Overseas Territories

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, and to offer Green support for his Private Member’s Bill and whatever we can do. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton, for securing this debate.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Lancaster, I will briefly reference frozen pensions, because it is a huge issue for 500,000 pensioners living overseas who cannot access a full state pension that increases in line with inflation. Many of those pensioners live in the overseas territories, and it is, in essence, turning the rest of their life into a postcode lottery. Pensioners living in overseas territories such as Bermuda and Gibraltar receive their fully uprated state pension, while those in the Falkland Islands, the Caymans or Anguilla see their pensions fall in value year on year. Some of them get as little as £20 a week. One example that has been shared with me is of Roger Edwards, a Falklands War veteran. He lives in the Falklands and now receives a state pension of just £106.50 a week compared to the full basic state pension of £156.20 a week, losing £1,800 a year as a result.

If I was going to do a checklist, I would also note in this debate the issue of economic crime. However, given that we will cover that again soon at the Report stage of the economic crime Bill, I will park it on one side.

In the time available, I will focus mostly on an issue that I have pre-warned the Minister about: that of carbon emissions in the Falkland Islands and more broadly, and the climate impacts of what is happening there. I fear that there is considerable confusion among the Government about this situation. I shall cross-reference a couple of Written Questions that I have put to them and responses that do not seem quite to add up.

The first of those Questions is HL6972, which was answered on 3 April. My Question was about the steps the Government were taking to work with the Government of the Falkland Islands to complete an emissions inventory for any potential future fossil fuel development. The Answer I received from the Minister stated:

“As a self-governing Overseas Territory, economic development, including the development and exploitation of hydrocarbons, is a matter for the Falkland Islands Government”.


In essence, that Answer appeared entirely to deny any responsibility here in Westminster. I then asked a further Question on 27 April, HL7503, about

“whether climate change emissions from British Overseas Territories are part of the UK’s total accounting for emissions and included in the Net Zero by 2050 target”.

The Answer I received was that

“emissions from the UK territory are in scope of domestic Carbon Budgets and the Net Zero target, in accordance with Section 89 of the Climate Change Act 2008”.

Those two things do not seem to square up. The Answer further stated:

“The UK’s ratification of the Paris Agreement, including its 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), is being extended to include CDOTS”—


or Crown dependencies and overseas territories.

I have been trying to make sense of how this all fits together. Part of the issue arises from the fact that, on 7 March 2007, the UK notified the UNFCCC that it wished to include Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the Falkland Islands in the UNFCCC. UN documents indicate that, shortly afterwards, the Government of Argentina notified the Secretary-General that they objected to this territorial application.

I am sorry; I have just given a very technical run-through, but I do not think the Government have been very clear about what is happening here. I do not necessarily expect the Minister to answer this rather complicated tangle fully today, but I hope he will commit to write to me afterwards to outline exactly where the Government see emissions for the Falkland Islands.

There is also a much broader issue. I note a very useful briefing from the RSPB, which all noble Lords taking part in this debate will have received, looking at crucial aspects of the British Overseas Territory and the climate emergency. That briefing notes:

“No UK Government Department has clear responsibility for supporting the Territories on climate adaptation, and there is no strategy in place to do so”.


This is a serious issue that really needs to be tackled. The RSPB briefing also notes:

“Many Caribbean Territories also still have very weak or absent development planning frameworks”,


which means that developments are taking place that are destructive to both climate and nature. They simply do not have the resources to deal with this.

Returning specifically to the Falklands, it deserves to be noted that the current population is about 3,500, growing at about 3% a year. None the less, it has an area half that of Wales, so it faces some very big issues, particularly with carbon emissions and peat. The Falklands have an amazing ecology; it is a place of no native trees, amphibians or reptiles, interestingly. But tussock grass, the naturally dominant species, when undisturbed can grow up to 10 feet high and is the fastest method of forming peat in the world.

The other relevant factor is that the Falklands are notably dry. The average rainfall, in some areas, ranges from 200 millimetres to 600 millimetres per year. The former end of that is definitely drought territory, even speaking from my Australian origins, and it is getting drier. The peat soil is drying out and blowing away.

There is also the very large issue of oil. The North Basin is thought to hold 580 million recoverable barrels of oil—a very large amount. The Falkland Islands Government are very keen to see the development of that, because of their budget’s huge dependency on fisheries. The UK Government have a real responsibility to work with and help the democratically elected Government of the Falkland Islands on these issues. This is a really big issue, which I do not believe the Government have got to grips with, which I am pushing them to do.

In the interests of full disclosure, earlier this year, I was in the Falkland Islands under the Armed Forces parliamentary scheme. I met members of the Falkland Islands Assembly, local officials and others, which very much informed what I have said today.