COP26

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

One of the things that we agreed at this COP—and one of the reasons why I believe it is so historic—is, finally, the Paris rulebook, which contains, among other things, provisions for transparency and agreement about how we measure what we are trying to do around the world. That is immensely significant and it gives a tool to everybody who cares about it. Even in closed societies—about which my right hon. Friend knows a great deal—where they may not take voters very seriously, there are consumers whom they take seriously and people who are willing to protest, whom they take seriously as well.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The COP26 President has undoubtedly done an excellent job, but frankly, that is no thanks to the Prime Minister, who has consistently undermined climate leadership, whether that is by going ahead with an oilfield at Cambo or cutting aid—1.5 °C is hanging by a thread and the vulnerable countries feel betrayed, so a little bit more humility might be in order. He says that we are not asking others to do anything that we are not doing ourselves. Will he demonstrate that that is the case by requesting an urgent and transparent audit by the Office for Budget Responsibility, independent of the Treasury, of all our own domestic fossil fuel subsidies, with a view to phasing them out as soon as possible—yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady, again, rather like the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), is trying to have it both ways: to suck and blow at once. She cannot say that it was a successful COP and somehow attack the UK Government; I simply fail to see the logic. [Interruption.] What we are also doing is moving beyond coal by 2024. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Hon. Members must not shout at the Prime Minister. Everyone will have a chance to ask their question—

[Caroline Lucas]

He is not answering my question!

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

And the hon. Lady certainly must not shout at me.

G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think what President Xi Jinping would say is that China keeps its promises. We will have to hope that that is true. I think the people of the world will want to hold all of us, all Governments, to account, but my hon. Friend is completely right to focus on the particular pressure that China faces from us and from the whole world.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent conversion to the climate cause. I agree with him that the clock is indeed at one minute to midnight, which begs the question as to why his snooze button was on for so long. He will know that the first rule of diplomacy is to walk the talk. Will he now take this opportunity to put real credibility behind his stirring words to lead by example and to commit now, finally, to reversing the decision on the Cambo oilfield—yes or no? Very simple.

[The Prime Minister]

What I can tell the hon. Lady is that we continue to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels of all kinds, and we will be going for complete net zero in our power production by 2035, moving beyond coal by 2024. I think it was a Scottish National party Minister who said that oil was still a part of Scotland’s future. I will say nothing about the Cambo oilfield. What I will say is that there is a future for hydrocarbons in so far as we can liberate hydrogen and make clean energy.

Afghanistan

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The Government are proud of what we have done since we came in to increase the size of our defence commitments by the biggest amount since the end of the cold war. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about Afghanistan, the reality is that even when there were 130,000 western troops in the country, it was not possible to subjugate the Taliban, and I am afraid that we are living with the lessons of that today.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Last Friday, a young Afghan constituent told me through tears how his father—a British citizen—was turned away from the Baron hotel in Kabul on 28 August. He was trying to evacuate his other children, but he was refused permission to take two of them out of the country because they were aged 18 and 19. Can the Prime Minister imagine the pain of that family separation? All of them have stayed in Kabul, at huge risk to themselves. Will he look again at the family reunification rules and finally make it possible for families to stay together and not to have to face such a terrible choice?

[The Prime Minister]

The whole House will be full of sympathy to the family the hon. Member describes and the heartbreak they must have felt. I am sure there are many such cases in Kabul right now, but I think the record of this country in receiving people and being prepared to receive people in the future is very good. I ask her please to write to me or to the Home Secretary directly on the case of that particular family she is talking about.

Afghanistan

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I will make some progress and then I will give way.

Many Afghans have bravely sought to rebuild their country and they did so on a promise of democratic freedoms, the rule of law and liberty for the oppressed, including women and girls. They are our friends and that was our promise. They are now fearing for their lives. We do not turn our backs on friends at their time of need. We owe an obligation to the people of Afghanistan. There should be a resettlement scheme for people to rebuild their lives here, with safe and legal routes. It must be a resettlement scheme that meets the scale of the enormous challenge, but what the Government have announced this morning does not do that. It is vague and will support just 5,000 in the first year—a number without rationale. Was that based on a risk assessment of those most at need, or was it plucked out of the air? The offer to others is in the long term, but for those desperately needing our help now, there is no long term, just day-to-day survival.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that as well as marking the need for a much bolder and more ambitious resettlement programme, this disaster must mark a turning point for our failed asylum system, in particular by getting rid of the so-called hostile environment and the Nationality and Borders Bill, under which a women fleeing the Taliban with her children on a boat across the channel would be criminalised? Does he agree that that Bill must now be revised?

[Keir Starmer]

I will come on to the specifics of the system. Yet again, the Government seem ill-prepared and unwilling, just as they have been too slow to provide sanctuary to Afghans who have served alongside Britain. There have been too many reports of eligible Afghans facing bureaucratic hurdles, and too many are being unfairly excluded. Having known for months that the date of withdrawal was coming, the Home Office is not close to completing the process that it has already got up and running. The process was designed to help 7,000 people, yet Home Office figures this week showed that only 2,000 have been helped so far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Watching the scenes at Kabul airport this week left me and many others with feelings of overwhelming grief and anger: grief for the millions of Afghan women and girls in particular who were promised a brighter future and the opportunity to learn, work and pursue their dreams; and anger that the many pledges made to the Afghan people over the past 20 years have been broken as they were abandoned to their fate.

The stories being told by terrified Afghans are heart-rending. There are the women students who are now hiding their diplomas and certificates for fear of punishment, and in the belief that in any case their qualifications will be useless as they will not be allowed to use them. There is the female mayor who says that she is now waiting for the Taliban to come for people like her and kill them. There is the Afghan journalist, now in hiding with his family, who said:

“There was a lot of promise, a lot of assurance. A lot of talk about values, a lot of talk about progress, about rights, about women’s rights, about freedom, about democracy. That all turned out to be hollow.”

That journalist is in danger of being proved right.

We have to do whatever we can now to honour our commitments to the people of Afghanistan. That starts with fixing our failed refugee and asylum-seeking system. For all the hand wringing of Government Ministers in the last few days, the reality is that their actions over the past few months have left thousands of ordinary Afghans in terrible danger. Interpreters and contractors who worked side by side with UK forces have been refused resettlement on the grounds that they were technically subcontractors. That is shameful.

I fear for the thousands of ordinary Afghans who supported the UK in delivering aid and supporting other projects, often in the interests of our foreign policy objectives. They are now at real risk of being seen as collaborators working against the Taliban’s interest. The NGOs they worked with are now powerless to help them, but the UK Government are not, yet we have heard very little about what the Government are doing to persuade and support them. Many are not covered by the Afghan relocation and assistance programme because they worked for UK organisations other than the Government—for NGOs and other civil society organisations, even though they were paid by UK aid. They are in extreme danger, so that ARAP programme must be expanded to encompass them, too. The scheme was far too late to get off the ground and only started in April when Taliban advances and atrocities were already all too apparent, and it has been drawn all too narrowly. It must be amended to allow visas for the family of people who would have been eligible but who have died, and for people who have fled Afghanistan but would have been eligible had they remained in country.

The resettlement scheme announced by the Government last night is welcome, but it is not enough. Places must be based on need, not on numbers. There should be no artificial cap. When the Government are already failing to achieve their existing target of settling 5,000 refugees a year, we need to hear an awful lot more about how Ministers are planning to deliver for Afghan refugees and guarantees that local government will be properly funded to work with them.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it is vital for local councils that have been willing for some time to take on additional refugees, such as mine in St Albans, to be given additional finance? For local government to support those refugees, it needs funding to help with finding furniture, relocation and connecting with utilities. All that support is needed so that the council itself can support refugees.

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely support the hon. Lady’s comments. Such support is vital.

I call on the Home Secretary today to abandon the resettlement-only plans set out in the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would criminalise, or deny full refugee status to, those who make their own journeys to seek asylum in the UK. I call on her to grant immediate asylum to Afghans already waiting for status in the UK, release all Afghan nationals from detention, and urgently expand the family reunion route so that Afghans can be joined by other members of their family, including siblings and their parents. I was contacted by a constituent who used to work for the EU delegation in Kabul and whose siblings all worked for allied forces. He has asylum here in the UK and his siblings have asylum elsewhere, but his mother is left alone, desperate and very much a target. We absolutely need to widen the family reunion rules.

We also need not just to properly restore aid, but to increase it. The Foreign Secretary said that it is being doubled; I welcome that, but it is still less than the 2019 figure. We need to recognise that the need today is so much greater than it was even in 2019.

There are many lessons to be learned from this disaster. It looks as if our intelligence might well have been inadequate, our promises to the Afghan people worthless and our duty of care to ordinary Afghans who worked with us patchy and unreliable. More than that, this Afghan tragedy should be the catalyst that finally forces us to rethink how the so-called war on terror is fought. The debacle in Afghanistan, with the loss of almost a quarter of a million lives, is just one of four failed conflicts in the past 20 years. Western military action in Libya and Iraq and the air war against ISIS in Syria have all failed to achieve their objectives: ISIS is still active in Iraq and Syria, ISIS and al-Qaeda are active across the Sahel and eastern Africa, and there are still links with Afghanistan.

We urgently need to learn the lessons of failed wars of intervention and take an honest look at the objectives behind our foreign policy. For too long, protecting British interests has been about stability and safety through access to oil, maintaining the current balance of power and a very inconsistent approach—to put it mildly—to human rights and democracy. When we ally ourselves with countries such as Saudi Arabia, our moral credibility to speak about human rights is fundamentally undermined. We need a longer-term approach, including stopping arms sales to oppressive regimes that do not abide by international law, and a more consistent approach to democracy across the world.

The Government like to boast of our country being global Britain. If that is to mean anything, it surely has to be an opportunity to finally develop the ethical foreign policy that we have spoken about for so long, focused on seeking to build international consensus with co-operation, security and human rights at its heart.

G7 and NATO Summits

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think I am giving anything away by telling my right hon. Friend that there were certainly discussions about the vital importance of all of us getting to net zero and avoiding a dependence on hydrocarbons, whether it is strategically unwise or not.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

The failure of the G7 to reach an agreement on ending investment in all fossil fuels speaks volumes about the Prime Minister’s true climate leadership. Today he mentions coal but again ignores oil and gas. That is not a green industrial revolution; that is business as usual. The International Energy Agency said last month that there must be no new oil, gas or coal developments if the world is to reach net zero, so with the success of COP26 now hanging in the balance, will he heed the call from 101 Nobel laureates for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, and will he pursue that with G7 leaders and others before the climate summit, or is he happy for that to be judged a colossal failure of his leadership too?

[The Prime Minister]

When we consider how much some of these countries are dependent on coal, I think it was groundbreaking for the summit to agree not to support any more overseas coal. The commitments on net zero and on making progress by 2030 are outstanding, and it can be done. The hon. Lady’s mood of gloom and pessimism is not shared by the people of this country. We know that in 2012, 40% of our power came from coal. Now, thanks to this Conservative Government and the actions we have taken to reduce dependence on coal, it is down to less than 2% and falling the whole time. The whole world knows that, and they are following the UK’s example.

Ministerial Code

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is an officer and a gentleman, and he puts the point very well. There are tried and tested procedures and principles in order to make sure that Ministers and others in the House behave in an appropriate way. Judgments can be made, of course, by all of us in a democracy. His reading of the ministerial code this morning may be a prelude to his being appointed as a Minister in due course, but I cannot further speculate on these matters.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

Contrary to what one Minister said at the weekend, concerns about the Prime Minister and the ministerial code are not “tittle-tattle”. People care deeply about this, which is why Peter Stefanovic’s video on the Prime Minister’s relationship with the truth has been viewed nearly 13 million times on social media. If the ministerial code says that any “inadvertent error” should be corrected at the earliest opportunity, what should be done about systematic deliberate errors? If, as seems to be the case with our archaic and dysfunctional rules, it is the Prime Minister himself who decides whether the ministerial code has been broken, should we really be trusting this one to mark his own homework, or should the whole system not be urgently revised?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a number of important points. She is absolutely right that the public have a right to expect that those who are responsible for discharging Government duties and spending taxpayers’ money do so in a way that is consistent with the public’s values. She also makes a broader point about the need always to review the mechanisms of scrutiny to which Government are subject. As was pointed out by my hon. Friends the Members for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), there is an opportunity, with the appointment of a new independent adviser on ministerial interests, to look again at how that role and, indeed, perhaps other roles can be strengthened if necessary.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

On behalf of my party, the Green party of England and Wales, I would like to join Members from across the House in paying tribute to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and in expressing my deepest condolences to Her Majesty the Queen at this very sad and difficult time. While this is a key moment for the life of the country, first and foremost it is a deeply personal one for the Duke’s family, and, in particular, for the Queen.

The past year has highlighted the importance of family like never before, and I am sure that the death of Prince Philip has resonated even more strongly with many other families up and down the country who are also mourning the loss of loved ones.

So much has been said already about the Duke’s long life of public service, his vision in creating the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, the pioneering role he played in global interfaith developments, and his internationalism and global outlook. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, it is on his advocacy for nature and wildlife that I would like to focus.

The Duke was a champion of the early environmental movement long before it was fashionable, recognising that we depend

“on being part of the web of life, we depend on every other living thing on this planet”.

He acknowledged what he called a moral duty to protect other species, saying:

“If we as humans have got this power of life and death, not just life and death but extinction and survival, we ought to exercise it with some sort of moral sense.”

Ever practical, he took those insights and translated them into action when Sir Peter Scott invited him to become involved in the founding of what was then the World Wildlife Fund, becoming its first president in 1961, a role that he held for more than 20 years before becoming president of WWF International from 1981 to 1996. As Sir David Attenborough has said:

“His importance to conservation worldwide has been absolutely huge.”

I particularly appreciate his impatience for change. He addressed the conference on world pollution in Strasbourg in 1970, telling his audience:

“It’s totally useless for a lot of well-meaning people to wring their hands in conference and to point out the dangers of pollution or the destruction of the countryside if no one is willing or capable of taking any action.”

Ever practical, he was also one of the first people in Britain to install solar panels at Sandringham. Back in 1982, almost 40 years ago, he brought up a global environmental threat that now makes headlines, but which, back then, was rarely spoken of at all outside green circles. It was what he called

“a hotly-debated issue directly attributable to the development of industry... the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”—

the greenhouse effect.

I am not sure that the Duke of Edinburgh would have particularly relished a glowing tribute from the green movement. In an interview to celebrate his 90th birthday, he was asked whether he would consider himself a green. After a moment of utter bemusement, he replied “No”, before famously going on to remark that

“there’s a difference between being concerned for the conservation of nature and being a bunny-hugger”.

For the record, I do not think that there are many greens who champion animal protection without also being active in the wider causes of the threats to wildlife. However, I am not for a moment trying to suggest that he was a card-carrying green activist, or that his views on a wide range of issues concerning nature and animal protection, including hunting, align fully with today’s green movement; they clearly do not. However, he was, undoubtedly, well ahead of his time when it came to understanding the importance of and our dependence on the natural world, and he played an important role in promoting that cause.

Many people’s minds are turning now to asking what his legacy might be. I do not pretend to know, but I hope that it might include that impatience for urgent action on the environment. I will conclude with his own words:

“It is up to all of us to protect the natural world—and there’s no time to lose.”

Integrated Review

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect and admiration for my right hon. Friend, who has campaigned for many years on international development and done much good, but I have to say, listening to contributions from around the Chamber, that we are in danger of talking Britain down. The investments we are making are colossal—absolutely colossal—by any international standards. We are the second-biggest contributor of aid in the G7 already, and in spite of all the difficulties occasioned by the pandemic, we are contributing £10 billion this year to support the poorest and neediest in the world. Yes, I can reassure my right hon. Friend that we will return to the 0.7% when the fiscal circumstances allow, but the law makes it very clear that when we have exceptional circumstances—I do not think anybody in this House or around the world would contest that we have had exceptional circumstances—we are entitled to vary that 0.7% commitment, and that is what we are doing.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

Given that the Prime Minister said the climate crisis is his No. 1 international priority, it is disappointing that there is a climate-shaped hole at the heart of the Prime Minister’s review, with resources dangerously diverted to nuclear weapons. Earlier today, the Foreign Secretary justified breaking our nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations on the grounds that nuclear weapons are

“the ultimate insurance policy against the worst threat from hostile states.”

The logical consequence of that position is surely that every country should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons on the same insurance policy grounds. If such nuclear proliferation happens, and since we are increasing our nuclear warheads by more than 40%, how could we possibly have any moral authority to speak out against it? If that nuclear proliferation happens, does the Prime Minister think the world as a whole will be more safe or less safe?

[The Prime Minister]

It is entertaining to see the shadow Foreign Secretary nodding along to the hon. Lady’s denunciation of nuclear weapons after what we heard from the Labour leader—quite extraordinary. I really do not think the hon. Lady can have been reading the integrated review at all, because it sets out very clearly that we will be investing £11.6 billion internationally on tackling climate change. It develops the 10-point plan that the UK is advancing for tackling the emission of greenhouse gases. It stresses that this is the major western economy to go for a net zero target by 2050. She should be applauding the document, but I have to assume that she has not yet properly read it.

COP26

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), all the more so because I think he just said he supported the proposal for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty—a new commitment to leave fossil fuels in the ground. If I heard him right, I would be delighted to work with him to help to achieve that.

COP26 is arguably the most crucial global summit in recent history, so it will be vital that the COP26 unit receives all the support and funding necessary to deliver a successful COP, even if that goes beyond the £260 million it has already been allocated. The world is watching and the stakes could not be higher. I welcome the fact that the COP26 President-designate is now full-time, able to dedicate all his efforts towards the COP, but if we are to achieve the results we so desperately need the whole of Government needs to be oriented towards a successful outcome from the negotiations. That means greater consistency and ambition across Departments if we are to show credible climate leadership, and it means having the plan that the Public Accounts Committee clearly identified as conspicuous by its absence.

It also means addressing the weakness and incoherence of our domestic climate policy: the Government’s failure to call in the recent decision to allow a new coalmine in Cumbria; the £27 billion road building programme; the freezing of fuel duty for the 10th year; the approach whereby air passenger duty is apparently to be reduced; the absence of serious climate action in the Budget; and the lack of a guarantee that measures such as the super deduction tax break will not be available for high-carbon investments. The list goes on, and with a record such as that it is no wonder we are off course to meet both our fourth and fifth carbon budgets. Not only that, but of course those budgets are based on an 80% emission reduction target by 2050, not net zero. No wonder, either, that the latest annual progress report from the Committee on Climate Change highlighted that the Government have failed on 17 of their 21 progress indicators and that just two out of 31 key policy milestones have been met.

When presented with facts such as those, Ministers like to say, “We have reduced emissions by over 40% since 1990”, but let us have some honesty here, because that is true only of territorial emissions, not imported emissions. It has been achieved only by offshoring so much of our manufacturing—in essence, outsourcing our emissions to countries such as China. As well as greater ambition at home, we must also use our presidency to redouble our diplomatic engagements to reinforce the need for strong Paris-aligned climate ambition.

On the arrangements for Glasgow itself, I appreciate that discussions are still ongoing about whether it will be physical attendance, online or a hybrid mode, but however the negotiations take place, everything must be done to ensure full and equal participation of the global south and of civil society. That, of course, means equitable access to vaccines, and on that I echo the words of the Chair of the BEIS Committee. Countries in the global south have already expressed concern in response to the call by António Guterres for preparatory negotiations to take place online. Any online negotiations must be inclusive and all countries must have the technical and financial support they need to participate on equal terms.

Moving on to outcomes, the UN is reporting that only 75 countries so far have brought forward new NDC commitments and that together they would reduce emissions by only about 1% by 2030, which is far from the 45% recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We are on course for climate catastrophe, yet a successful COP26 will not be defined by emission targets alone, crucial though those are; it will also mark the start of a process to set a specific target for climate finance beyond 2025. On this, the Government talk a good game, with the Prime Minister repeatedly boasting that the UK has doubled its commitment to £11.6 billion, up from £5.8 billion. While it is true that the UK performs well in some areas—for example, providing the majority through grants and allocating 50% to adaptation— all is not as it seems, as is so often the case with this Government.

The entirety of the UK’s climate finance commitment comes from the aid budget, which the Chancellor is cutting from 0.7% to 0.5%. That is despite the fact that, under the UN framework convention on climate change, climate finance was negotiated by all parties in good faith as new and additional finance. It was understood to be additional to the long-standing commitment to ODA, not taken from money that developing countries were set to achieve anyway. Not only is this morally wrong, it will also undermine the trust that we so desperately need as we head towards the negotiations in November.

As an immediate step, I call on the Government to reverse the cut to the aid budget and to ensure that the finance is genuinely new and additional. As COP26 host, the UK must also call on other countries to bring forward new and additional commitments to climate finance, including at least 50% allocated to adaptation; grants, not loans; and a significant increase in the finance provided to the least developed countries and small island developing states. Just 3% of climate finance reported to the OECD for 2017-18 went to small island developing states—countries that are on the frontline of the climate emergency.

Loss and damage is an overlooked area of the Paris agreement but is profoundly important for vulnerable countries—so important that failing to address this pivotal issue could lead to the collapse of the talks at COP26. Currently, no financial support has been agreed for loss and damage, despite the most vulnerable countries having to take on the debt to deal with consequences of global heating. In January this year, Mozambique was hit by Storm Eloise, which killed more than 1,000 people, destroyed 100,000 homes and flooded thousands of hectares of crops. At that point, the country had yet to recover from Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in 2019, which pushed its public debt to almost 110% of its GDP.

We cannot let vulnerable countries be pushed further into debt by the climate crisis. The UK must put its pre-existing position, which has been to block loss and damage, to one side. It must use its role as a neutral COP26 president to thoughtfully and effectively facilitate a way to progress action on loss and damage finance and to stand in solidarity with communities that are suffering the worst impacts right now. At the heart of COP26 is the issue of climate justice, and as summit hosts, we will be judged on our ability to deliver it.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

This is the last Budget before the UK hosts the COP26 climate summit in November, before it presides over the G7 and before it takes part in the global biodiversity summit. In that context, the Chancellor should have embraced the enormous potential for a fair and green recovery, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and to shift our economy on to new sustainable foundations.

Climate leadership means deeds, not words. It means following the science on the speed and scale of the investment required to meet climate goals and halt the loss of biodiversity. The question is not whether we can find a climate initiative here or a mention of green spaces there—I welcome the progress on green bonds and the investment bank. The question is whether, as a whole, this Budget addresses the climate and ecological emergency with anything approaching the ambition or urgency required, and it gives me no pleasure to say that it does not. It is alarming and disappointing to see the Chancellor doubling down on economic dogma that is fuelling the fires of the climate crisis and making our society more unequal and less resilient. Because the Chancellor has failed to make space for nature in his Red Box, we are missing out on thousands of jobs that a national nature service could create, for example. More fundamentally, as the Treasury’s own Dasgupta review, “The Economics of Biodiversity”, explains, bio- diversity loss is

“undermining nature’s productivity, resilience and adaptability …fuelling extreme risk and uncertainty for our economies and well-being.”

I say in all seriousness that our nation’s health and prosperity would be better served by a Chancellor who cared rather more about hedges and hedgehogs and less about hedge funds.

I would like to highlight three big omissions from this Budget. First, we needed a climate and nature test so that all spending and fiscal measures could be aligned with limiting global heating to 1.5° and with the UK’s other environmental goals. The idea that the Treasury already accounts adequately for nature is farcical. If that were the case, the Chancellor would at the very least be restoring funding for the green homes grant. It is shameful that this scheme is being allowed to wind down. We need it.

Secondly, we need transformational investment to create green jobs. With unemployment rising and so much needing to be done to create a fair and green economy, we could have been investing millions. For example, £48 billion over 18 months could have created over 1 million good green jobs. In the US, Joe Biden has a $2 trillion plan to address the climate emergency. Maybe there has been some kind of spreadsheet error here in the UK.

Finally, in this Budget and beyond, the Chancellor must act on the conclusions of the Dasgupta review. He must respect the fact that we should be having a wellbeing Budget and shifting towards an economic approach fit for the 21st century that is not fixated on GDP growth but properly puts wellbeing and the health of people and the planet at the heart of the Budget.