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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“Our country is in the throes of an extraordinary change in our constitutional arrangements. At this stage, no one can be entirely certain what the structure of our future relations with the European Union will be, but the Labour party is clear that the country cannot be left without the capacity to defend our manufacturing industry against unfair trading practices. Indeed, many Opposition Members will wish that the Government had been more keenly aware of the need for strong action on trade defence when our steel industry was put into crisis by the unfair dumping of Chinese steel, or when the United States took entirely unjustified action against Bombardier in Northern Ireland.”
“I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add: “this House recognises that on leaving the European Union, whether or not the UK concludes a new long-term customs union with the EU, it will need effective legislation to implement agreements with partner countries corresponding to international trade agreements of the European Union in place before the UK’s exit, to implement procurement obligations arising from the UK becoming a member of the Government Procurement Agreement in its own right, to establish a Trade Remedies Authority to deliver the new UK trade remedies framework, and to establish powers for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to collect and disclose data on exporters, but declines to give a Second Reading to the Trade Bill because it fails to set out proper procedures for Parliamentary consultation, scrutiny, debate and approval of future international trade agreements, fails to protect the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty in the implementation of those trade agreements previously negotiated by the European Union and in respect of changes to existing government procurement regulations arising from the UK’s or other countries’ accession to the Government Procurement Agreement, fails to establish sufficient scrutiny procedures to replace those that have pertained while the UK has been a member of the European Union, fails to guarantee that European Union standards and rights will be protected in future trade agreements, and fails to render the Trade Remedies Authority answerable to Parliament or representative of the full range of stakeholders.” May I take this opportunity to wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all those in this place who in their various ways serve the public, a very happy new year?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I commend him for the article he published this morning on LabourList, which I thought was an excellent exposé of the Bill. To answer his specific question, once the UK leaves the European Union, it cannot remain in the EU customs union, because by definition when a state leaves the European Union all EU rules cease to apply to it, as set out in article 50. The customs union is an institution of the European Union; it has its legal basis in the European treaties and its functioning is set out in EU regulations.”
“Friend the Member for Nottingham East, like me, will have been interested to find that provision to do just that was incorporated in clause 31 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, which we debated last night.”
“I will happily give way to my hon. Friend once I have answered our hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie). As we will no longer be a signatory to the European treaties and no longer come under their territorial scope, we cannot formally be a member of the EU’s customs union. As the EU’s treaties currently stand, only EU member states, and territories attached to those states, are actually members of the customs union. However, it is possible for the UK to enter into a customs union with the EU after Brexit, whereby we choose to have a joined external tariff and no tariffs on trade between the EU and the UK. That would, in effect, mirror the current arrangements. I think that my hon.”
“No, I am not telling the House that at all. I am happy to try to answer not only the letter of the Secretary of State’s question, but the spirit. Those on the Labour Front Bench have always tried to make it clear that we recognise the benefits of the single market to this country, and the benefits that traditionally the customs union has brought and that a customs union could bring. However, we are focused in the negotiations on achieving the benefits, rather than putting red lines around the structures, which is what the Government have done, and ruling those off the table.”
“Some of us believe that we still are a great trading nation, but clearly he does not. Yet somewhere along the way the Secretary of State seems to have lost his nerve. Instead of the legislative framework for a future trade policy that we were promised, he has left us with this hollowed out little embarrassment of a Bill, which extends to just six pages and four schedules. We have no more than a vague suggestion that at some point in future we might return to the business of discussing whether Parliament may or may not play a role in overseeing our relations with trading partners around the world.”
“I will press on. The Bill fails utterly to establish the legislative framework for the UK’s future trade policy, which it leaves entirely in the hands of Ministers. It also risks undermining the rights of the devolved Administrations through its undue centralisation of powers in Westminster. The impact assessment accompanying the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, which the House debated only yesterday, confirms that this Trade Bill was to provide the key measures necessary “to build a future trade policy for the UK once we leave the EU.” We were looking forward to a full debate today on the future of the powers that we will have repatriated from Brussels, and how we might like to use them to make Britain what the Secretary of State calls “a great trading nation once again”.”
“That would be an extremely bad deal indeed. I trust that fully answers my hon. Friend’s question.”
“The EU conducts the deals and agreements with third-party countries on behalf of Turkey that set its tariffs and quotas. Indeed, that has caused Turkey great concern, because while the Mexico-EU agreement means that Mexico can import cars into Turkey tariff-free, there is no reciprocal liberalisation of Mexico’s markets for Turkey’s textiles, and Turkey is extremely aggrieved about that. Were we to have the same arrangement, we could be in a position in which the European Union concluded an agreement with the United States—for example, perhaps along the lines of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which many Members would have concerns about—to the detriment of this country but the advantage of the European Union, which we would have no control over, and without liberalising US markets to British exports.”
“I am very happy to respond to my hon. Friend, and I understand the distinctions she is making, but she will also understand what I have already set out about the force of the treaties, which is simply a matter of law. We will not be bound by the treaties and therefore we would not be able to continue as a member of the EU, and therefore as a member of the EU customs union, although, as I have pointed out, we could then come back and form a customs union with the European Union. My hon. Friend asked specifically about Turkey’s relationship with the European Union. Turkey has a customs union agreement with the EU customs union, but it is not a member of the EU customs union—she should be aware of that—and there is therefore an asymmetry in the way in which its trade relations are conducted.”
“That is why, when it comes to the new agreements that the Bill is creating, we need the powers that I am talking about.”
“That means parliamentary approval of negotiating mandates for future trade arrangements; proper consultation with trade union, industry and civil society stakeholders; comprehensive impact assessments of the likely social, economic and environmental risks; a new scrutiny committee to fill the vacuum created by the loss of the existing powers over trade agreements; unrestricted access to the consolidated texts of trade and investment treaties as they are being formulated; the most rigorous ratification process, with a debate and vote on the Floor of the House— [ Interruption. ] The Secretary of State is chuntering away from a sedentary position, saying, “That’s not what this Bill is about.” My point is that that is what it should be about, and it is what the Government promised it would be about.”
“I will not give way again on that point. International trade agreements have the status of treaties under international law. They cannot be repealed in the same way that domestic legislation can be repealed, and they create real and binding obligations on future generations to uphold their provisions. In a word, they are serious undertakings that demand the most rigorous procedural safeguards if they are not to cause lasting harm. As we take back responsibility for trade policy from Brussels, do hon. Members really think we should end up with less scrutiny and accountability than we currently have as a member of the EU? My party made a manifesto commitment to ensure proper transparency and parliamentary scrutiny of all future trade and investment deals.”
“The provisions agreed by the Secretary of State are expressly designed to deny British MPs and the wider public any knowledge of what has already been discussed with the United States’ representatives. He will not tell us what he has already told them.”
“The letter says that the following approach will be taken: “Proposals, accompanying explanatory material, emails related to the substance of the working group, and other information, exchanged in the context of the working group, are provided and will be held in confidence unless otherwise jointly decided.” Yet when the Secretary of State responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who asked a trenchant question about the need for transparency, he said that of course he believed there should be full transparency. In fact, this obsession with secrecy should not be taken for a prudent desire to conceal our negotiating hand from the Americans.”
“That is simply not good enough in a modern democracy. Hon. Members hold this House’s dignity very cheap indeed if they vote tonight to govern ourselves after the fashion of a tinpot dictatorship. The Government have a woeful record on transparency and democratic oversight when it comes to international trade agreements, so it pains me to remind the House of the exchange of letters, which were revealed just before Christmas, between the Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, in which the Secretary of State gave assurances to President Trump’s Administration that he will deny Members of this House access to information on the substance of talks held in the UK-US trade working group.”
“Our representatives in the European Parliament debate it and scrutinise it in the trade committee. The resulting treaty is then put under the powerful microscope of the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who chairs the European Scrutiny Committee in this House. Once we leave the EU, all those institutional levels of accountability are stripped away and we will fall back on the 1924 Ponsonby rule. It was interesting to hear the Secretary of State say, “No, no, it’s all about the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.” Does he not realise that CRAGA actually gives legislative effect to the Ponsonby rule, an arcane procedure from the last century that allows our Government to ratify a trade agreement—an international trade treaty—by simply laying the text before the House for 21 sitting days, with no need for a debate or vote?”
“I will give way a little later to both the right hon. Lady and the hon. and learned Lady, but in the meantime I propose to make a little progress. There is nothing particularly remarkable about any of the strictures that we laid down in our manifesto. Many other countries around the world have such procedures to exercise oversight over their Executives. New Zealand requires its Government to present national interest analyses before its Parliament. Australia has a separate joint scrutiny committee on treaties. Even in the EU, Germany requires all trade treaties to undergo a process of scrutiny by parliamentary committee before ratification can take place. Currently, the Council of Ministers sets a negotiating mandate and the Commission is charged with implementing it.”
“The right hon. Lady is free to suggest whatever she likes. I have dealt with the customs union at great length this afternoon and made our position quite clear. All information exchanged between the UK and US officials will be kept secret until four years after the working group has been concluded. That is why hon. Members should not take on trust any verbal reassurances that the Government or the Secretary of State might give this afternoon. One has to establish good faith to earn trust.”
“Look, the hon. Lady is of course right that the European Union held a lot of those discussions in private, particularly over TTIP. However, she may be unaware though that although European Members of Parliament were able to access the text of the TTIP agreement, this Secretary of State refused for nine months to set up a reading room so that Members of this House could access the very same information that was available to her colleagues in the European Union.”
“I ask the Minister to come clean and confirm to the House that the delegated powers memorandum is correct. Will he assure us that the Government will bring forward their own amendment in Committee to ensure that these new internationally binding agreements must go through a due process of proper scrutiny by Parliament, rather than being signed off by Ministers without a vote?”
“The Government are aware of the magnitude of what they are attempting. The delegated powers memorandum could scarcely disguise its shame with regard to this part of the Bill. It says: “It is recognised that Parliament will want considerable assurances from the Government that this power will not be used beyond what is necessary to ensure a seamless transition of the agreements in scope.” The Government have given that assurance, but they cannot deny that the power is there. In the next breath, the memorandum claims, apparently without irony: “The Department considers that this power is appropriate for the negative procedure.” The negative procedure is the least rigorous procedure available to this House, as it allows the Government to bypass the need for a debate or a vote, or the possibility of amendment—there is nothing.”
“The Government have tried to justify this power grab with the sham argument that these are simply roll-over agreements—existing agreements that are just being grandfathered. They claim that the corresponding agreements between 60-plus countries and the EU have already been through the process of scrutiny, meaning that the UK’s new agreements can go through on the nod. Yet the Government have been forced to admit that the UK’s new trade agreements are legally distinct from those previously negotiated by the EU. They are new agreements in international law. If we allow the Bill to go through as it stands, the Secretary of State, as the Government have acknowledged, will be given carte blanche to agree substantively new obligations with third countries and to implement them without a vote in Parliament.”
“I cannot claim to have served with Henry VIII. I cannot claim that Henry VIII was a friend of mine. But, to misquote Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s remark to Dan Quayle, I can say, “Secretary of State, you are no Henry VIII. This Bill is an affront to the dignity of your office and to the authority of this House.” Clause 2 provides the Secretary of State with unprecedented powers to implement international trade agreements without a vote in Parliament. It is perhaps the most egregiously anti-democratic provision of the Bill, in that it allows the Secretary of State to engage in secret negotiations with a trading partner of the EU, to lay the results of those negotiations before Parliament without the need for a debate or a vote, and to proceed to incorporate the resulting treaty into UK law without the need for a vote either.”
“and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) with such devastating effect earlier, states on its very first page: “The Bill contains 6 individual provisions containing delegated powers. Two of these, clauses 2(1) and 7(3), include a Henry VIII power.” This was not the case of a Cabinet Minister misspeaking or being ambushed in a broadcast interview; this was a written communication that the Secretary of State placed in a national newspaper in the cold light of day that contradicted plain fact and the considered explanation of his own officials. I will happily give way to the Secretary of State if he would care to come to the Dispatch Box and explain himself by putting on the public record why he chose to suggest that there are no Henry VIII powers in this Bill when his own Department had already confirmed the opposite to be the case.”
“The powers in the bill will only allow for amendment of secondary legislation covering existing trade agreements, and secondary legislation is still subject to parliamentary oversight.” Yet it was not The Guardian that was wrong; the Secretary of State was wrong. He knew that he was wrong, although he did not correct his remarks, because clause 2 of the Trade Bill, which he had published just two weeks earlier, states quite clearly that the powers in the Bill make provision not only for the amendment of secondary legislation, but for “modifying primary legislation”. Lest there should be any doubt about this, the delegated powers memorandum published by the Secretary of State’s Department to accompany the Bill, which was quoted by the right hon.”
“On that point, we were treated to the extraordinary spectacle of the Secretary of State resorting to the letters page of a national newspaper to deny what is printed in black and white—actually in black and green—in his own legislation. He must have been piqued by a number of articles in response to the Bill’s publication in November that accused him of appropriating powers that should, by rights, lie with Parliament. He responded on The Guardian website on the evening of 20 November, saying: “In an editorial (13 November) you claim that the trade bill is ‘effectively granting ministers the power to write law behind parliament’s back’ with ‘Henry VIII powers’. This claim is repeated in a column by George Monbiot (18 November). This is untrue.”
“Will the Minister explain what the saving to the public purse was from this procurement agreement that merited £16.7 billion going to foreign companies while just £1.2 billion came back to the UK? There might well be a very good answer, but is this not precisely the sort of issue on which Parliament should have a proper role of scrutiny and holding the Executive to account? Of course, the Bill denies us the capacity to do so. Clause 2 gives the Secretary of State the most far-reaching powers to implement new international trade agreements without the need for even a debate in Parliament. As his Department has confirmed, the clause includes the Henry VIII power to modify primary legislation without a vote.”
“It would be quite proper for us to do so, to boost trade for our small businesses, but the Bill, as currently formulated, would not allow that. I have to confess that when I first looked at the GPA, I wondered what material difference this might make to British business. I was quite impressed to find that the Government’s explanatory notes showed that the GPA opened up £1.3 trillion of contracts to UK business—we should all rejoice in that—but when I checked the Bill’s impact assessment, I learned that the total cross-border earnings of our businesses from GPA contracts outside the UK is just £1.2 billion, which is less than 1% of that amount. I also learned that the total earnings by foreign companies from the £68 billion of GPA contracts inside the UK was £16.7 billion, which is about 24.5%.”
“The Government will use the sweeping powers of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 to push through the UK’s independent membership of the GPA without a vote in Parliament. The Bill confirms that any future changes to the terms of the GPA will go the same way. We can talk about the merits of the GPA—I am sure that we will find much common cause across the Dispatch Boxes—but the Secretary of State said that we would be acceding on the “existing terms of participation”, if I wrote that down correctly. That is something that Members should be free to scrutinise and debate. The United States, Canada, South Korea and Japan have all put annexes to their schedules for the GPA that allow them to set aside and disapply regulations on behalf of small businesses and other organisations. That is something that we might wish to consider.”
“I will deal with issues around devolution later in my speech. Indeed, that is something that my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) will be addressing in his winding-up speech. Having set the context, let us look at the detail. The Bill’s opening clause sets the tone for the power grab that is to come. It gives Ministers the power to implement regulatory changes as a consequence of any country acceding to or seceding from the WTO’s government procurement agreement. This is not a temporary power. It is not simply to facilitate our transition from a member under the wing of the EU to a member in our own right, as the explanatory notes to the Bill claim, but a power in perpetuity without the requirement for any scrutiny by Parliament.”
“The honest answer to my hon. Friend is that I do not know, although I share his suspicion that that might well be the case. The point is that the Bill shows that the Government’s expectation is that these are not simply roll-over agreements and that, precisely as he suggests, third countries may demand additional features in new agreements. On that point, he is absolutely right and the Secretary of State is absolutely wrong.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that that is a possibility, but while I have disagreements with the Secretary of State, do I think he is so foolish as to throw the Scotch whisky sector under a bus? No, I do not, because it is a very important player in our economy, as my hon. Friend knows. However, the point he makes is entirely right: it is possible that new interpolations in old agreements may do damage to other sectors. The point remains that this House—I repeat, this House—is the appropriate place for that to be scrutinised. Clauses 5 and 6 deal with the establishment of the Trade Remedies Authority. We of course welcome the establishment of a new authority as an essential pillar of our international trade policy to ensure that British manufacturers are not exposed to dumping or other countries’ unfair trading practices.”
“Friend does not disagree with that—and a balanced decision must then be taken, but, again, it is right that the House should scrutinise those things and ensure that they are genuinely in the wider interest. In particular, hon. Members with specific constituency interests—the ceramics industry; the Scotch whisky industry; the steel industry—should have the opportunity, at the appropriate point, for scrutiny.”
“I was very interested to hear the Secretary of State’s response to my hon. Friend’s question. It was a feat of Dispatch Box prestidigitation such as I have not seen for many years, because the Secretary of State appeared to agree with my hon. Friend while in fact disagreeing. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. As we saw with the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, which we debated yesterday—that Bill sets out the role and powers of the Trade Remedies Authority—the Government certainly envisage a key role for not only the lesser duty rule, but such economic impact assessments. Of course we must conduct economic impact assessments—I know my hon.”
“I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have taken that intervention, Madam Deputy Speaker. Mindful of your strictures on time, as I always am, I had actually excised a paragraph about that from my speech, so I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his well-made point.”
“Instead, we are faced with another sordid power grab by a Government forced to hide their own weakness behind a legislative veil that is technically and morally incompetent. The Opposition believe that the British people deserve better. That is why we have tabled the reasoned amendment. If it is not accepted, we will vote against the Bill.”
“The Welsh Government have already established that several of the clauses in the Trade Bill pertain to areas covered by its legislative competence and have found restrictions on Welsh Ministers in the Bill that they consider inappropriate. The Welsh Government have therefore stated that whether they consent to the Bill will depend on the Government’s response to amendments tabled to address those shortcomings. The undue concentration of powers in Westminster to the detriment of the devolved Administrations mirrors the undue appropriation of powers by the Secretary of State to the detriment of this Parliament. This Bill fails to establish the proper framework that would allow our country to develop a sound, legitimate and properly scrutinised trade policy for the future.”
“Labour believes that the Trade Remedies Authority should be formally constituted, so that it is fully representative of the key stakeholders affected by unfair trading practices. That means the experts within business and the trade unions who face the reality of dumping and unfair state subsidies as an existential threat to their jobs and industries, not a côterie of Rabbit’s friends and relations. Finally, I must alert the House to the threat that the Bill presents to the devolved Administrations. Today’s international trade agreements reach far behind the border into the policy space of national, regional and local authorities.”
“One can only suppose that the Secretary of State did not receive the updated consultation principles that were issued to all Departments in 2016, which state: “Take consultation responses into account when taking policy forward…Do not ask questions about issues on which you already have a final view.” Worse still, the Secretary of State has chosen to appropriate to himself the power to appoint all the key postholders of the TRA without any constraints on their representative function—that point echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) was just saying. He will even decide without limit how much those people will be paid. The Bill creates a lapdog, not an industrious and independent guard dog.”
“Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State spoke for quite long enough; I will try to beat him by a short head. The House will recall that the consultation on the Trade Remedies Authority ended on the evening of 6 November, but by early morning on 7 November, hard copies of the Trade Bill were already being delivered to Parliament.”
“Sooner or later, the electorate will put them out of their misery and we will have a Budget for the many, not the few.”
“Friend the Member for Croydon Central highlighted the fact that the need for the productivity growth on which depend our country’s future prosperity and successful engagement on the international stage. Productivity will depend on the two pillars of education and infrastructure investment, so it is not coincidence that these were the two key offers that the Labour party made in our manifesto at the general election, with our national transformation fund and our national education service. It would be tempting to claim that this Budget proves that the Government have lost their way. The truth is that they never had a direction in the first place. The Prime Minister is a prisoner of her Cabinet, and her Cabinet is divided against itself.”
“Friends the Members for Stroud (Dr Drew), for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), for Leigh (Jo Platt), for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for Stockton South (Dr Williams) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) spoke powerfully about the Budget’s failure to address the needs of our health service: £4 billion is needed next year; £1.6 billion has been provided. They highlighted the irony that social care, which was a defining issue in the general election, got scarcely a mention. In a brilliant speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) not only exposed the anti-London nature of this Budget, but highlighted the total lack of any stimulus to housing supply, as indeed did my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid). My hon.”
“Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) warned about, or the deal that the Brexit Secretary once upon a time boasted would give the UK the “exact same benefits” that we currently possess as members of the single market? The Chancellor told the nation what he thought was more likely when he announced the £3 billion to prepare for a no deal Brexit. It is therefore no wonder, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) pointed out, that the Foreign Secretary spent more time talking about penguins and plastic bags than about Brexit. My hon.”
“Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) who said that sound finance is the only basis for a caring Government. We need a strong economy, and the Budget figures did not show that. Growth has been revised down by 0.5%, productivity by 0.7% and investment by 1.5%. This Budget admits that previous Treasury promises have not been met, but it has failed to set out a vision to take our country forward. Business growth and trade are crucial to our capacity to act and to lead in the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) posed the key questions on which businesses need certainty if they are to lead the economic revival we so desperately need: what tariffs and quotas will they face, and what will our future trade relationships look like—the no deal Brexit my hon.”
“Globally, world trade is set to grow year on year by approximately 4%, but the Government’s own projection of the contribution trade will make to our own domestic growth declines to zero by 2019, and stays at zero for four years throughout the life of this Parliament. It is no wonder that the Government have been reluctant to jeopardise the £4 billion deal to sell Saudi Arabia British fighter jets. Human rights must not be regarded as a commercial inconvenience. If our country wishes to stand tall in the global community, we must do so on the basis of our values. We need to ensure that we do not end up pawning our democratic values to boost our failing economy. The central facts of the Budget determine how our country is able to respond to all these international challenges. I agree with the hon.”
“It says that the conflict has “descended into a new circle of hell after Saudi Arabia committed its air force to defeating Houthi rebels” earlier this year, and began destroying bridges, roads, markets and container ports. The infrastructure breakdown means that food is reaching the hungry “fatally slowly”, and that was before the Saudis decided to block even humanitarian aid in reprisal for a missile fired at Riyadh earlier this month. Seven million people are now on the brink of famine, according to the UN. The relation of this tragedy to the Budget becomes clear when we look at the OBR projections for trade growth.”
“Instead, we find that there will be no new low-carbon electricity levies until 2025, and there is nothing for renewables or investment in domestic energy efficiency, or for the necessary transformation of our grid structures to bring on new localised production, microgeneration and supply. Instead, there is a clean growth plan—six years late—that will not even meet the target set in the fourth carbon budget, never mind the fifth carbon budget. No international debate should or could have taken place today without reference to the appalling war going on in Yemen. Yesterday’s Financial Times leader on the looming famine in Yemen is one of the finest editorials I have read. It refers to the risk that allies of Saudi Arabia face in being complicit in the use of starvation as a weapon of war. It is chilling.”