Ed Davey
MP for Kingston and Surbiton · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s opening remarks, not least about the 25th anniversary of the horrific terror attacks of 9/11. I welcome the Government finally banning imports from illegal Israeli settlements, something Keir Starmer should have done a long time ago.”
“I thank the Prime Minister for that answer. Britain should be the safest country in the world to have a baby. We will keep raising this issue until it is the safest.”
“No mother should have to give birth in such circumstances. Does the Prime Minister agree that Musgrove Park cannot wait until 2033 for work to start on a new maternity unit? Will he offer a meeting to local MPs, so we can move it forward? And will he make fixing the maternity scandal across our country a top priority of his Government?”
“I hope at that summit the Prime Minister will negotiate a good deal for our country, our economy and our defence, and that means rejoining the single market. North Devon’s maternity unit has been closed for three weeks due to staff shortages, so women now have to travel for up to two hours to give birth.”
“The Prime Minister said yesterday that Brexit ushered in “a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.” —[ Official Report , 1 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 27.] He is right. Our economy is stuck in this mess thanks to the Conservatives—and the leader of Reform UK—and their terrible Brexit deal.”
“There are so many more problems in our political system: too much power in the hands of social media barons who interfere in our politics and crypto billionaires who use donations to buy influence; and too little power in the hands of our people.”
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“Instead, we have a care sector on its knees. Care homes are closing and there are shortages of care staff. That is partly because of Brexit—I say that because it is true—partly because of immigration restrictions, and partly because of the Government’s failure to address issues of social care. The “Interim NHS People Plan” stated that dealing with the nursing shortage is the single biggest and most urgent need for us to address, yet the Government have not done that. Social care, whether directly in the NHS or through local authorities, is one of the massive issues facing our country. We must debate it and get a grip on it, but this Budget does not do anything. It is an astounding omission.”
“Finally, I wish to talk about the care sector. We need a care revolution in this country, not just in care for the elderly, but in care for adults with learning disabilities, which makes up the biggest and fastest-rising part of local authority expenditure. I speak as a father of a disabled child who cannot walk or talk—he only said “daddy” two years ago, and he is 12—and I worry about what will happen to him when my wife and I are gone. Obviously, I am trying to ensure that I make provision for my son, but I am lucky enough to be able to do that. Hundreds of thousands of parents of special needs children will not be able to make such provision, and the state will have to work out how we care properly for those adults, who will be of working age for many years. We have not even begun to debate that issue.”
“We were the world leaders because we have a comparative advantage with our amazing engineers, with the North sea in which to store a lot of the emissions, and with our oil and gas industry and the skills from it. Instead of exploiting that, what happened in 2015, when the former Chancellor, George Osborne, had his way? He cut that project overnight, not even telling Shell, which had shelled out £30 million. It was a disgraceful act against climate action. We need CCS, not just to green our power sector, but to green our heat sector and our industry. We could be world leaders, but that was a disastrous policy. The idea that these projects, which the Red Book claims will take the next 10 years, are a replacement for the level of ambition that we once had, is frankly shocking. The Government have failed very badly on the green agenda.”
“If there is a real area on which we need to see significant Government expenditure, it is refurbishing the housing stock. We all know that that is where a huge amount of the emissions come from, and we all know that that is where there are easy wins that will reduce our constituents’ fuel bills, tackle fuel poverty and create jobs in every community. Why are the Government not doing that? They should of course bring back the zero- carbon homes laws that we passed and the Conservatives abolished, but, no, they are not keen on real action on climate change. Then there is the Government’s announcement on carbon capture and storage. I was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change when we were pushing this, and there was a £1 billion set-up fund, with a competition with two projects, with several billions of pounds running forward.”
“The Government have been trying to pretend that this Budget is going to take action on climate change. Let us look at it. With a fuel duty freeze again and £27 billion on 4,000 miles of road, that does not sound like a green transport policy to me. Then they announce, as though it is going to make any difference, £1 billion on green transport measures. This is completely absurd. The transport sector is the biggest sector for our emissions, and we need a completely different green transport strategy if we are to be serious about the climate. We need to make sure that we are not expanding airports, but that we are really investing in the electric vehicle infrastructure and giving incentives for electric vehicles, and this Budget does nothing for that.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is the failure to invest in skills and the failure to realise that Brexit is going to damage productivity, while the attack on immigration, which is important for so many parts of our economy, will hit that too. I worry about the self-employed and small businesses. They are suffering from the unfair business rates and they are suffering from things such as IR35. The Government are completely silent on IR35 today. They promise a reform of business rates. Liberal Democrats have been arguing for that for several years, with a well-thought-through proposal using land value tax, but the Government seem to be going to kick this into the long grass. That is not good enough when our small businesses are under such pressure. The other issue I find disappointing is climate change.”
“That is not the sort of society we should be building. I and my party, the Liberal Democrats, want a fairer, greener economy. This Budget has not done that. We want a fairer, more caring society and this Budget has not got that done. I hope, if we have more fiscal events later this year, that the Government will think again, particularly on climate and caring, to make sure we have that fairer, greener, caring society that we ought to have.”
“We need a full, comprehensive approach to caring, because we have kicked the issue into the grass for far too long. Let me raise a couple of other social justice issues. I was deeply disappointed that the Government are not properly reforming universal credit, because the two-child limit for universal credit is extremely damaging to many families. The families who are really suffering are those with a number of children—what the Government have really cut back on is measures for children, and that is not a way to develop a decent society. Moreover, in terms of work incentives, the fact that there is no second earner work allowance is a major problem. The IFS calculates that since May 2015, the average family hit by freezing benefits lost £560 a year, with the 7 million poorest families losing nearly £600 a year.”
“I agree with everything the hon. Lady said. Although the Government are trying to say that Brexit negotiations will continue, if coronavirus is a pandemic it is frankly only a matter of time, and unless they really want a no-deal Brexit, they will have to extend the transition period—watch this space. I mention care because for me, it is a social justice issue. Because those who need care—people with mental health problems, physical disabilities or learning disabilities —cannot work, they do not have much money, and that hits the incomes of their families who, by and large, tend to do most of the caring. Many people who are vulnerable and have low incomes are disabled, ill, or looking after their loved ones, and as a civilised society we need to respond rather better than we have done hitherto.”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that it is a moral scandal that hundreds of homeless people are still dying every year on our streets, without the palliative care that they ought to receive during their last weeks and months? Will he look at the Homelessness (End of Life Care) Bill, which I introduced in the last Parliament? Will he also agree to meet me and the charities that helped me to write the Bill, including Pathway, St Mungo’s, Hospice UK and Shelter, and enable them to use some of the funds that he has announced today—in conjunction with the NHS—to end the scandal of terminally ill homeless people dying without proper care?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today, the Court of Appeal handed down an historic and fantastic ruling, judging that the Government’s Heathrow expansion decision was unlawful because it did not take account of the Government’s legally binding commitments on climate change. The Secretary of State for Transport has tweeted that the Government “won’t appeal” against the ruling, but the Government’s transport policy is now in confusion and chaos, along with their climate change policy. Could you, Madam Deputy Speaker, through the Chair, use your good offices to ask the Government to make a statement to this House as soon as possible on how they take this decision forward? We hope that the Government will confirm that the expansion of Heathrow has now been consigned to the dustbin of history.”
“Q6. Before the previous successful climate change talks in 2015 in Paris, I led the British preparations, including the delegations, for the three preceding UN climate talks. Global action on climate change only happens when the host nation engages with the world’s largest nations in advance at the highest political level. As the host of the 2020 climate talks, will the Prime Minister today publicly commit himself to meeting President Xi of China, Prime Minister Modi of India and US President Trump to secure for the Glasgow talks global action on the climate emergency?”
“When Kevin Simpson’s partner of over 12 years died and his two children lost their mother, the family received no bereavement support payments at all. Because the parents were unmarried, the law denied that support to the two grieving children. The High Court ruled last Friday that this breached the children’s human rights, so when will the Government obey the rule of law and legislate to respond both to that ruling and to the similar ruling by the Supreme Court in the McLaughlin case in 2018? Will there be no further delay so that we can start supporting the thousands of similar children across our country every year who lose their mother or father?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and I declare an interest as the father of a child with special needs and an EHCP being administered by Achieving for Children. Does my hon. Friend agree that not only does that company have to improve, but the accumulated debt on Kingston Council’s balance sheet, on Richmond’s balance sheet, and indeed on those of local authorities across the country, creates a huge crisis in funding not just for SEND but for schools and local authority services across the board? It is time that the Government got a grip of this, either by shifting that accumulated debt on to central Government balance sheets or by special funding relief, because this crisis could blow up in councils across the country if they do not act.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech, which I agree with. He touched on the conspiracy theories around George Soros, and I am glad he did. Will he join me in condemning parts of the Hungarian Government who are pushing this and call on Prime Minister Orbán not to allow this anti-Soros propaganda to continue?”
“Governments, Parliaments and civil society need to reflect on the need for early intervention, so that no stage goes unchallenged. When Gregory Stanton was asked what he thought was the best antidote to these appalling crimes and the best way to prevent genocide, he said the answer was popular education—educate everyone as well as we can—and then develop a social and cultural tolerance for diversity. I worry that we are not working hard enough to develop that tolerance. We have to do more. Let us remember the victims. Let us remember Mirele, her mother and her father. But let us, in remembering them, pledge ourselves to ensuring that we really understand what happened, and to fighting every step of the way so that these things never happen again.”
“The eighth step is persecution—expropriation of property, displacement, putting people in ghettos and sending them to the death camps and concentration camps. The ninth step is extermination, when the killing happens and humanity is just gone. The tenth step Gregory Stanton identifies is denial, which we see now—people denying the holocaust, which is utterly shocking. I have read out those 10 steps to the House today because when I read them and had them explained to me—the way they can operate at different levels, even here in the UK—I realised why we have to step in early. Gregory Stanton did not just try to identify the different stages that linked various genocides together, starting with the holocaust; he said what, at each stage, we have to do to prevent the genocide—to stop step 1 going to step 2, then to step 3 and so on.”
“Symbolisation, with hate symbols for the other. Discrimination—excluding groups, segregating groups, denying them rights. Dehumanisation—denying the humanity of people and equating them with vermin, animals, insects and so on. Organisation, because genocide does not happen because of just a few people; it takes a whole group of people in society, determined to carry it out and working together in militia groups. The sixth step is polarisation, which we are seeing in social media, as the hon. Lady rightly said; propaganda is being put out now, in Britain today, to polarise society. The seventh step is preparation—the Nazis and others prepared, in cold blood. They did not commit genocide by accident; they prepared in detail. They identified the victims, separated them out and built their killing machines and camps.”
“On that day, I learned about how we can stop holocausts and genocides of the future. The hon. Member for Chichester spoke about the Cambodian genocide, and we know about the genocides in the former Bosnia, in Darfur and in too many other places. I do not suggest that all genocides are the same. The holocaust stands on its own, not only for its sheer scale but for the political ideology that forced it through in the most appalling machine-like way. But as we look at antisemitism, racism and hatred in society here and in other places, I think it is important to discover lessons we can learn. Academics have studied the holocaust and other genocides and I pay particular tribute to Gregory Stanton, who wrote about the steps that lead to genocide. The first step is classification of different groups—dividing them into them and us.”
“Your father and I are going to wake you, feed you and tell you over and over how much we love you. You’re barely two years old, but maybe, if God is good, maybe, you’ll remember it. And maybe you’ll keep this letter until you are old enough to read it… I love you. Your father loves you. May God help us all.” You can hear in that letter, Mr Deputy Speaker, the pain of a parent thinking about what is going to happen. When I read that letter for the first time, on the plane to Auschwitz, it took me back in a way that nothing else had done. Those Members who, like me, are lucky enough to have children will know that that bond is more special than anything. For the Nazis to take that away from so many parents and to kill so many people will always be the most unforgiveable crime the world has ever witnessed.”
“But you will have this letter, and this letter will make you feel secure, if God answers my prayers. You have us, Mirele, even though you can’t see us, we’re with you. We’re watching you and praying for you… Mirele, you’ll wonder what your first two years were like. You’ll wish you could remember. Let me remember for you right now, tenderly, on this piece of paper. You like hot cereal in the morning, with lots of milk and sugar. Except there is no milk and sugar now, none in this whole city. But I will make your cereal anyway and you eat it with big smiles between every bite. Then you become ready for your nap, so I will rock you, after putting the rocker where the sunlight will fall in it… God! It’s 2am already. Only two more hours with me, my love, my baby, my Mirele. I’m going to hold you now, Mirele for two hours.”
“That’s what Herman says is going on…But I won’t have lived in vain, Mirele, if I know that I have brought you into the world and you will live and survive and grow big and strong and you will be happy. You can be happy, Mirele, because we loved you. What makes a difference in the lives of adults, it seems, is if they have secure childhoods. Secure, with lots of love and acceptance and needs fulfilled and predictable routine and the like. You’ve had that up to this minute…but then you won’t. Who knows who will end up taking care of you? Some family who will take you in for the money Herman will pay them? They will surely be kinder to their own than to you. Here is where the pain mixes with rage! I rage at the animals who are making it possible for you to cry and I won’t be there to comfort you.”
“They’ll inject you with a sedative so you won’t cry and then they’ll slip you off in the predawn with you—my life, my love—out of this barbaric country to safety. By the way, Mr Deputy Speaker, these are just extracts. I will not detain the House by reading the full letter. “Mirele, do you see why I have to give you up? He said no belongings, but I will beg, I will plead that this letter be allowed to go, sewn into your undershirt. And then, I will pray to God that the letter stays with you until you are old enough to read it. You must know why you are alone, without parents. Not because they didn’t love you…but because they did. It’s eerie to think that by the time you read this, I will probably be dead.”
“When people go round Yad Vashem, they see the candles and they see and hear the names. That does speak powerfully, but among the material from the Holocaust Educational Trust was a pamphlet with a letter from a lady to her daughter, and that daughter, Miriam Bas Leiba, published it many years later. I want to read from that letter, because it is a testimony from those days, from the people who were experiencing the holocaust. In the letter to her two-year-old daughter, a mother wrote: “Dear Mirele, I can’t believe I have one night to fill a lifetime of love into this letter. Tomorrow morning…I am giving you up. I am taking you, Mirele, to the back entrance of dear, brave Herman’s grocery store and the child rescuers will be waiting there for you and the thirty-two other children under the age of three.”
“I want to share with colleagues the lessons that I learned on a trip to Auschwitz, which was organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust. It was a truly moving day—I went with some young pupils from a school in my constituency. I had been to Auschwitz before—I had been to Dachau and Yad Vashem—but I had never received the insight of the Holocaust Educational Trust. I learned two things. One was about telling the individual stories, and I want to tell an individual story today in the words of someone who was murdered in the camps. It is a story of how her hopes for her child were snuffed out. I also want to talk about the academic studies that have been done on how we learn the lessons, and what the lessons to be learned are. Let me start with the individual story first.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who told us the story of her constituent and the film made about him. I hope the Chichester festival brings that message to many other people. The contributions in this debate have been truly impressive. It feels odd to single out any one Member, but the speech of the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) deserves singling out not just for his stories about his family, but for the dignified way in which he told them. I will never forget the image that he painted of Heinz’s doctor sitting there in his first world war Wehrmacht uniform with the Iron Cross, giving the Nazi Waffen-SS the impossible task of how to deal with him. I am delighted that the House is standing together today on this Holocaust Memorial Day.”
“I thank all those involved in the important progress in Northern Ireland. When my mother was widowed with three young children, bereaved families received small payments until the youngest child left school. In our case that would have meant payments for 14 years, except my mother died too early. The duration of the payments was reduced in 2017, and a new bereavement support payment was paid for only 18 months. Many of us feel that is far too short. Will the Prime Minister deliver on his Government’s promise to review the new bereavement support payment, and will he meet me and charities helping such families to discuss how we can better care for bereaved parents and their children?”
“Happy new year, Mr Speaker. May I associate myself and my colleagues with your remarks of support for the people of Australia? In that regard, may I ask the Treasury Front-Bench team whether this March’s Budget will be a Budget for the climate emergency? If it is, will Ministers look at the ideas of the outgoing Governor of the Bank of England to decarbonise finance and green the City and come forward with the rules and regulations that will catalyse private investment to beat climate change?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, in particular his emphasis on de-escalating tension, and acknowledge his genuine expertise on Iran. Given how damaging the Iraq war was to security in the middle east and given the Government’s support for reducing tension, will he now rule out any British involvement in any attack on any site in Iran?”
“That would be a much better approach to managing fiscal policy long term, because it looks at the whole balance sheet of the public sector, which is what a normal business would do. We now have a data set for the past three years from the Office for National Statistics, and I hope we can have that debate later on, because it is important to get fiscal policy right. The right hon. Gentleman made two other interesting points about monetary policy. He spoke about wanting to bring back quantitative easing, which is an interesting question.”
“It is a great privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), and it was a delight to hear that he is a convert, however late, to increased public spending. He made some interesting points about macroeconomic policy and he spoke about the new fiscal rule that the Chancellor announced just before the general election, which I hope the House will soon get to debate. He welcomed that rule, but I have some concerns about it as I think it rather old-fashioned. I would like a new fiscal rule to consider the net worth of the public sector and ensure that it is growing over time; at the moment it is in negative territory, particularly because of various pension fund liabilities.”
“I wish him luck. I believe our United Kingdom is one of the greatest examples of international co-operation in world history, so much so that four nations can be as one while being themselves: democratic, open and internationalist, operating under the rule of law and under the uniting presence of Her Majesty. We have been a beacon of political stability in the world. I believe we remain fundamentally a people who are outward-looking, inclusive, compassionate and capable of progressive reform as we recognise and value the lessons of history.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you would like to hear an example, but I fear I must remind the House that our proceedings are being broadcast before the 9 pm watershed. I pay tribute to the mover and the seconder of the Humble Address. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) has a bright career in front of her, particularly in pantomime. I invite her to join me in my annual walk-on part for St Paul’s Players in Chessington. This year, during the general election, I took my family and I had my walk-on part as one of Robin Hood’s merry men. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I know where the baddies are in this House and where the Sheriff of Nottingham sits. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) made an impressively long speech as a bid for a job ahead of the Prime Minister’s ministerial reshuffle.”
“Finally, I will just say this. It did appear that the right hon. Gentleman was talking about expansionary fiscal policy and expansionary monetary policy. I wonder if he is worried about the impact of Brexit on our economy. Like the Leader of the Opposition, I would like to remember one of our late friends, Frank Dobson, who passed away last month. Although we were members of different political parties, I found Frank to be one of the friendliest, most decent and most committed Members of this House I have ever met in my 20 years here. From his opposition to the Iraq war and apartheid to the work he did to rebuild the NHS, Frank leaves a proud record. In his role as the Brian Blessed of the Commons, Frank also leaves several volumes of funny, filthy and totally politically incorrect jokes.”
“The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, and I am sorry if I misinterpreted his remarks. We should look at quantitative easing and how it is done, both in this country and elsewhere. There is some concern that the way central banks have done it has not led to a fair distribution of prosperity and that the money has gone into a small number of hands, resulting in increased inequality. I am slightly worried by something that the right hon. Gentleman said about monetary policy that might imply—he might disagree that this was his implication—that there should be some challenge to the independence of the central bank by the Government of the day. I would not welcome that, although I would certainly welcome a debate on quantitative easing. I look forward to debating with him, so that we get our macroeconomic policy right.”
“His willingness to jump unashamedly over every red line he had previously been willing to die in a ditch for will have been noted in Brussels by Europe’s rather more skilful negotiators.”
“Let us be clear that the Prime Minister and the Conservative party now own Brexit. It is their total and complete responsibility. They cannot blame anyone else any more. They have become the Brexit party from top to bottom. The question, of course, is this: will the Prime Minister get Brexit done? More precisely, will he get it done by the end of the year, so we can avoid the disaster of a no-deal Brexit? Well, we shall see. The Prime Minister’s biggest weapon in his Brexit deal endeavour is surely his unmatched flexibility with the truth. His so-called triumph of achieving a deal for Brexit phase one was possible only because he betrayed his big promise to the Democratic Unionist party, his erstwhile big supporters.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. The majority of people in Scotland voted for parties who want to preserve the Union. I get a sense that right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches should also note that the majority of people voted for parties who wanted to give the people a final say on the European Union. We needed a Queen’s Speech that would truly keep our country together, heal the divides and tackle the challenges of inequality, lack of opportunity and climate change. However, I fear the Prime Minister’s Queen’s Speech will only undermine our united country’s great traditions. I fear that, with this Government’s programme, we will become a more inward-looking, more illiberal and less compassionate country. The one nation rhetoric of the Prime Minister is not matched by his actions. Let me start with Brexit.”
“I readily admit that the NHS is far more efficient as a health service than, say, the health system of the United States, but surely we should be really ambitious for the NHS, and the factual evidence shows that this Government and this Queen’s Speech are not. As we legislate for future NHS spending targets, why do we not take the opportunity to be really ambitious? Why do we not aim to spend 10% of our national income on the NHS, as a minimum? That would bring us up to G7 comparators, and I think that the British people would back a policy where £1 in every £10 of the national cake was spent on the nation’s health. I accept that the Government may be nervous about spending targets based on national income because their economic policies look set to fail so badly and national income will grow very slowly.”
“Instead, let me approach it in a rather different way, in terms of what our medium-term NHS spending target should be. Most health analysts tend to talk, not as the Prime Minister does, in the abstract—in total spending, which is bound to go up with an ageing population and economic growth—but in comparisons between similar countries: on spending per person, on the percentage of the national income. If we compare the UK’s health spending in these ways—even with the Prime Minister’s rises—against the world’s other largest developed countries, the UK fares badly. In the G7, our health spending per person is the second lowest—lower than Germany and France. As a share of national income, in the G7, the UK again performs badly, with Italy the only country that is spending less.”
“We shall see, but as we oppose Brexit and continue to point out the extra costs, economic damage and loss of influence, we will also remind Government colleagues of the previously unthinkable concessions that now need to be made for any chance of a deal next year. I turn to the NHS, which the Prime Minister has made so much of. Every Member of the House was elected on a manifesto committed to increasing spending on the NHS in real terms—maybe there is a little political consensus there. I, for one, am relaxed about putting a spending commitment for the health service into law, but that prompts one question: is the spending enough? I do not want to repeat the election debate, where the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats were arguing for higher health spending than the Government.”
“There is always time for redemption, but if the hon. Gentleman is hoping for it in this case from this Prime Minister, I wish him well. Some of us have led successful negotiations, pan-Europe, in Brussels—difficult negotiations that I won for Britain—on everything from economic reform of the single market to climate change. I did not succeed by adopting this Prime Minister’s tactics of bulldog bluster combined with the record of a turncoat. I do not believe that that is the right approach, and I do not believe that he will succeed without reneging on all, or most, of his previous promises to leave voters. My parliamentary interest in this is whether or not, in the dark Conservative forests of the Brexit Spartans, his erstwhile friends have yet smelt betrayal.”
“I will come to that last point in a second, but the right hon. Gentleman’s point about health systems is an interesting point for debate. I point to countries such as Denmark, which have a taxpayer-funded system and spend a significantly higher share of their national income on health. I am afraid that his point is not valid.”
“We have already seen the numbers of children in poverty rise by nearly 400,000 since 2015, and we have seen the report from the Resolution Foundation, which I hope that Government Members will read, that analysed the Conservative’s general election manifesto and said that child poverty will continue to rise year-on-year with that party’s policies.”
“No, I am going to make some progress. On economic policy and Brexit, I have to tell the House that I am worried about self-imposed Brexit austerity. I will explain why. First, take the damage to growth from Brexit and the red tape of Brexit at our customs borders, a cost estimated by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs at a mere £15 billion every year. We had a red tape battle in the coalition, and we never got anywhere near saving that amount of money, yet this Government want to impose that cost on our businesses. Then we have the damage to businesses and our NHS from the ending of free movement of labour within the EU. That will damage growth overnight. It is not just the impact on economic growth of this Brexit austerity that worries me, but the impact on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society who will feel it the most.”
“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Shelter’s report made that very point this week. There was no mention of homeless people in the Queen’s Speech, and no mention of tackling child poverty. There was another huge omission from the Queen’s Speech: the climate emergency. Sure, we heard the unambitious 2050 net zero target mentioned again, but just like in the Conservative manifesto, there was a lack of a sense of urgency and of a set of practical but radical measures. I find that truly alarming. It is particularly alarming because this Prime Minister has previously written so scathingly about the need to tackle climate change.”
“In south-west London, we do not forget what the Prime Minister said just four years ago, when he promised that he would “lie down in front of those bulldozers and stop the construction of that third runway.” If only, Mr Deputy Speaker—if only.”
“Members: “Oh!”] If anybody wants to contest that point, I am happy to take an intervention. None are coming. What did this Prime Minister have to say about what is now the cheapest form of renewable power? He said that wind farms would barely “pull the skin off a rice pudding”. This technology is a global leader from Britain. It is powering our homes, but the Prime Minister apparently does not believe in it. Then we see the Conservative record on climate change since 2015, voted for at every stage by the Prime Minister: scrapping the zero carbon homes regulations, banning onshore wind power and stopping tidal lagoon power. And then we come to Heathrow.”
“I absolutely do. In her speech, the hon. Lady mentioned carbon capture and storage; I had pushed that competition forward, and it was going very well but, directly after the 2015 election, the then Chancellor cancelled it overnight and put Britain’s global leadership on this key climate change technology back years. It was a disgraceful measure. I was talking about the opinions of the Prime Minister on climate change. Just seven years ago, in his infamous Telegraph column, he sought to cast doubt on mainstream climate science, dismissing it as complete tosh. You can hear him saying that, can you not, Mr Deputy Speaker? Instead, he warned about the “encroachment of a mini ice age”. That is what our Prime Minister said. On wind power, in which Britain now leads the world thanks to Liberal Democrat Ministers—[Hon.”
“Today, in the Financial Times , we read that Mr Carney is taking action, introducing world-leading climate stress tests in major financial institutions. If only this Government would back the Bank of England in the City, there would be a historic opportunity for this country to lead the world with a gold standard for green finance, but I fear that there is no ambition on the Conservative Benches for that. This Queen’s Speech is disappointing on so many levels, and we will vote against it. Liberal Democrats in this Parliament will do our democratic duty: we will scrutinise the Government, and argue for the liberal, inclusive, fairer and greener society in which we believe.”