Kerry McCarthy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 Jan 2026 · Animal Welfare Strategy for England · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, as always, Ms Lewell. I am tempted to join the discussion about non-stun slaughter, but I will not, other than to say that my understanding is that the derogation to allow it is meant to cater to domestic populations, yet we are exporting quite a lot. Not allowing animals killed in that way to be exported would be one way to significantly reduce the numbers. I very much welcome the animal welfare strategy. There is lots of good stuff in it, and things that some of us who have been around for a long time have been pushing for for many years. I would like a bit more clarity from the Minister on the timescales and when these measures are likely to come into effect. Will legislation be needed? Will there be one overarching animal welfare Bill—primary legislation—or can we do things by statutory instrument? Will the Government look to private Members’ Bills? That was something that the previous Government used to try to kick issues into the long grass; they were nervous about bringing forward anything more substantial because they thought that we would try to ban trail hunting. We tried to tack that on, so they farmed off individual, discrete private Members’ Bills to their Back Benchers instead, and even those did not get over the line for the most part. Also, how will progress be monitored? Can we have a regular statement to Parliament? I am a little concerned by how much is going out to consultation. I have had a briefing from the NFU, which I have read carefully. I appreciate the financial pressures on the farming sector, and I know that colleagues will talk about things like the sexing of the 40 million to 45 million male chicks that are slaughtered each year within a day of their birth. There are systemic issues with how much farmers are paid for their food and how much we are prepared to pay for it, but we should not use the argument about the financial pressure on farmers to move away from doing what is right in terms of ethical animal welfare practices. I look at things very much from the perspective of trying to avoid a shift towards ever more intensive industrialised farming. We know that the poultry industry, for example, is huge: over 1 billion meat chickens are bred every year. We know the impact on our water supplies and air quality from what are more like factories than farms. There is very little profit to be made from that. On the dairy sector, one of my concerns is how the strategy links up with moves to reduce emissions from livestock. The Climate Change Committee recommended reducing herd sizes to about 80%, but the Government talk about increasing production as a way of compensating for that. As I understand it, a beef suckler cow naturally produces about 4 litres of milk a day, and at the moment a dairy cow produces about 28 litres a day. If we are talking about increasing production and getting ever more milk out of a cow—treating them like machines rather than sentient animals—that will be of real concern to me, so I would like to know how that will be dealt with. My final point is about octopus farming. The sentience of decapods and cephalopods was recognised, after quite a battle, in the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, but cephalopod molluscs, which include octopus, have not been brought into the scope of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. There are measures abroad, in the United States in particular, to ban octopus farming. I am very concerned about plans for an octopus farm in the Canary Islands. Can the Minister tell us the Government’s stance on that?

• 20 Jan 2026 · ADHD Diagnosis · Hansard source

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  In the last few weeks, I have visited two alternative learning projects in my constituency. One is the Wheels Project, which gets children working on restoring cars. The other is Enemy of Boredom, which is a brilliant thing, getting children video gaming while learning at the same time. What is amazing is that they do only half a day a week there, but it transforms their experience of mainstream education. They are much better when they get back to the classroom, because they have had focused attention on something they love doing. Does my hon. Friend agree that we ought to do more of that?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Business Rates: Retail, Hospitality and Leisure · Hansard source

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  I hope the Minister will join me in congratulating Bristol East’s Lost and Grounded Brewers, which has just appeared on the list of the eight best breweries in Britain in The Times . He may recall that just before the Budget, I brought another Bristol East brewery, Left Handed Giant, to meet him and other Ministers at No. 11, where it made very clear the pressures facing the hospitality sector. Can he give me assurances that, as a first step, we need to sort out the revaluation shambles? Can he also ensure that the consideration of a differential rate of VAT, as we see in so many other countries on the continent, is also on the Treasury’s radar?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Arctic Security · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Prime Minister’s strong response, and the assurances that we have heard from the Foreign Secretary today. She has rightly made it clear that Donald Trump’s claims to need to possess Greenland for security reasons are complete and utter nonsense. The United States already has access. The Foreign Secretary spoke of a multilateral approach to Arctic security; there is also the critical minerals element, which I suspect has a great deal to do with Donald Trump’s interest in the country. What are we doing to adopt a similar multilateral approach to critical minerals, as we seek to divest ourselves of reliance on China?

• 15 Jan 2026 · Food Inflation · Hansard source

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  On Friday, I visited the Coexist Community Kitchen in my constituency, which does amazing work to get the community in. It runs cookery classes, is accessible and has affordable and healthy food, and sometimes it is free. Quite a lot of people go there on social prescriptions. On the issue of cross-departmental working, does my hon. Friend agree that is not enough for the health service just to issue prescriptions? It needs to support community kitchens so that they can do the cookery classes and make the food available. There needs to be institutional support, as well as the prescribing end of it.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Food Inflation · Hansard source

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  I echo what the Minister said about Frank Field. Quite a long time ago now, he approached me about setting up Feeding Bristol as an offshoot of Feeding Britain. Feeding Bristol has gone from strength to strength, particularly with its holiday hunger programme, which provided tens of thousands of meals for children who would otherwise have gone hungry during the school holidays. We all owe Frank a debt of gratitude for that.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Food Inflation · Hansard source

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  It is always easy to criticise regulation, but we often find that regulations are introduced for very real reasons, whether that is protecting public health, animal welfare and so on. Will the hon. Member tell us which of the regulations and requirements she has listed ought to be dropped?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Universities: Statutory Duty of Care · Hansard source

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  It is not adequate for us to have to rely on a determination that someone is suffering from a disability because of mental health issues. In some cases, there will be a history, engagement and a diagnosis of a disorder, but in many others, it could be that the student suddenly feels themselves to be in that situation. There is not always a long pathway to suicide; it could be triggered by a particular event. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that relying on the Equality Act is not adequate in the cases of these students?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Universities: Statutory Duty of Care · Hansard source

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  As a Bristol MP, I very much appreciate the fact that my hon. Friend has taken up the case on behalf of Natasha’s parents. I have had conversations with the University of Bristol about Natasha’s case, and also with the University of the West of England. One issue that comes up is where parents fit in, because students have a right to tell the university that they do not want their parents involved. They are treated as adults in that respect, which can put universities in quite a difficult position if they feel that the parents ought to know what is going on. What thought has my hon. Friend given to that aspect?

• 7 Jan 2026 · Jury Trials · Hansard source

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  My first job after graduating was in a magistrates court, which was just making the transition from writing court records in a huge ledger by hand to computerisation; I appreciate that it has modernised an awful lot since then. Let me pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) about the impact of persistent drug dealing on local communities. One of the things being piloted in Bristol is an intensive supervision court. We know that a huge number of crimes are committed by people with persistent drug addictions, so if we can divert them from the criminal justice system it will help to free up our courts. Can the Minister say a little about what we are doing to roll out that programme?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Draft Public Order Act 2023 (Interference With Use or Operation of Key National Infrastructure) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Alec. I will start by talking briefly about the underlying issue of animal testing, before making more general comments about restrictions on the right to protest. I think I am right in saying that the only commitment made in the 1997 general election manifesto that was not implemented by the Blair Government was the pledge to establish a royal commission on vivisection, which was scuppered by opposition from the life sciences sector. As I recall, they justified their stance by saying that if there were more transparency around what scientists were doing, they would be at personal risk. As I understand it, one of the reasons we are here today is to consider restrictions on the right to protest about animal testing. I want to make it clear from the outset that I totally condemn any abuse or harassment of individuals working in the sector, but laws are already in place to deal with that. Indeed, some activists, whose behaviour in the past went far beyond the pale, are currently serving very long prison sentences as a result. I welcome the Government’s publication of the road map for phasing out animal testing, but I am sad that so much time has been wasted since 1997—time with which we could have made progress—and that so many millions of animals have suffered as a result. I am not opposed to all animal testing, but I believe that the vast majority of experiments are unnecessary, ineffective and inhumane, for reasons that I think my hon. Friends will set out. I hope to see the day when we have developed humane alternatives to all animal testing, so that it ends. To give one example, I have in recent years met scientists at the University of Bristol in a bid to stop them using the forced-swim test. They were looking at the stress that mice experienced when drowning, and whether giving them antidepressants made them feel a bit more zen about the whole thing. The scientists told me that they had done that test over and over again, but had yet to observe anything interesting. That sounds to me like Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I am very glad that there is a moratorium on that test now. In 2015, I attended a meeting in the Commons at which the main speakers were Stanley Johnson, father of Boris, and the eminent zoologist Professor Michael Balls, father of Ed. It was a rather unlikely pairing, but they were joining forces to call for an end to beagle breeding for the purposes of animal experiments. A decade later, the sector involved in testing on beagles is still calling for more time to find replacements. I just do not think that that is acceptable. We need to shine a light on what is happening and question whether such tests are needed. I grew up seeing images of beagles with cigarettes strapped to their mouths to test the effects of smoking. That has rightly been stopped, but I do not think that the public realises that testing on beagles—indeed, testing on dogs—continues. To what extent will these measures, if implemented, prevent peaceful protest against animal testing? If Will Young—whom I have also heard speaking in Parliament about MBR Acres—was thinking of peacefully handcuffing himself to the fence at MBR Acres once again, would the Minister think he’d “better leave right now”? [ Laughter. ] Thank you. Somebody was going to make that gag— I thought it might as well be me. Let me turn to the more general issue. I fiercely defend the right to protest. I am a Bristol MP; we have quite a reputation for it. I went out to Russia under my own steam to observe the end of the Pussy Riot trial, and the powerful speeches from Nadya, Maria and Katya from their cage in the courtroom. However, I accept that there should be limitations to the right to protest. I accept that we cannot have the country grinding to a halt; we must appreciate the impact on people’s lives, and sometimes protesters do not. A few years ago, a protest by Extinction Rebellion in Bristol blocked the M32, causing a five-mile queue. I remember vividly that there was a woman in a car in that queue who was in labour, trying to get to hospital, and her husband ran to the front of the queue. One of the activists was quoted in the press as saying, “It’s all right, we allowed her through.” I thought it was quite shocking that they should feel entitled to give somebody in labour permission to get to hospital. I have also defended the Government’s plans to curb the cumulative impact of protests. We have a number of hotels housing asylum seekers in Bristol, and of course people should have the right to express their views—however much I might disagree with some of them—but it is not right that people are targeted week after week, and that the communities around them have to live in fear of possibly violent protests. I accept that; and I have defended that, but I also believe that people have the right to choose to break the law. However, they should also be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so. I do not accept, however, that what we are talking about today constitutes “key national infrastructure”. I do not think that the country will grind to a halt if MBR Acres, is occasionally obstructed from supplying beagles to laboratories for testing. The fact that we do not know what tests are being carried out makes it rather more difficult to make such judgments, so I return to my earlier point: transparency about what testing is going on is important—the public have a right to know. Transparency is also important when it comes to business in this place. We should not seek to place limitations on fundamental democratic rights—in this case, the right to protest—through a small Committee such as this. I therefore ask the Minister to facilitate at the very least a deferred Division on the motion, so that all MPs may vote, but ideally we would have a proper debate on the Floor of the House of Commons.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Draft Public Order Act 2023 (Interference With Use or Operation of Key National Infrastructure) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  As I mentioned, 10 years ago in this place there was a high-profile piece of campaigning particularly about testing on beagles, and I seem to remember that it got quite a lot of press coverage. Assurances were given then that we were on a journey to phasing that out, but we have no idea what has happened in that interim decade. That is the problem. The Minister can reassure us now that we are on that pathway again, but how can we have any confidence that it will not take another decade—or several? As the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) said, it has been 40 years since he started pushing for this.

• 19 Nov 2025 · Myalgic Encephalomyelitis · Hansard source

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  Sarah Lewis was my constituent. I have here the prevention of future deaths report that was issued after the inquest. She took her own life, but was severely ill with ME. One thing that comes through very strongly is that she did not feel she was believed or taken seriously, or that her symptoms were recognised by the medical profession. It is so important that we challenge the medical profession to take this more seriously.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Asylum Policy · Hansard source

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  I agree about the need for a fairer asylum system in which the public can have confidence, but everything that the Home Secretary has proposed today is predicated on decent legal advice being available to people, and we know—I know from 20 years as a Member of Parliament—that that is simply not the case. Despite the best efforts of the advice sector in Bristol, which is proud to be a city of sanctuary, there is a dearth of decent immigration lawyers, and I see too many constituents fall into the hands of dodgy lawyers who will help them to falsify and fabricate claims. What will the Home Secretary do to ensure that that decent legal advice is there?

• 27 Oct 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  In the interests of time, I will focus only on new clause 2, which stands in my name, though I also support new clauses 1, 10 and 11, and I very much welcome Government new clause 14. I thank the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden) for originally tabling new clause 2. His subsequent elevation to the shadow Cabinet means that he has had to withdraw his name. On 21 May 2024, I introduced the Children (Parental Imprisonment) Bill—with immaculate timing, as it turned out, as the general election was called the next day. I was delighted that despite the lateness of the hour I managed to have a quick word with somebody from the Leader of the Opposition’s office, and a commitment to identify and support such children made it into the Labour election manifesto. I would rather the commitment in the manifesto had not quite been framed in the way it was, which was about breaking the cycle of reoffending. That is certainly one factor, but to focus solely on it risks adding to the stigma and shame that is often felt by children in this situation. However, the important thing was that the commitment was there. At the time, we did not know how many children had a parent in prison, as most figures were based on out-of-date research or unreliable estimates, but we saw the publication of an official estimate 13 days after Labour were elected. I know that we were quick off the mark as a new Government, but that work was the result of lots of lobbying and campaigning that we had managed to get the previous Government to agree to. They set up something called the Better Outcomes through Linked Data project. Through that, we now know that around 190,000 children are affected by parental imprisonment each year—a huge number—but that is still only a ballpark figure. It does not tell us where in the country these children are, who is looking after them, whether they are getting support, what trauma they are going through and, in far too many cases, how long they have been coping completely on their own. My Bill called on the Government to set up a statutory mechanism so that at the point when an adult is sentenced to imprisonment, efforts are made to find out whether they have any children at home, and if so, whether those children are being taken care of. That is what new clause 2 also seeks to achieve. I have to say that I was a little disappointed by the Minister’s reply, because it rather misses the point of what we are trying to do with this new clause. It has nothing to do with making a judgment about who has parental responsibility or not. The new clause says that the court should look at whether the offender has a dependent child, parental responsibility or a child living in their household. It talks about “responsibility for or contact with”, so there is no legal decision that needs to be made as to whether that parent is the sole carer or responsible for the child; it is about whether there is a child in the picture. I very much believe that the Minister is passionate about this issue, and I know she has met representatives of the excellent charity Children Heard and Seen. I know she wants to act, but 16 months on from the general election, there are still no timelines for when identification and support will be brought forward for these invisible children. I want to make it very clear that this is about the welfare of children; it is not about prisoners. There is important work to be done on the rehabilitation of prisoners, and we are fortunate to have an excellent Prisons Minister who totally gets that. Research has shown that maintaining family ties for prisoners is very much part of that rehabilitation, but that is not what we are talking about today. I am concerned with the welfare of the children and specific child-focused support for those with a family member in prison, regardless of whether they have contact with that parent or not. We should not conflate the two, and I am concerned that the MOJ does so, which is in part because its responsibilities and funding streams are all focused on prisons and prisoners, whereas in the Department for Education there is a risk that these children get lost in the mix among other children who are suffering adverse childhood experiences. In their responses to me, Ministers have highlighted the “Working Together to Safeguard Children” multi-agency working statutory guidance, published under the last Government in 2023. This guidance says that prisons need arrangements in place that take prisoners’ children’s needs into account. It recommends that on the first night of a prisoner’s sentence, they are to be “supported to make suitable care arrangements for any dependent children”, with the involvement of children’s social care services where needed. It advises the Prison Service to ask all prisoners during their custody screening whether they have caring responsibilities for children under the age of 18. The inclusion of that in the guidance was positive, but it does not address the fact that some prisoners deliberately avoid revealing that they have children at home. Children Heard and Seen, the charity I mentioned, reports that some parents are scared of their children being taken away by social services, so much so that they do not tell anyone about their children. Furthermore, the prisoner in question might not have caring responsibilities. They might not even any longer have contact with the child. They might have been convicted of domestic violence against the child’s mother, or convicted of sexual abuse or offences against the child themselves, but their imprisonment is still important in terms of the trauma, stigma and shame that the child will be going through. I have heard of so many cases where children of sex offenders have had their homes targeted. They have been driven out of where they live, they have been humiliated at school, and they have had to move town and change their names because of what their imprisoned parent—usually the father—has done. The Government’s “Keeping children safe in education” statutory guidance for schools and colleges, which was published in September, rightly notes that children with family members in prison are at a higher “risk of poor outcomes including poverty, stigma, isolation and poor mental health.” It signposts to the National Information Centre on Children of Offenders as a source of support for school staff helping children with a parent in prison, but the guidance has not been properly maintained for years. Many of the resources it redirects to no longer work, but families and professionals are still being referred there. On the MOJ side, the Government published a multidisciplinary training offer tender for professionals on the impact of parental imprisonment, but this tender was taken down and the Department will not clarify why or when it will go back up. In the meantime, children are still being left without support. Given that all prisoners have contacts with His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, there is a missed opportunity for early identification of such children. This new clause would not necessarily pick up all of them, but it would be a really good step forward. New clause 2 would go further than current guidance by instructing courts to determine whether prisoners have children, to ensure they are protected. This could include using official data and working more closely with councils or local authorities, as well as speaking to the offender directly about how a child will be looked after. It could also involve working with schools. The new clause would present another opportunity for prisoners, before they enter the prison estate, to report that there are children at home. The more opportunities that prisoners are given to do that, the more likely they are to tell officials. I was particularly struck by one of the accounts I heard, in which a woman had been in prison for about four months before revealing—she was having a counselling session or something—that she had children of school age who were left behind at home by themselves. The new clause could also bring forward a structure and process for having those conversations to reassure prisoners that informing the authorities about any child at home is the right thing to do for their children. Statutory guidance is non-binding official advice and cannot carry the force of the law, but the new clause would instruct the relevant agencies to go further in their legal duty to protect children. As I have said, it will not catch all children, but it would be a major step forward. Will the Minister say in her response how, if we are not going to do it this way, we are going to do it?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  Like others, I very much welcome the Bill, and I hope it swiftly passes into law so that we can play a full role at Ocean COP1 next year. If we look back beyond recent years, we had people such as John Kerry, and David Miliband as co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission, spearheading efforts on this front, but it then felt as if the issue dropped off the agenda. Next year will be important for ensuring that it becomes a priority again. I will start by saying why the oceans matter, why they are under threat and why protecting them is so important. As we have heard, oceans are a massive carbon sink. They absorb over 90% of excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, as well as around 25% to 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions. They host around 80% of all life forms, many of which are still waiting to be discovered. They are under threat from plastic pollution, ocean acidification and the bleaching of coral reefs, and from overfishing on an unsustainable industrial scale. The largest factory trawlers have net mouths of up to 1,200 metres wide and 200 to 300 metres deep that sweep up hundreds of tonnes of fish and seafood in one trip, much of which is bycatch, not for human consumption, that is then discarded. Oceana has called this “marine deforestation—akin to clear felling an entire rainforest when you’re only looking to harvest one type of tree”. The Environmental Justice Foundation has done some brilliant reports in the past into slavery and labour exploitation as part of this industrial-scale fishing, particularly in the Thai seafood sector. The fish stocks in territorial waters are depleted, but the further afield those ships go, the higher the risk to the workers that are kept at sea for years at a time. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, between 35% and 37% of assessed fish stocks are being fished beyond biologically sustainable levels. That figure is much higher in the high seas and in straddling fish stocks, with two thirds classified as over-exploited or depleted. That includes iconic species, such as sharks, that are a crucial part of the ocean ecosystem. It is estimated that there has been a 71% decline in the ocean population of sharks and rays since 1970. Some 77% of oceanic shark and ray species are threatened with extinction. Roughly 100 million sharks a year are killed by humans through targeted fishing, shark finning and bycatch. Many of us will have seen “The Blue Planet” series that did such a brilliant job at highlighting, among other things, the threat of plastic pollution and at spurring calls to action. I want to give a shout out to BBC Bristol’s natural history unit, which has been hugely influential, as well as giving great enjoyment to all the people who have seen its programmes. It is a great shame that agreement still has not been reached on a global plastics treaty, and we must keep up the efforts on that front. I hope that Sir David Attenborough’s latest production, “Ocean”, will have a similar impact when it comes to bottom trawling. As Sir David says: “What we have done to the deep ocean floor is just unspeakably awful.” He says that the trawlers tear the seabed with such force that “the trails of destruction can be seen from space”. It was reported that some of the material filmed for the programme was deemed too shocking to be shown. Due to climate change, more than half the world’s straddling fish stocks will shift across maritime borders between economic exclusion zones and the high seas by 2050. In the high seas, fisheries management is much more challenging and stocks are much more likely to be over-exploited, as I said earlier. That makes the need for marine protected areas in the high seas even more important. As we have heard, as well as being an island nation ourselves, because of our overseas territories the UK is the custodian of a fifth of the world’s territorial waters. That means that we are the neighbour, which is the next best thing as a custodian, of much of the high seas, including the Sargasso sea. Greenpeace is calling on the UK to take a lead in working with our overseas territory, Bermuda, on developing an ocean sanctuary proposal for the Sargasso sea, ready to present it at the first Ocean COP next year. The Sargasso sea is a uniquely biodiverse and important ecosystem. The floating sargassum mats are known as the “golden floating rainforest”, and they are a haven for juvenile fish and turtles, a spawning ground for a rich range of species and an important migratory pathway for humpback whales. As a generator of massive carbon sequestration and oxygen production, the Sargasso sea is vital in tackling climate change and planetary health, but it is at risk of overfishing, pollution and shipping traffic. There is much support in Bermuda for the proposal, and I hope that we will be able to take that forward next year. Given our strength as a global financial centre, the UK is uniquely well placed to play a role in developing innovative financial instruments that will help finance marine protection, building on what countries like Seychelles and Belize have done with their blue bonds and their debt restructuring. At COP29 last year, we launched our six principles for high integrity carbon and nature markets, and they have been out for consultation this year. In a world where public sector resources and donations are dwindling, the world is looking to make progress on leveraging private sector finance in a meaningful and sustainable way. That could be of huge benefit to climate-vulnerable coastal countries and small island states, but could also be applicable to funding marine protected areas in the high seas, making it economically viable to protect our seas rather than to plunder them. I have heard that the Treasury may be less enthused about the nature side of these voluntary markets than the carbon side, but I hope that is not the case. I will certainly keep up the pressure on the Treasury to take this forward. I want to speak briefly about deep-sea mining, to which I am totally opposed. Deep-sea mining could cause irreversible damage to deep ecosystems and a loss of undiscovered biodiversity. I understand that the current UK position, as confirmed by an FCDO ministerial answer last month, is that we back the suspension of deep-sea mining and support a moratorium on the granting of deep-sea mining contracts by the International Seabed Authority. The Minister said that we will not grant licences for exploitation unless “there is sufficient scientific evidence about the potential impact on deep sea ecosystems, and strong enforceable environmental Regulations, Standards and Guidelines”. However, it is not clear what powers we will have through this international collaboration to stop other countries issuing such licences, so I hope that the Minister will clarify that in her summing up. I am a little concerned that the measures in the Bill about marine genetic resources will open the door to deep-sea mining. I accept that there is a case for exploring the potential of such resources, if carried out under strong safeguards, but I would resist any attempt to allow deep-sea mining to occur. Finally, while I welcome international initiatives and, as has been made clear, the Bill addresses areas beyond national jurisdiction, we need to lead by example with stronger protection for our own territorial waters. As has been said, there has been some progress, notably around our overseas territories, but perhaps it is easier to act when those areas are thousands of miles away and do not have the same economic interests. There has been great work around Ascension, Pitcairn and South Georgia, but there is more of a mixed picture around the UK coast. Dogger Bank in the North sea is one of the largest marine protected areas. Since it was established in 2022, it has benefited from a 98% reduction in bottom trawling, supporting the recovery of marine species like halibut, cod, angel shark and eels. As it says in the UK’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan, all marine protected areas must be well managed, enforced and effective, not paper parks. We could start by moving faster to end all bottom trawling in our marine protected areas. The recent excellent report “Blue Carbon”, published by the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, set out a blue carbon mapping project carried out with the help of the Scottish Association for Marine Science. We are the first country to undertake such mapping. We know about the importance of kelp forests, seagrass meadows and mangroves, but it is the less glamorous sediment on our seabed that is the true hero in carbon sequestration. The report found that 224 million tonnes of organic carbon was stored in just the top 10 cm of seabed sediments and vegetated habitats, and 98% of that was in the sediment, such as the mud. In my role as Minister for climate, it frustrated me that we talked so much about the role of trees and forests in carbon sequestration, but we did not talk about the oceans at all. I was told that that was because it was difficult to quantify, so this project is a great example. If this is the amount of carbon work that is being done by the seabed around the UK coast, just think about the amount that the seabed of our high seas is doing. We must have action on that at Ocean COP. I hope that the Bill will be enacted very soon, and I look forward to next year’s discussions.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree with the right hon. Gentleman to an extent. It was reported in The Guardian that some of the footage was deemed too shocking to be shown. I do not know whether he has seen it, but what remains in the film is incredibly powerful. I have read about bottom trawling in the newspapers for a long time, so I knew about it from a factual perspective, but it was only when I saw those images that it was brought home to me how terrible it is.

• 14 Oct 2025 · COP30: Food System Transformation · Hansard source

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  That was a brilliant speech. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I agree that the Prime Minister should go to COP. It was such an important moment last year in Baku when he announced an ambitious 81% NDC and demonstrated to the world that the UK was back in the business of global climate leadership. I know from the past year just how much that has resonated, not least with climate-vulnerable countries. That leadership is needed now more than ever. It was 16 years ago that I secured a debate in this Chamber on the livestock industry and climate change, inspired by the seminal United Nations report “Livestock’s Long Shadow”. I spoke about the impact of intensive industrialised animal agriculture on our planet. It has to be said that what I said back then was treated with a degree of derision in some quarters, especially when I got on to the subject of what I will delicately refer to as emissions from cows. That argument, I believe, has now been won—I could cite many more expert reports on it if I held a similar debate now—but what remains to be seen is whether Governments have the political will to act. I know that the Brazilians are keen to make super-pollutants, including methane, a major theme at COP. The UK is due to publish its own methane action plan by the end of this month, along with the carbon budget growth delivery plan. I hope that we put down a marker in it about what global leadership on methane looks like, especially on agriculture and food systems. Food systems account for roughly 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions and drive about 90% of tropical deforestation. I was proud to co-chair the forest and climate leaders’ partnership with Guyana. I know that the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), was passionate about this, not least because of his Guyanese heritage. I hope that the new Foreign Secretary will step into his shoes at COP with similar commitment and passion. We cannot show global leadership on forests unless we lead by domestic example by stamping out deforestation in our supply chains. The EU is acting on forest risk commodities by focusing on sustainability; under the previous Government, the UK focused on legislation based on illegality. There are arguments for and against both approaches, but what it is not acceptable is not to act at all. I hope that by the time we get to Belém in the heart of the Amazon, the UK will have made its own intentions clear.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Solar Development: Newark · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) on securing a debate on this important issue on behalf of his constituents. As he has acknowledged, I am limited in what I can say about specific projects within the planning system, but before I move on to address some of the detail that he has mentioned in his speech, I will explain why solar is so important to our energy security, to lower bills, and for climate action. More than three years on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our energy system remains at the mercy of price fluctuations on the international fossil fuel markets. Wholesale gas prices remain high—75% higher than before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The simple fact is that the only way to get energy bills down for good is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. That is why one of the Government’s guiding missions is to achieve clean power by 2030. Solar, as the cheapest and most easily deployable renewable energy source, is right at the heart of that mission. Our clean power action plan, published last December, set out that 45 GW to 47 GW of solar power are required by 2030, up from about 19 GW at present. Thankfully, our vastly experienced UK solar sector stands ready to deploy at pace and at scale. One of the first things that we did on getting into government last year was to consent to several major solar projects that had been stuck in the in-tray. Solar is overwhelmingly popular with the British public. Our recent public attitudes survey found that solar energy is supported by 86% of the public—that figure has never dropped below 80%. I agree with the right hon. Member for Newark, however, that if we want to keep support for solar that high, it must be rolled out in a way that provides communities with a say and with a direct benefit if they host clean power projects. First, that means protecting local communities and ensuring that only the right projects get the green light from the planning system. All projects are subject to a rigorous planning process in which the views and interests of local communities are considered. That includes things such as the potential impact on biodiversity, the local economy, visual amenity, protected landscapes and land use. Secondly, it is essential that communities feel involved in the decision making on projects. Developers of projects larger than 50 MW, which qualify as nationally significant infrastructure, must complete considerable community engagement before any decision is taken. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that we are about to return control over a greater number of those projects to local authorities by doubling the threshold to 100 MW. That will come into force at the end of this year. For projects of all sizes, however, the level and quality of community engagement by developers is taken into account by decision makers. The right hon. Member for Newark expressed concern about the use of agricultural land. The planning guidance makes it clear that, whenever possible, developers should utilise brownfield, industrial, contaminated or previously developed land. Where the development of agricultural land is shown to be necessary, lower-quality land should be preferred to higher-quality land, but it is important that we do not overstate the amount of land that is used for solar developments. In the solar road map, which was published in June, we set out our expectation that, even in the most ambitious scenarios, only up to 0.4% of UK land would be devoted to solar—significantly less, as Members may be aware, than is currently covered by golf courses. I will come on to the issue of clustering and concentration in a moment. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned food security. We do not accept that there is a trade-off between solar deployment and food security. In fact, the chief climate adviser to the National Farmers Union stated recently that there is no threat to national food security from solar. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned biodiversity. There is evidence that solar can improve biodiversity when it is installed on agricultural land—he talked about sheep and mentioned sheep grazing under solar panels. Under biodiversity net gain, projects smaller than 50 MW are required to increase biodiversity by 10%, and we are investigating the possibility of extended BNG to nationally significant projects as well. I do not know if he has read the recent study by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the University of Cambridge that found that solar farms in East Anglia have up to three times more birds than surrounding arable farmland. When local communities do their country a great service, as the right hon. Gentleman said, by hosting solar farms, it is important that they enjoy a share of the benefits. In a recent working paper, we proposed that it should be mandatory for developers to provide community benefit funds. The working paper included a call for evidence seeking views on facilitating shared ownership and on whether the Government should consider expanding shared ownership, and we are currently working to get that framework right.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Solar Development: Newark · Hansard source

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  I am pretty sure that my hon. Friend has raised that issue at Energy Security and Net Zero questions before. I will remind the Minister for Energy, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), to engage further with him about that. On clustering, and coming to the nub of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, some communities feel that what they are being asked to host is excessive. I have a few responses to that issue. First, the planning system includes provisions to assess cumulative impacts under such circumstances, so that should be a part of the process. Secondly, we will be changing the way that we allocate energy infrastructure around the country. To date, developers have been incentivised to build projects where there is spare grid capacity and in industrial areas, such as the midlands. That is why there is that attraction and that can lead to clustering. In the future, we will take a completely different approach to the one that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. We have commissioned the National Energy System Operator to create a strategic spatial energy plan that will set out a strategy for how new infrastructure should be spread across the country. By investing in our electricity networks and our grid, we can ensure that the grid will go where the projects are, rather than the other way around. I wish I had time to answer all the other points that the right hon. Gentleman raised about storage and safety, but I will be happy to do so in writing. Finally, I want to focus on what we are doing to accelerate solar deployment on rooftops. We will encourage the installation of solar on new-build housing and on commercial buildings through new building standards. The vast majority of new homes built under these standards will have rooftop solar fitted. We have permitted development rights to allow most rooftop projects to proceed without an application for planning permission, and we have just conducted a call for evidence about adding solar canopies in car parks. Great British Energy is putting solar on 200 schools and on 200 NHS sites to bring down bills and build more local clean power. Next month, we will launch our ambitious warm homes plan, with £13.2 billion available to support people with the upfront costs of installing green technology, including rooftop solar, insulation of homes, heat pumps and so on. We are unleashing a rooftop revolution because we think that rooftop is so important, but the scale of the challenge facing us, to get to clean power by 2030 and to ramp up renewables, means that ground-mounted solar and floating solar, which the Government also support, have to be a part of the plan. To sum up, we take the concerns raised by the right hon. Gentleman very seriously. We want to take people with us on our clean power mission, which will work only if we do so. We are putting measures in place to get the planning process right, to ensure that communities benefit from hosting clean energy, and to support the strategic spread of projects across the country, including in urban areas, through our rooftop revolution. I am glad that the British people agree with us that solar is a vital part of our future energy mix, but we are never complacent about retaining that support. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to set out—in brief, at least—our position, and he will appreciate why we cannot be too specific about some of the points he raises. Question put and agreed to.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Net Zero Policies · Hansard source

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  Perhaps if the right hon. Member had been here yesterday, she would have been able to engage with the Secretary of State on this. The science is absolutely clear: every avoided fraction of a degree of warming makes a difference to the severity of climate impacts. That is why the Prime Minister went to the global leaders summit at COP29 last year to announce a new 1.5°C-aligned nationally determined contribution, and we will continue to show international leadership.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Net Zero Policies · Hansard source

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  Yes, of course we look at the cumulative impact of these developments. Having been in the Department, the right hon. Gentleman will know that we have an excellent team of scientists led by Professor Paul Monks, who I want to pay tribute to because he is standing down later this year. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would want to do so too.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Net Zero Policies · Hansard source

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  As someone who grew up in Luton, I am not sure I am allowed to say that I love Watford, because there is an age-old rivalry there—but yes, we know that acting now with our clean energy superpower mission, scaling up renewables, reinforcing the grid and reducing our reliance on volatile fossil fuel markets will mean a cleaner, more secure future for generations to come. That is why, unlike the Conservatives, we are following the science and showing the leadership that is needed at home and abroad.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Net Zero Policies · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, the Secretary of State made an incredibly important statement to this House outlining the crises we face when it comes to climate change and the decline of nature. Tackling this starts with being honest about the science and what the experts are telling us. We know that we can only have climate security for future generations by acting at scale today.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Climate Change Committee Report · Hansard source

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  I am happy to join the hon. Member in congratulating his local council. I visited the Local Government Association the week before last, I think, with the local net zero delivery group, on which we have representation from all areas of local government. I am keen to learn from the best and translate that into action for others who need a bit more encouragement.