Climate Emergency

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as to where the Agriculture Bill is, I fear that I cannot help the noble Baroness, but no doubt my noble friend sitting beside me will be able to offer advice in due course. All I can say is that we will do all we can in all fields—there are a great many fields in which work needs to be done—to reduce our carbon footprint. As I have said before, we have done a great deal, but there is a great deal more to do.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Government met the Extinction Rebellion campaign recently. What did they learn from that and what policies are going to change as a result of the meeting?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the most important thing is that we had the report a few months ago from the IPCC, which we put to our own climate change committee. Last week we received a report from the climate change committee and we will respond to it in due course.

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord makes a good point. The first thing to say is that we should all eat up our greens.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Please, no!

[Lord Henley]

I will restrain my carnivorous habits in the future. However, the noble Lord makes a good point, and everyone should get that message—there is a great deal of waste in the food chain, just as there is throughout the world. We have possibly a lot less waste than in the third world as a result of the efficient means we have of moving food around and processing it, but as the noble Lord said, there is still a great deal of further waste, and more must be done.