Pippa Heylings MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Jun 2026 · Progression of Bills through Parliament · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the petitioners on their resilience not just this evening, but over time. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) on the excellent way in which he put across the central tenets of the petition and our debate, which I think has been misrepresented by several Members, unfortunately. I am grateful to the hundreds of constituents who wrote to me over the course of the debates on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to share their views and perspectives. I pay tribute to all those who provided compelling, powerful and emotive evidence on, and personal testimony to, what they thought should be the choice available to people with a terminal diagnosis in their dying days. This is also personal to me. I have long held with the principle of assisted dying, but I have had long, deep conversations with my husband over the last couple of years about the choices he would like available to him if and when his leukaemia eventually becomes terminal. I know which choices he would want to be available. The Bill had well over 175 hours of scrutiny in both Houses, and that followed the Health and Social Care Committee hearing evidence and expert testimony on assisted dying and assisted suicide—18 months-worth in 2023-24, before the private Member’s Bill was introduced—to determine how such a Bill could be acceptable to the legislature and the public, so there was plenty of evidence, testimony and analysis before the private Member’s Bill came forward. After all that, a principle is clear to me and many constituents: legislation should succeed or fail because our elected body in Parliament has reached a decision on it—it has primacy. The House of Lords does indeed have a role in scrutinising Bills that come before Parliament, but it works through conventions, such as self-regulation. Earlier, the Chair set a strict speaking time for today’s debate so that every single one of us could have the chance to make our points, and also to ensure that we had a timely discussion and a conclusion to the debate. That does not happen in the House of Lords because of self-regulation. The Lord Speaker also does not group amendments to make sure that there is timely progression of the proceedings. That, ultimately—because the process was abused—failed both Houses, democracy itself and faith in democracy, because the House of Lords did not allow the Bill to be returned to the Commons in time for further decision. No matter one’s view of the Bill, I believe, like many constituents and the petitioners, that Parliament should determine the fate of any Bill. I therefore ask the Leader of the House if he will seriously consider the reform that is now needed of the procedures for the timely passage of Bills through Parliament, and his view of the relationship between both Houses and the fact that we can no longer have an unelected House of Lords that frustrates the will of the House of Commons.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  We have been asking for the warm homes plan for Christmas for the past two years. It is better late than never, but we have mixed feelings in unwrapping it. The Liberal Democrats have long called for an emergency home energy upgrade scheme with free insulation and heat pumps, and we have recently submitted proposals for low-interest loan schemes, so we really welcome this significant investment by the Government in low-carbon heating. It is folly for anyone to think that we can rely on Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America for the gas to heat our homes, so it is right for the Government to help households make this shift. Every solar panel, heat pump and battery installed will protect families from volatile fossil fuel costs and make homes cheaper to both warm and cool, which is a key point. However, I share the concerns of the energy efficiency sector about the balance that is being struck between insulation and electrification. As the Secretary of State said, we have seen fuel poverty rise and rates of insulation fall over the last five years, and the UK has some of the least energy-efficient housing in Europe, leading to serious health problems and cold, damp, Dickensian home conditions. Despite our warnings, there is still no clarity in this plan about what will replace the ECO programme, leaving supply chains in limbo and skilled installers going bankrupt. The delay—I will call this out—could leave us without an operational national fuel poverty strategy over the coming winter. We hope that is not the case, and we will therefore hold the Government to account on this and other things that have been mentioned. The gas and electricity price reform has been postponed again, and efficiency standards for landlords have been weakened. Thank you so much for taking on board the rooftop revolution on the back of the New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), but the future homes standard is still missing in action. We cannot afford more failures. We welcome this significant investment, and there is no time to waste.

• 8 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  This past week, we have all been speaking about the need to respect the rule of international law, yet transnational repression in which authoritarian regimes extend their jurisdiction beyond their borders and powers is worryingly present on UK soil. My constituent Shahzad Akbar, who is a former human rights lawyer, cabinet Minister and political dissident from Pakistan, has faced repeated and violent attacks against him and efforts to intimidate him. He has suffered an acid attack in his home in front of his four-year-old daughter. Just on Christmas eve, he had a physical assault against him, resulting in a broken nose and jaw, which again happened in front of his young family. Just before new year’s eve, he had a terrifying arson attack on his home. I have made the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary aware of those attacks, but does the Leader of the House agree that that cannot be allowed on British soil? Further measures are needed to protect political dissidents here in our country, and a debate on transnational repression and the Government’s measures to combat it is in the interests of democracy and this House.

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

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  It is a privilege to speak in support of this Bill. This is a hugely important step that, as the Minister laid out, will finally allow the United Kingdom to ratify the high seas treaty and play its full part in protecting our shared global ocean. That is something that I hope Members across the Chamber will support. I share in congratulations to the Minister on keeping her word that she gave as shadow Minister. That is really good to see. The Bill comes at a crucial time. After more than a decade of negotiation, this treaty is one of the greatest biodiversity conservation victories in history. It is a landmark moment for global ocean governance, setting out for the first time a clear legal framework for establishing ocean sanctuaries and area-based management tools on the high seas, two-thirds of which lie beyond national borders and are therefore currently lawless. We refer to our rainforests as our planet’s lungs, but our oceans are just as important for biodiversity, regulating our climate, absorbing almost a third of human-made carbon dioxide, and sustaining billions of people around the world. As we have heard, they are also under extraordinary pressure from overfishing, plastic pollution and the growing threat of deep-sea mining. The treaty is currently the only viable pathway to meeting the global 30 by 30 biodiversity goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s ocean before 2030. Currently, less than 1% of the high seas is fully protected, so time is running out to meet that goal by the end of the decade. I welcome the Bill, which provides the legal framework for the UK to deliver on the high seas treaty’s three central pillars: first, the fair sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources, the DNA and data of ocean life; secondly, the creation of marine protected areas and area-based management tools on the high seas; and thirdly, stronger environmental impact assessments to prevent harmful activities before they happen. This has to be fair for developing nations, and capacity building and technology transfer is central to that. This is personal to me. Before entering Parliament, I spent over a decade working professionally on the creation of marine protected areas in east Africa and South America. I helped to create the first ever multiple-use marine reserve, together with fishermen and Government in Zanzibar on Misali island. I then spent several years mediating conflict and reaching consensus between fishermen, tour operators, the Galapagos national park, and the Government, to help create the Galapagos marine reserve, which at that time was one of the largest MPAs created. Since then I have been involved in work towards international marine governance beyond national jurisdiction, the high seas treaty, as well as the UK’s Blue Belt programme, and I worked with communities and officials on all those overseas territories. I have seen at first hand what is at stake, from working with fishermen to prevent the destruction of coral reefs by dynamite fishing, to the terrifying news that we have reached the first climate tipping point, with our precious and beautiful warm-water coral reefs now in irreversible decline, putting at threat the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. I have also mediated negotiations with the fishing sector on deep-water fishing to find sustainable fishing quotas and standards for tuna fishing, while protecting vital marine corridors for our endangered marine mammals and birds. I have dived along those, tagging whale sharks to understand the routes that they take across the high seas, beyond national jurisdictions. That is often the wild west, where we are facing the “tragedy of the commons”, and there are no agreed rules or governance to stop everyone in the race from taking as much as possible before someone else does. That is why it is so important to highlight that the global ocean treaty could provide a legal mechanism to address the “blue hole” in the south Atlantic—a region requiring agreements about what is sustainable fishing practice, and ways effectively to deter terribly unsustainable activity. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a coherent ocean policy, and an ocean strategy that links the global commitments we make through the Bill to stronger domestic action on marine protection, sustainable fishing and pollution at home. The UK was instrumental in securing an ambitious treaty text at the UN, and we should take pride in that. However, as other Members have said, we must be honest: the UK was not among the first 60 nations to ratify that treaty, and that matters because where Britain leads, others follow. The commitments being made today must be matched with commitments to sustainable fisheries management and marine conservation back in our own waters. Our credibility and moral authority on the world stage is under threat when Ministers seem to say that we might not implement an outright ban on bottom trawling, despite pledging earlier this year to extend the ban on bottom-towed fishing gear to offshore protected areas. I was a member of the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into marine governance, which recommended the ban on bottom trawling ahead of the UN ocean conference, and we commended the Government on their announcement at that time. I fully support the Committee Chair’s response, which repeats the Committee’s call to completely ban bottom trawling within offshore MPAs, and pleads with the Minister and the Government to take the right decision on the back of the consultation that is happening now, and not to undermine the integrity of our protected waters. In conclusion, the Liberal Democrats are clear: we support the Bill, and we urge the Government to bring forward ratification swiftly—I hope Members across the Chamber will support that—so that the UK has a seat at the table when Ocean COP1 takes place, and going forward.

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

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I applaud her constant advocacy in Parliament on behalf of farmers. The second part of the debate is about the conference of the parties and how we can bring about legally binding obligations that translate into exactly the kind of measures my hon. Friend talked about. In just a few weeks, world leaders will come together at the global climate summit, COP30, which will be held in Belém, Brazil, in close proximity to the Amazon rainforest. It is being held there deliberately to symbolise the Amazon rainforest’s critical role in global climate stability. In the lead-up to COP30, I hope this debate today will allow us to consider why this summit is expected to finally be billed as the nature, food and climate COP, putting food systems at the heart of the climate agenda for the first time, and rightly so, because the way we grow, produce and consume food is one of the biggest drivers of the climate and nature crises and one of the most powerful levers we have to solve them. At the same time, climate change is one of the most significant threats to our food production and national security. Why does COP matter? We have come a long way since the Kyoto negotiations in 1997. That was the first time that countries around the world agreed global governance arrangements to address the shared challenge of global warming. At the time, we were hurtling towards a catastrophic 4°C or even 5°C world, so what a feat it was, unknown in any other sector or on any other issue, to create a framework agreement between 198 parties—197 countries or states and the European Union—to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that could help to prevent dangerous human-induced disruption of the climate system. Through dialogue, negotiation and finance, the COP process has brought about legally binding agreements—the Kyoto protocol and then the Paris agreement in 2015—where we all agreed that we have a common and interdependent future, and that we need to do everything possible to keep global warming below 1.5°C. The Amazon rainforest has been called the lungs of the planet for its ability to capture and store carbon. Yet, right now, the rainforest is gasping for breath as we perilously approach the tipping point where the Brazilian rainforest switches from being a huge sponge, store and carbon sink to being a source of carbon emissions, due to massive deforestation and degradation through land use change. That is why, now more than ever, we need to ratchet up our collective ambition. I know that rainforest well, and I know what it means to the many indigenous and local communities that depend on it, having worked professionally on climate and nature negotiations for more than a decade in South America, in the countries that share the Amazon: Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil. I was part of the UK’s largest international climate policy programme in the region, and latterly I worked as the global team lead for the UK’s international £100 million climate and nature programme, the biodiverse landscapes fund. Since 2010, I have seen at first hand the internal workings, impacts, successes and failures of three relevant UN COP processes—the climate COP, the nature COP and the avoiding desertification COP—working alongside Governments and non-state actors such as businesses, scientists, local communities and local governments. I know how long people have argued for food systems to be a central pillar of the climate framework. Our own independent Climate Change Committee, in its seventh carbon budget, highlighted the importance of agriculture and land use change in meeting our climate targets. I therefore want to make three points today. First, the transformation of food systems is essential for climate action, food security and nature restoration. Secondly, this transition must be just, supporting our farmers and animal welfare as we change how food is produced. Thirdly, the UK must show renewed leadership at COP30 by leading from the front, with the Prime Minister, and by committing to sign a new global declaration on food systems. Why does food system transformation matter? The EAT-Lancet Commission announced that even if fossil fuels are phased out, the world will breach 1.5 °C because of emissions from food systems alone. Unsustainable food systems are driving deforestation, soil degradation, water pollution and marine biodiversity loss. Globally, agriculture and land use are responsible for almost 60% of biodiversity loss. Exeter University research revealed this week that we have now reached the first catastrophic tipping point, with warm water coral reefs facing irreversible decline, threatening nature, food security and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people—a moment many of us hoped we would not reach. Closer to home, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit recently found that wheat lost to storms and drought over the past five years could have produced more than 4 billion loaves of bread—the equivalent of an entire year’s supply for the UK. There has been a strong build-up to COP30 in Belém, which is expected to produce a declaration on food systems, building on discussions at the Bonn climate conference and the COP28 declaration on sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems and climate action, which the UK signed.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 1 September, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), now Minister of State in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, issued a written statement on the contingent liabilities from the funded decommissioning programme and Government support package for Sizewell C, which is due to be undertaken on 1 October. It is a liability to Government and taxpayers that could reach up to the tune of £12 billion. That is a significant contingent liability for the public purse, and due parliamentary scrutiny is necessary. Although the Minister stated reasons for not providing the required 14 days for scrutiny and withholding of approval, which is normally required for any contingent liability above £300,000, surely Parliament should have been presented with the results of the ongoing review of the liabilities during whatever time was available, and parliamentary time should have been scheduled to allow parliamentarians to scrutinise—