Climate and Nature Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

No, I will make some progress.

At that point, I understood that it is entirely possible for us to hit our climate targets as we rip up and destroy a 10,000 or 50,000-year-old woodland. At that moment, I realised that I could never allow the road to be built. We can look at the Amazon forest and campaign about what should not be happening there, but what about our own backyards? There is a question for the Government —my Government or any Government—about growth: what kind of growth do we want? No one is answering that question. Do we want sustainable growth? What is growth about? What are we growing? Are we growing pollution in our rivers? Are we growing roads that go through ancient woodlands? Yes, that is growth, but is it the growth we want? Do we not want to see growth in well-paid adult social care or renewable technology? Do we not want to see growth in rewilding or sustainable farming? Those are the areas where I want to see economic growth. I do not want to see growth that comes at the cost of my daughter and her generation’s future. That is the kind of decision that we in this country and this Government have to make.

I am afraid to say that we cannot have growth on a dead planet. Politicians need to understand that; for too long, we have not. We cannot pick growth out of the air and say, “Biodiversity will come in second place; climate will come after.” They are all interlinked. We cannot have a viable economy unless the climate and nature of our country and the economy are working well together in unity and in synthesis. That is what needs to happen.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I agree with the hon. Member’s point about the kind of growth we want. Does he agree that if the Government were to proceed with expanding Luton airport, as rumours suggest, that would fly in the face of advice from the Government’s own climate experts and economists, who say that it would not deliver the kind of growth that airport expansion used to deliver?

[Clive Lewis]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and that was a great pun—“fly in the face.” This decision has not been taken. I, for one, do not believe that it is compatible to have expansion of aviation at these four airports: London, which has already been agreed, Luton, Gatwick and Heathrow.

Choices need to be made here. Many of my constituents cannot afford to fly. Everyone wants to see their constituents benefit from the economy, and if we go down that path of expansion, we will be heading in the wrong direction. There will be many Members on both the Government and the Opposition Benches who do not want to see that. I believe that expanding Heathrow is incompatible with having a genuine approach to biodiversity and climate. The Climate Change Committee has already stated, before we even get to the seventh carbon budget, that this should not happen. We will need to have a very hard, honest conversation about that. I do not think it should happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

Let me respond to my hon. Friend by quoting one of his great political heroes, the noble Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton: just because we cannot do good everywhere, that does not mean we cannot do a little bit of good here. I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes. Of course we have to be conscious of cost differentials, production costs and all the rest of it, but I say to him respectfully that if the rest of the world does something that is to the good, and one or two countries decide not to, or go at a slower pace or on a different path, I do not believe we should just stop, shrug, throw it up in the air and say, “Oh, well, if not everybody’s doing it, why the hell should we?” We led the abolition of slavery. Nobody else was doing it. We did it because we thought it was right. We introduced factory Acts. Nobody else was doing it. We did it because we thought it was right. We introduced votes for women. [Interruption.] Not me personally! I am not as old as my hon. Friend; I have just had a hard life.

We have led. It is what the United Kingdom does. We are not a nation that follows; we are a nation that sculps, leads, forms, challenges, cajoles and encourages.

[Daisy Cooper]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady needed encouragement; she has got it.

[Daisy Cooper]

I rarely need much encouragement. The hon. Member is making an impassioned speech about the fact that this country has led, and it can continue to lead in this area. He talked about hard power. Does he agree with me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues that if our country is to be better than just assembling parts, we need urgently to rip up the red tape that is stopping so many of our home-grown manufacturers building the climate technology of the future because of the trade barriers that exist with our EU neighbours?

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Lady is pushing at an open door. There is much merit in the trade and co-operation agreement that we have with the European Union. That should never have been seen as an event; it should be an evolutionary process, responding to events in a pragmatic and sensible way while always maintaining the integrity of the result of the Brexit referendum. She and I were on the same side in that debate. We lost, and we now have to play the hand of cards that we have been dealt.

I have received emails describing me as a “dangerous radical” and a Stalinist. I have been called many things in my time, but a Stalinist dangerous radical was new to me. My North Dorset constituency is about 440 square miles, of which only 12% is built upon; the rest is open farmland, hill land, ancient woodland and so on.

I had hoped that I might have been able to finish my speech by now, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I am just getting into the romantic prose. I notice that the clock stands at 10.59 am, and I understand that you want the statement to be given at 11 am. I am now in “Just a Minute”, talking down the clock without hesitation, repetition or deviation—

Proceedings interrupted (Standing Order No. 11(4)).