Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Claudia Webbe

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]]

With the highest-ever temperatures recorded in the Arctic circle, and with just 3% of the world’s ecosystems remaining intact, we cannot delay taking radical action to save our planet and future generations, yet this Environment Bill does not go nearly far enough to tackle the climate and ecological emergency.

As we emerge from the pandemic, we must raise our ambition to forge a new social settlement, a green new deal, to rebuild the country with a more just and sustainable economy. We must fight for a society in which public health always, always comes before private profit, and it must be the big polluters and corporate giants who bear the costs, not ordinary people. It is vital that those responsible for climate chaos—the fossil-fuel companies and big polluters—are held responsible for their actions.

Fracking is bad for people and the environment; therefore we must ban it. It is vital that the protection of all workers and communities is guaranteed during the transition to a carbon-free, renewable-energies future. As we rebuild our economy from the ruins of a pandemic, it is possible for the Government to create 1 million green jobs with a programme of investment in renewable energy, flood defences and a resilient health and care service.

The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the need for communities like Leicester to have access to clean air, green spaces, streets for people and interconnectivity. That is why we must also introduce full-fibre broadband free at the point of use, a mass house insulation programme, and a green, integrated public transport system.

Air pollution has reached dangerous levels under this Government, with 60% of people in England now breathing illegally poor air. Many of my constituents have contacted me regarding the need for a stronger environmental Bill for clean air in Leicester. The Government must enshrine the World Health Organisation’s guideline for damaging particulates known as PM_2.5 in law via the Environment Bill. Currently the Bill falls short and merely commits to setting a new, unspecified target by 2022. Our current legal limit for PM_2.5 is twice as high as the World Health Organisation recommends. I urge the Government to adopt a clear legal commitment to reduce these particulates, which, as we know, contributed to more than 4 million deaths in 2016.

Without much more ambitious Government intervention, the urgent action required to preserve a habitable planet will be too slow. This will cause unmanageable ecological disruption and could cost millions of lives—most sharply in countries of the global south, which have contributed the least to climate change. To ensure a global green new deal, our Government must strongly consider the cancellation of global south debt to enable investment in public health. The UK must also end international fossil fuel finance and rapidly step up financial support for a just global energy transition.

The upcoming COP26 in Glasgow provides a crucial opportunity to reset our relationship to climate justice, yet the conference risks excluding representatives from countries that are most at risk from climate breakdown. Every possible step must be taken to ensure that COP26 is accessible for all and that it is a turning point for more radical climate action. While we recover from the pandemic, a green ambition must be hard-wired into everything we do as we rebuild our economy. To achieve this, the Government must raise their ambitions, seriously rewrite the Environment Bill, work with the Opposition and begin to act on the scale that the climate crisis demands.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Nos. 17, 19, 20 and 21 on the list have withdrawn, so we go straight to the final speaker from the Back Benches: Jim Shannon.

Covid-19

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Claudia Webbe

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

Amid a deadly second wave and record-breaking numbers of covid-19 infections, it is important to act for change. The virus is continuing to rise. The measures put in place are not working. Time is running out. My constituency of Leicester East knows this only too well as our city has been under enhanced restrictions and/or lockdown longer than any other area in the UK, yet our numbers are continuing to rise.

People in Leicester East and across the country cannot afford to live below the minimum wage. Even before this crisis, more than half of the 40 million people in poverty in the UK were part of the working poor—suffering in-work poverty. Child poverty is off the scale due to a decade of austerity, extortionate rents and declining living standards. The Conservatives have overseen an unacceptable breakdown in our social contract in which a job no longer provides a route out of destitution. Yet now, during an unprecedented crisis, the Government are handing out poverty payslips and driving our residents into hardship. Will the Government today commit to ensure that no one receives less than a living wage throughout the remainder of this crisis? We are only as safe as the most vulnerable in our society, so, yes, local and regional authorities need funding to use their discretion to fully support undocumented workers and those on no recourse to public funds. Will this Government relax the barriers and grant status now to all undocumented workers, so that they can access much-needed social security benefit and not be destitute or desperate?

What makes this lack of support even more disgraceful is the billions that the Government have been willing to pay to private companies to oversee the disastrous test, track and trace system. The recent National Audit Office investigation into Government procurement has highlighted cronyism at the heart of Government. That has had a devastating impact on the spread of the virus in Leicester. In one week this month, the success rate of Leicester’s privatised contact system was just 55.5% and this has decreased by more than 5% on the previous month. That means that, in one week alone, nearly 700 Leicester residents who may have been exposed to the virus were not informed and therefore did not self-isolate. This is a Government who are frivolous when it comes to handing out public money to Tory donors or private companies, but penny-pinching when it comes to bailing out communities and the 3 million excluded, including the self-employed across the country.

As the representative of one of the most diverse areas of the UK, I am also especially concerned about the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on African, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Recently published research by the universities of Leicester and Nottingham found that black people were twice as likely, and Asian people 1.5 times more likely, to be infected with covid-19 compared with white—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claudia Webbe]

Does the hon. Member not agree that the intensive care beds are filled today with covid-19 patients from African, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds—back at levels seen during the first peak, despite earlier pledges from the Government to learn lessons and protect the vulnerable? What we need is change now.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I really do urge people not to make interventions, because it is going to prevent other people from speaking.