycatch of unwanted species, is massively disadvantaged compared with a fisherman who ignores those regulations. We are, as it stands, incentivising non-selective fishing, rewarding illegal behaviour and punishing those who stick to the rules, such as the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. The fishing industry rightly talks about the challenges it faces, yet its biggest challenge comes from an unhealthy marine environment that is incapable of supporting thriving fisheries. The notion that we can have a thriving fishing industry without a thriving marine environment is an illusion. We cannot have a growing sustainable fishing industry on the back of a depleted marine environment. No measure of Government support or access to markets can make up for no fish. Somehow this self-evident truth goes out the window when it comes to making decisions. We should be clear: if we do not recover fish stocks and start setting catch limits at levels that allow stocks to grow and adopting a precautionary approach that favours long-term sustainability, then we will be back there every year wondering why quotas have to be cut. There are instances where the advice is for large increases in quota, and they were mentioned by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland; I think he said that when the data became available, it showed a 211% increase in relation to monkfish. When that is the case, I do not think we should chase down every last fish because that will simply result in smaller catches in future years, as well as significant increases in bycatch of other stocks, which will often result in overfishing. However, the argument the right hon. Gentleman made is absolutely right: we need to get good data and it needs to be comprehensive. Once we have that and we can base the scientific assessments on really strong data, we can make sure we fish in line with the science and that stocks can recover.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Fishing Industry · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister actually believe that the discard ban is being observed? If he has doubts about that, would he agree that ensuring there are onboard cameras and monitoring is the best way to put an end to that element of illegal fishing?