Barry Gardiner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2025 · Draft Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) (Threshold Amount) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  Of course. I think we all agree that we should have thresholds that are proportionate and do not involve undue bureaucracy while ensuring that money is not badly spent or, indeed, that money that is spent is recovered where it should not have been spent in the first place. Given that we have proportionality in this area, I wondered whether the Minister could enlighten us whether we are looking to do the same in other areas, such as benefit overpayments.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Draft Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) (Threshold Amount) (Amendment) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. May I just ask the Minister whether the Government intend to bring in similar thresholds for such things as benefit overpayments?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Criminal Cases Review Commission: Leadership · Hansard source

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  I welcome the statement from the Chair of the Select Committee and the appointment of Dame Vera Baird as the interim chair. Does my hon. Friend share a certain incredulity that the Ministry of Justice took three years to resolve the fee that would be paid to commissioners, and that the recruitment exercise appears to be taking 18 months to resolve? What is going on there? Does he believe that the terms of appointment for commissioners should be reviewed to ensure that they can play a greater role in the day-to-day running of the CCRC?

• 6 May 2025 · Counter Terrorism Policing: Arrests · Hansard source

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  The Minister will be aware that a number of Iranian citizens in this country still have relatives in Iran, and it is not beyond the wit of the Iranian Government to use that pressure on them. In requiring the citizens of Iran in this country to report to our Government if they are in any way connected to the Iranian Government, has he taken measures to protect them from exposing their family to the pressure that the Iranian Government may put on them?

• 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.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Bangladesh: Attacks on Hindu Community · Hansard source

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  Thank you for allowing this urgent question, Mr Speaker. Since the fall of the previous Government in August, Bangladesh has seen more than 2,000 incidents of violence, most of which have been targeted against the minority Hindu community. Hindus make up less than 10% of the population of Bangladesh. As my hon. Friend will be aware, anti-Hindu violence has been a recurrent event in Bangladesh. Indeed, earlier this year, the Jamaat-e-Islami party was banned after riots in which 200 people were killed. While Bangladesh no longer has the secular constitution of 1971 and became an Islamic state in 1988, there are none the less supposed to be protections for minority religions under the constitution, including articles 28 and 39. However, these appear not to be being enforced. There are reports of police and army standing by, as more than 20 places of minority Hindu and Sufi worship were vandalised and their worshippers attacked. This came to a head on Friday, when extremist groups from the Jamaat-e-Islami party attacked two Hindu temples in Chittagong and conducted a campaign of orchestrated violence against the Hindu population. A leading Hindu monk, Chinmoy Krishna Das, a former leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness has been arrested. ISKCON is a worldwide branch of modern Hinduism with its UK headquarters at Bhaktivedanta Manor in Bushey, many of whose worshippers live in my constituency of Brent West and the surrounding areas of north-west London. People are concerned that while he was engaged in exclusively peaceful protest, he has been denied due process, charged with sedition and refused bail, yet none of the individuals who attacked the temples has been apprehended or charged. On Saturday, senior Bangladeshi journalist Munni Saha was taken into police custody following an attack on her car by a large mob in Dhaka, and released only under the provisions of the criminal code. The situation is clearly on a knife edge. With such large diaspora populations in the UK and large Hindu communities with strong links to the community in Bangladesh, I ask my hon. Friend what more she can do to have discussions with the Bangladeshi Government and other partners in the region to ensure that tensions are lowered, the rule of law put into effect, and calm and order restored.

• 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 · 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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  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?