Finance (No. 2) Bill

Claire Hanna Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) [V]]

That was a fair point well made about contributions earlier, Madam Deputy Speaker, and as I am mostly going to address climate change, I will try to be aware of the levels of hot air I am producing myself.

I rise to speak in favour of the reasoned amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—my name is also on the amendment—and to say that Social Democratic and Labour party Members will vote against this Bill. We spoke last month in the Budget debate to highlight the missed opportunities, including the opportunity to respond to the economic challenges and the challenges of inequality that have been exposed by the pandemic. However, while interim and half measures can perhaps be explained away with an economy in lockdown and in deep freeze, they cannot be justified for the live climate crisis we are facing at the moment. This Bill misses the opportunity to act on that ecological emergency because it lacks the ambition and the urgency required to meet the UK’s obligations under the Paris agreement. It does not deliver the transformational investment needed to create green jobs, particularly at a time when so many people have lost their work and when so many sectors will take time to recover. Opportunities also need to be there, not least here in Northern Ireland.

Additionally, the Bill provides very little for those who have been working on the frontline throughout the pandemic. It does not say much either to people whose economic precarity has really been exposed over the past 12 or 15 months, or to young people who have missed so many experiences and opportunities and who need to see an economy in which they can have some hope—an economy that focuses on opportunities and wellbeing rather than on an obsession with growth. They need something that offers them more than just personal debt and insecurity in the years ahead.

This year, the UK hosts COP26, which provides even greater impetus than ever to be a leader in climate action, with meaningful cross-governmental action right at the very heart of the Bill and right at the very heart of this global inflection point that we are experiencing at the moment.

We have been doing things differently necessarily for the past year and we should continue to do that and to follow a different ecological and economic course from the one that we would otherwise be on. The Government have repeatedly highlighted the importance of net zero, which is welcome, but the Bill does not reflect the urgency of what we are experiencing here and what we are seeing around the world. We cannot keep putting the meaningful actions into the “too difficult” piles. Recent moves by the Government, including approving a mine, granting new licences for oil and gas exploration, scrapping the green homes grant and cutting overseas aid to countries that are dealing with the impact of climate change and removing funding at a time when they need to transition to less carbon-intensive measures, is going in the wrong direction. These are not the signals of a Government who are serious about a green recovery or serious about the wellbeing of the planet or of future generations. There needs to be consistency in domestic policies and international objectives that we are not seeing here.

I am pleased also to co-sponsor the Climate and Ecology Bill, which would have provided some signals for the actions that this Government could have chosen to take in this Bill if they were serious about the environmental urgency and dynamism that we need to see, so we will be opposing the Bill on that basis.