Barry Gardiner
MP for Brent West · Labour · United Kingdom
“Sir Desmond, imagine that the top brains in the country’s security and intelligence community produced a report that told you how to save the world. You would want to see it, right? Well, the report we are discussing is not about how to save the world; it is about what happens if we do not.”
“The nuclear threat will rise as clashes between nuclear powers become more frequent. Those are the cold assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Government were right to think that those assessments might scare people—they scare me—but they were wrong to think that they could hide them from the public.”
“The Minister will know that the grant structure on which UKRI is based gives out grants for a maximum of three to five years. Very few are for five years—most are for three years or under—yet the sort of long-term scientific development that my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making a superb case for the importance of funding for her deep earth facility. I had the privilege of going to the National Oceanography Centre’s deep oceans facility, and the innovative science there on carbon sequestration is superb.”
“The Prime Minister has spoken powerfully about the devolution of power and giving back control. Will he therefore ensure that the proposals for commonhold and leasehold reform, for which 5 million leaseholders in this country are waiting with bated breath, do give that power and control back to those people, through the right to enfranchi…”
“We know how much land there is in the UK, and we know the extent of our inland waters and seas, so we can know how much we have to do to protect them, as we are required to do by target 3 of the global biodiversity framework.”
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“The £60 billion of borrowing for the energy guarantee is to paid back by bill payers, not the oil and gas producers who are making record profits on the back of the public’s misery. That is not fair. Will the Minister consider raising not a temporary windfall tax but the basic tax rate for oil and gas producers, which in the UK is the lowest in the entire world? If he raised it even to the global average, he would raise an addition £13.4 billion every single year.”
“The irony is that this is a regime, which, since 16 September, has killed at least three further young people in an attempt to prove to its population that it did not kill Mahsa Amini. The reduction of sanctions and the unfreezing of Iranian assets would serve only to strengthen the regime and turbocharge its repression of young people such as Mahsa Amini. What assessment have the Government made of the attempt by President Biden to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which would lead to such a reduction in sanctions?”
“While the Chancellor was speaking so optimistically about growth, the City saw the FTSE 100 fall, the S&P 500 fall and the pound fall to the lowest level since 1985. Given that oil and gas prices on the wholesale markets are in dollars, he will appreciate that that has increased still further the borrowing that he will have to pay back for the package announced yesterday. If he is so optimistic about growth, will he set a timescale? Will that timescale be six months? Will he retire in a year if the growth that he has predicated has not been achieved, or is this an admission that he is going to stuff as much money into as many of his friends’ pockets as possible before the general election in 2024?”
“The domestic scheme is based on a loan to be repaid out of future bills. If the business scheme is to be repaid in the same way, why would businesses not regard it as a deferred tax rise? If it is not, does the Secretary of State really expect it to be repaid out of general taxation by the rest of the taxpayers? “Tax, tax, tax” is what he is saying.”
“This cannot be justified on environmental or economic grounds. The investment allowance will give gas producers 91p in every pound invested in new frack pads. Warwick Business School calculates that fracking could produce 330 billion cubic metres at a maximum—about 100 billion therms. At today’s spot price, from about 20 minutes ago, that would be £289 billion. Given that the taxpayers are covering nine tenths of the investment, why should they not get nine tenths of the profit?”
“Last month, my constituent Alan Suthers phoned 999 at 7 in the evening. His wife had suffered a stroke. He knew the signs—face, arm, speech, time—and the urgency of medical care. That care arrived five hours later, at 1 o’clock in the morning. The Health Secretary can have all the ambitions, expectations and targets she likes, but does she agree that she will not have the human resource to achieve them unless she addresses the workforce strategy and the 132,000 vacancies that currently exist in the NHS?”
“And now it is complete. May her soul rest in peace, and may God save the King.”
“Would there be mention of charities and visits to communities celebrating significant anniversaries or suffering from disasters? But two things were constant: the Commonwealth and her own deep, very personal faith in Jesus Christ, which was the guiding principle of her life. Many have spoken of her life as a pattern of duty and service, and it was. But the virtues that, in my view, her life so manifestly displayed are what Christians call the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance. As St Paul says, “against such there is no law.” Integrity is not a very fashionable thing in the public sphere these days, but her life was one of real integrity. We thank God that she brought all those virtues together in her life. It was a life that was selfless; it was a life that was whole.”
“In Brent we like to claim that we are the most diverse place in the world. That may even be true. We speak more than 160 languages around the dinner tables, and we have welcomed generations of immigrants, people who came to build a better life for their children, and asylum seekers like that lady from Afghanistan. She spoke for every one of my constituents in Brent when she said, “I at Queen’s party, sorry.” Every year for more than 40 years, my family has had a ritual. No matter whether the turkey is ready or not, Christmas dinner has to be finished in time to watch the Queen’s Christmas message at 3. I hope it does not seem disrespectful, but we used to grade them. Was it as good as last year? Would she focus on something new this time?”
“This morning I was walking to the station at Wembley Central and an Afghan lady stopped me. Her English was, let us say, not much better than my Pashto, but through her accent I heard her say, “You are MP, yes?” I said that I was and asked if I could help her in any way. She shook her head and left me confused, because I thought I heard her say, “I at Green party, sorry”, and then she moved on. It took me a few moments to work out what she was actually saying. She wasn’t making a statement about her political affiliation, but saying that she had been at the Queen’s party, one of the glorious street parties that we held in Brent for the platinum jubilee. And in that simple word, “sorry”, she wanted to convey her condolences and share her own sorrow at the death of the late Her Majesty the Queen.”
“Delays to cancer treatment can be a matter of life and death, yet the Government are still not meeting seven of the nine urgent referral cancer targets. Can we have a debate in Government time about how we can improve the situation for those awaiting cancer treatment?”
“The Prime Minister has been careful to frame her guarantee in terms of her refusal to tax, but will she not have a problem explaining to the British people how a levy on their bills in the future to repay the borrowing is not actually a tax?”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is making a broad and apposite speech. He was challenged on the rate of tax that he believes is appropriate, but he will know that prior to the introduction of the windfall tax, the UK had the lowest tax rate of any oil and gas producer in the world. He was challenged on 65%, which is actually 6% below the average of all producers in the world. If he were prepared to go to the global average, it would still mean that relief could be given to taxpayers in this country.”
“The UK has the lowest tax take in the world from offshore oil and gas. Even with the temporary energy profits levy, the tax take will still be six percentage points lower than the global average, and the new investment allowance announced by the Government will compensate companies 91p for every £1 they spend on new oil and gas projects. Will the Government look carefully at the fiscal regime and abolish the obscene subsidy that is distorting investment into outdated fossil fuels instead of new renewables, which do not qualify for that investment allowance?”
“The children of our service personnel in Cyprus are being taught by supply teachers who were brought out under employment contracts with the Ministry of Defence. The MOD is now threatening to sack them unless they sign new contracts that abolish their pension rights and lower their terms and conditions. Given that the Government profess to be against the practice of fire and rehire, may we have an urgent statement on why the MOD is joining companies such as P&O in using such unfair employment practices, and an assessment of the impact that the dispute with the teachers is likely to have on armed forces children’s education?”
“The recent Carbon Tracker report set out the exposure of each financial sector across the world to stranded assets—over $1 trillion in total. Will the COP President be engaging with each of the heads of the financial sectors—such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the London stock exchange—to ensure that they cope with that problem?”
“The 5.5 million public sector workers whose real-terms wages have stagnated and declined in the past 12 years have no confidence that they can continue to pay their rent, with 9% inflation eroding their pay still further. A blind eye has been turned to jobs for sexual favours, to ministerial bullying, to crony contracts and to wine time Fridays—although people did ask “WTF?”—yet this Prime Minister wants to stay on as caretaker. Ponder that word. Is there any word in the entire English language that describes this Prime Minister less than “caretaker”? He is a reckless narcissist, and nobody inside or outside this Chamber should have confidence in his Government.”
“Women and girls have no confidence that this Government, with their inability to properly tackle sexual predation in their own ranks, will deal with the violence against them. Minority communities who experience racial profiling and have been outraged as police shared racist photos among themselves have no confidence that this Government will press for real reform. The families and friends of the 72 who died in Grenfell Tower have no confidence that, five years on, this Government have acted to make others safe. The 2 million families depending on food banks to feed their children have no confidence that this Government understand what it means to see their children go to bed hungry.”
“The taxpayers paying the highest level of tax for 70 years and facing the highest inflation in 40 years have no confidence that this Government have the ability to tackle the record £2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime debt the UK has ever seen. The victims of crime who have watched crime rise by 18% while prosecutions fall have no confidence in this Government. The people awaiting their passports because of the chaos in the Home Office have no confidence that they will be able to travel abroad for either business or a family holiday. The refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution in Syria or Afghanistan have no confidence that they will not be deported to a country where they have no family and no connection.”
“Former Conservative Cabinet colleagues are publicly accusing each other of economic incompetence, of negligence in preventing fraud and even of being a Liberal Democrat, yet after defenestrating their party leader because they had no confidence in him, Conservative Members have decided to leave the man in place as Prime Minister of this Government. As a result, the public have no confidence in them. That is clear because the Government refuse to call a general election, as they have no confidence that they would win it. The 6.6 million people waiting for treatment in the NHS have no confidence in this Government. The parents of the 350,000 children on that waiting list have no confidence in them. The 50,000 imaginary nurses currently housed in the 40 presumably non-existent hospitals have no confidence in them either.”
“Two days ago, my constituent sent me a photograph of his 15-year-old daughter Zahida. She was lying in her coffin, because she had drunk poison to avoid a worse fate, living under the Taliban. On 25 August last year she, her mother and her sisters were called to the Baron Hotel at Kabul airport but were unable to board the plane to safety because of the bomb explosion that occurred on that date. Many families of British residents are still trapped in Afghanistan. I wholly applaud all the work the Government have done for Ukrainian refugees and the setting up of the hub, but it seems that the Afghan refugees are absolutely forgotten. Please will the Leader of the House secure a debate in Government time on what the Government are doing to assist Afghan refugees?”
“Does the hon. Member recall that we set out a biodiversity target to halt the decline in nature by 2010, and we set out a target again in 2010 under the Aichi targets to halt the decline in nature loss by 2020, but we achieved neither? Is there anything in the papers in advance of COP15 that gives her any hope that our ability to implement a reverse or even a halt in the decline in nature by 2030 is more likely this time than it was in the previous two decades?”
“We are extraordinarily blessed in this country to have more than 250 years of amateur scientific data-gathering. We have baselines against which we can say, with real confidence, that 41% of all UK species have declined in the past 52 years, since 1970, but under-employed Church of England vicars and other gentlefolk going back to Georgian England provide us with a database that other countries can only of dream of. May I ask the Minister to ensure that our support for COP15, and the financial assistance that we make available to countries, focus on enabling them to have an accurate dataset of their own natural and biological assets.”
“Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to discuss the Dasgupta review, it became clear that she had not read it. Yesterday, when the chair of the Committee on Climate Change appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and was asked about DEFRA’s plan for net zero, it was notable that he said not only that there was no clarity for others, but that there was no implementation that it was possible to judge because the metrics were not there. Just as the Government should implement net zero stress tests for all budgets, so they should implement net nature tests against all expenditure to ensure that alignment with our post-2030 biodiversity framework is maintained. That brings me to the importance of data.”
“The disaster that destroyed so many lives and so much wealth is counted in our economic system, GDP, as a positive, but the loss of the tupelo and cypress forest swamp, which had previously—when the trees were not being taken down—reduced the surge swell and protected the city, was not counted as a negative in any economic calculation. The Dasgupta review, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred, set out with great economic force the consequences of what Professor Dasgupta termed “impact inequality”: the imbalance between humanity’s demand and nature’s supply, and the need to reconstruct economics so that nature is an essential part of it and ecosystem services are properly valued. It was disappointing that when the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon.”
“Pollination services, clean air, the purification of water by forests and the protection of coastal cities by mangroves are all regarded as externalities by classical economics. Let me now enter into the earlier debate between the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—my hon. Friend on this side—and the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), whom, certainly in terms of conservation, I am happy to call an hon. Friend on the other side. Our obsession with GDP suggests that the coastal surge that destroyed cities such as New Orleans—under hurricane Katrina—resulted in the growth of GDP owing to the economic activity when all the new levees were built.”
“We spend our lives trying to win, but in this struggle between ourselves and our planet, there is always going to be just one winner: planet Earth will continue in a new form long after we have made it impossible for our own species to live on it. Reversing the trend of biodiversity loss requires urgent, transformative change. That is code for saying that we need to consume less, because at the current rate of consumption, we would need three planets-worth of resources by 2050. That means that we must examine our economy. It is not just about reducing our consumption; it is about changing our economic accounting model in order to account properly for the free goods and services that we are destroying.”
“Only last weekend, as I was in Durham, the IPBES report set out again what we already know: the global rate of species extinction is between 10 to 100 times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years. We are living in the Anthropocene—the sixth great extinction event. Human activity is actually being compared to the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs—except that unlike the asteroid we know what we are doing. We know that 12% of tree species and over 1,300 wild mammal species are threatened by unsustainable logging and hunting, more than 25% of the world’s forests are subject to industrial logging, and 34% of marine wild fish stocks are overfished—but the plunder goes on. We politicians are strange creatures: we say we want to do the right thing but so often we end up doing the easy thing instead.”
“I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whom I congratulate on securing the debate. Here is my perspective. Life on this planet has been going for 4.5 billion years—4,500 million years. Human beings have been on this planet for 6 million years. That means that we have been around for 0.013% of the time that life has existed on this planet. We are cashing in 4.5 billion years of planetary saving bonds and blowing it on bling, and nothing but our own hubris gives us the right to do so. Exponential growth within a finite system leads to collapse, and that is what is happening—collapse. We know it is happening.”
“The overseas territories need that support to get the database.”
“My hon. Friend is entirely right. One of the constant problems, particularly in our overseas territories, which do not have the resources to be able to establish their own datasets, is the gaming between them and the Foreign Office, because technically, through the convention on biological diversity, we are responsible for the biodiversity in those overseas territories. It is a great tragedy that this palming off of responsibility between the two continues. I know that the Minister is new in post, and I welcome him to his post, but I hope he will have robust discussions with his colleagues in the Foreign Office about this. Perhaps he could whisper something to that effect in Lord Goldsmith’s ear, given that he is Minister of State in both DEFRA and the Foreign Office. This really does need to be sorted out.”
“The COP is setting out its target to halt the loss of biodiversity, but as I said earlier, sadly that has been our 10-yearly target for nearly three decades now. For effective implementation, we must ensure that there are key staging posts to show that we are on the right track to achieving the long-term objective. Interim objectives around the amount of reforestation and the amount of marine protection zones must be used as staging posts in the same way as we in this country use the five-yearly carbon budgets as staging posts towards our 2050 net zero target.”
“We also know that, even when NBSAPs are based on sound scientific data, they have to be implemented. There is no point in simply putting them into your action plan and not implementing them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central spoke about the Lawton report. Professor John Lawton set those principles in place over 15 years ago and those principles are clear. We have to act. Whether it is in the UK, sub-Saharan Africa or south-east Asia, we have to act at a landscape scale. As John Lawton suggested, we need “bigger, better, more joined-up” habitat. That in effect is the response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on the metrics. We need to see at a landscape scale that that is happening.”
“Indeed. One of the things COP15 is grappling with at the moment is how to reconcile the different metrics that different countries use to assess their national biodiversity and sustainability action plans, and how to integrate them into a common measure. It is much more difficult to do this with biodiversity than it is with climate change. We know the common measure in climate change—it is CO 2 —but we do not have an easy common measure for biodiversity. My right hon. Friend is right. It is one of the things that COP15 really has to grapple with. I mentioned the national biodiversity and sustainability action plans—NBSAPs—that are produced by many countries. The truth is they are simply inadequate, not from a lack of goodwill on the part of those countries but often because of a lack of the robust scientific data we were speaking about.”
“That is essential. If we are to enable those developing countries in the global south to do exactly what the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was talking about with regard to the restoration of degraded land, and if we are to deal with these problems, we have to be serious. As the human species, we do not have the right not to be.”
“She pointed out to the politicians assembled for the launch of COP26 that the promise we had given was for $100 billion a year to be put into the global planet fund to help the global south to cope with climate change and to take effective mitigation efforts. We have not delivered that, and we are nowhere near delivering it. She pointed out that it was not because we could not afford it, because we had just spent $9 trillion—trillions, not billions—bailing ourselves out over the covid pandemic. The funds are available and they must be made available. The extent of quantitative easing that the global north has allowed itself since the 2008 global financial crisis has been more than $36 trillion. What is COP15 asking for? It is asking for the same as was promised at COP26: $100 billion a year, rising to $700 billion a year.”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is right that we need to look at land restoration as one of the key indicators. It is particularly the case in sub-Saharan African countries, which are facing an increasing challenge of desertification from climate change, which they are having to fight against, rather than just looking at the land that is already semi-desert and trying to see how to restore that. It is a huge problem. The NBSAPs must be living documents, which is why they need to be ratcheted up, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, every five years between major COPs. Let me turn to finance. I pay tribute to Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who spoke at the beginning of COP26. For my money, she was the most powerful speaker at the whole event.”
“Nobody else is here to argue for nature. We must be the guardians of that trust. We have been on this planet for only 0.13% of the time that biodiversity has existed. We have no right to destroy the world around us.”
“We will not have global agreement and global co-operation on the environment and our failing global biodiversity unless biopiracy by pharmaceutical companies is addressed. These companies must not go into communities—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred to this—and say, “We are going to take the genetic sequences of these two trees and use them in our pharmaceutical products, but you will not get any advantages from it.” That is why the UK must be foursquare behind access and benefit sharing at COP15. An ecosystem has the right to exist, to flourish, to regenerate its vital cycles and to evolve naturally without human disruption. Nature has rights. We often think that rights apply only to us, but trusts and institutions have rights, and those rights are safeguarded by trustees and guardians. That is us.”
“The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell spoke about the way in which our financial sector was incentivising deforestation, particularly in Brazil. He is absolutely correct. We should not simply say, as is the Government’s position, that companies need to declare their climate and sustainability actions in their mandatory annual reporting, and that they should not fund any activity, such as ranching in Brazil, that drives illegal deforestation. That is not good enough. When those stipulations were put in place, countries such as Brazil simply changed the law to make it legal so that they could continue to receive the finance. There must be objectivity about whether something is or is not deforestation. I am conscious that I should not take up too much more time, but it is critical that COP15 addresses access and benefit sharing.”
“I am delighted that my hon. Friend made that intervention at precisely that moment, because it enables me to talk about green finance, and the importance of involving the private sector and ensuring that critical private finance is coming in. Green bonds and debt-for-biodiversity swaps are innovative and fundamental ways in which we should facilitate countries such as Belize to tackle the environmental problems they face. It cannot be done without money, and it cannot be done simply with public money. In fact, green bonds are now classed as more attractive than ordinary, vanilla bonds, because they tackle not one issue, but two; they mitigate risk on two factors. The secondary market in green bonds has really taken off. I want to talk about the way in which the financial sector needs to be regulated and guided through the issue.”
“I certainly would not roll my eyes, and I pay tribute to the Scottish Government for setting up the natural capital convention. It must be almost 10 years ago now that the first natural capital convention in the world took place, so Scotland has shown leadership on these matters. The point is that we must all try to learn from each other and make sure that we get the best out of it.”
“Will the Minister confirm that, even though COP15 is taking place in Montreal, the presidency is still with China and the Chinese Minister will be the president of the COP?”
“I think the whole House understands why the Minister is unable or reluctant to commit the Prime Minister to attending COP15, but is it possible for him to commit that either the Secretary of State will attend it, or he or his successor will do so as the Minister responsible for biodiversity?”
“When discussing ambulance response and waiting times, the Minister kept using the phrase “month-on-month” improvements. Can she specify which months? She will know that it depends on which month you choose as your baseline—if it was the worst month in recorded history, it is not difficult to show month-on-month improvements.”
“Thousands of Tamils in my constituency are deeply concerned. They look back to 2013, when the coalition Government supported the move to hold the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka; and they look back to the measures that the UK Government took, as part of the European Union, to reinstate the generalised scheme of preferences plus, and to give trade preferences back to Sri Lanka. The Opposition advised against it all at the time, saying that the Government in Sri Lanka were no more than a kleptocracy. That has now been proven. The Minister needs to outline the measures that she will take to support a new, strong, inclusive and democratic Government in that state.”
“I make it clear that I do not want to cast aspersions on any individual Minister. This morning I visited the care workers of the St Monica Trust in Bristol. One worker told me that the average wage is between £16,000 and £17,000, and that the trust is asking them to take, in one case, a reduction of £6,000. The House will consider legislation later today that enables agency workers to undercut striking workers, in an atmosphere in which we are talking about levelling up. Does the Minister understand that these payments should not be made where a Minister resigns voluntarily? I understand it if a Prime Minister says, “Your services are dispensed with,” but to make any such severance payment following a voluntary resignation is really wrong.”
“Does the hon. Member understand that as the normal remedy is an injunction, what he proposes might, ironically, make injunctions against strikes more difficult for employers to obtain? One of the conditions for the grant of an interlocutory emergency injunction is that it must be shown that damages, if awarded at full trial, would not be an adequate remedy, so raising the level of that remedy makes it less likely that an employer could get an injunction. The hon. Member’s argument has therefore undermined itself.”
“However, the employer, by paying agency rates to strike breakers in a dispute, actually makes the union’s case for it, because it shows that the employer actually can pay higher rates for the job. How very foolish of them. Finally, I want to ask whether the Minister might, in her summing up, explain whether the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has replied to the letter written at the end of June by Hays, Adecco, Randstad and Manpower, in conjunction with the TUC, in which they said: “We can only see these proposals inflaming strikes—not ending them”. It seems to me that, when we have the employers of the agencies themselves saying that this is a bad thing to do, the Government should listen.”
“I want to ask the Minister tonight whether she will please report the St Monica Trust to the Health and Safety Executive and ensure that a positive inspection is carried out there, because the workers out on the picket line were very concerned about the safety of employing unskilled workers who do not understand the residents and are not able to care for them in the way that they have all the way through covid. They were there on Christmas day and all the time when relatives could not visit; they treated them as their family. The agency workers cannot do that. I want to make a couple of other brief points. Agency workers are generally paid significantly more than permanent staff, and that reflects the intermittent nature of their work.”