COP26

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and his colleagues for enabling this important debate to be held today. I also thank Members from across the House for their contributions. They have made some excellent points about the Government’s plans for COP26, with many focusing on the lack of clarity around the efforts made so far on the road to COP26 and to our critical net zero targets. We have heard repeated calls for the Government to outline their proposed path to net zero, not just their targets, as was suggested by the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne). Certainly, speaking as a representative from a Scottish constituency, the continued uncertainty over their plan for the involvement and participation of devolved Administrations in the delegation, as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), seems unforgivable given the lead that Scotland is taking on climate issues.

The thing to really focus on is the Government’s planning for COP26. If that planning exists, there is, I am afraid, little evidence for it. There may be a few targets floating about, but there are no details of the strategies, no plans, and no route map to reaching all those targets. There may be a nationally determined contribution, which sounds impressively whizzy, but there is none of the real grunting heave of an effort needed to move us along towards any kind of emissions reduction. There is so little ambition, drive, vision or political capital being expended. The motions are being well rehearsed. If going through the motions was what was needed, we could all sleep soundly in our beds, but the truth is that we are facing the nightmare of a crisis worse than the pandemic—it is unimaginable, but the scenario is that terrifying. The UK has a Government playing shadow puppets with the issues. Perhaps worst of all, the UK is supposed to be leading world discussions in a few months’ time.

As COP21 showed in creating the Paris agreement, delivery on an ambitious programme and a visionary agenda requires the agenda and the programme first, but it also needs a whole of Government effort and a comprehensive and dedicated diplomatic effort to pull it off. The French Government showed themselves capable. They delivered. The evidence given to the BEIS Committee suggests that the UK Government will miss the train altogether.

The Committee was told that the diplomatic effort of the UK amounted to the Foreign Secretary and the permanent secretary in that Department sending a few letters to diplomatic staff to remind them about it. It was a note to remind them to do their homework, as if the diplomats needed that. The previous COP26 President told the Committee of the chaos and infighting in Whitehall that bedevilled her attempts to get anything done, although the CEO of the COP26 unit assured the Committee that everything was hunky-dory now and that they are working night and day to deliver.

I had a look at the COP26 team on the website, and there were a couple of folk from environmental think-tanks and pressure groups in among the career civil servants, but there was also a former deputy head of press at Tory HQ—now policy adviser to the COP26 President—and a former Tory special adviser, who is now the strategy director. Then there are a couple of bankers and a businessman bringing his experience of emerging markets, but that lack of focus on environmental and climate change expertise does not inspire confidence.

I have no doubt that these civil servants will do their jobs efficiently and well, and I have no doubt that the diplomats engaged as regional ambassadors will deliver on what they are asked, but they need political leadership and the investment of political capital, and that is missing. If I may, I point to the evidence that Lord Deben gave to the BEIS Committee in July last year, speaking as chair of the Climate Change Committee. Responding to a question about whether sufficient progress was being made towards the net zero target, he said:

“We are clearly not. In almost every sector, we are failing…The Government are not on track to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budget”.

He went on to say that measures were “not taken quickly enough” and that the Government

“have simply not done the radical things that need to be done.”

That is fairly unequivocal. He went on to say that using the pandemic as an excuse for inaction, rather than a “springboard” for action would be unforgivable. We are sliding down that slope from which there may be no return, and we are still waiting for Government action.

Even the arrangements for the summit in Glasgow are opaque. We have a bald and unconvincing headline Budget figure with no more to it. We have an agreement with Police Scotland that there will be no detriment to its budget, although some of us remember that the same was promised for the Gleneagles G8 in 2005, but Scotland still got left with that bill. There appears to be little if any consultation, engagement or interaction with the Scottish Government over this event, which will be on their patch.

While I am seeking clarity, I hope the COP26 President will see his way clear to elaborating on the arrangements with MCI over accommodation. There appears to be some exclusivity being claimed for that organisation, and the booking website appears to suggest that using any other accommodation provider in Scotland is likely to result in some loss to the customer. I am sure he will agree that that unintentional slur should be corrected at the earliest possible opportunity.

Will the COP26 President elaborate on the arrangements with MCI? How will it make a profit, and will any of that profit be heading back to the Government? Will international visitors be getting surcharged for MCI’s services? Furthermore, has MCI been given what amounts to a Government monopoly with the arrangement that it entered into? Will he publish all the tendering documents and other correspondence around that arrangement?

The operation of the summit is one thing; the fight against climate chaos is another. Here we are approaching the setting of the sixth carbon budget, with COP26 following close behind, and still we do not know what the Government’s intentions are. We still do not have a really clear idea of what they hope to get out of the summit. The Chancellor’s Budget lacked any real commitment to environmental action or action to address climate chaos, and it seems like the efforts on COP26 will match that lack of ambition all too well.

The truth is that the current UK Government just do not care enough about the issue to want to address it. They are so blinkered to the probable effects of the changing climate that they will stumble blindly on, hoping that it all goes well in the end; so tone-deaf to the pleas of climate activists that they cannot see the benefit of copying the French and putting in the early effort to get results. COP26 is on course to be an opportunity wasted, and it will be wasted simply because the Government do not put in the effort.

Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s excellent work in supporting green jobs in her constituency. Of course, as host of the G7 and COP26, we want to showcase innovative British green businesses, such as those housed by the Menai science park in her constituency. I am delighted that the science Minister is opening her innovation jobs fair, and I know they will work closely together to ensure it is a success.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]]

In those discussions with interested parties, did they ask why the UK’s objectives are so vague and so unambitious? Did they point out that the UK Government have missed a slew of targets on the climate change emergency and that there appears to be little to no effort being made to catch up? How can the UK Government pretend to any world leadership on this issue when they show such a marked reluctance to act at all?

[Alok Sharma]

I respectfully suggest to the hon. Lady that she look at the record of this Government in cutting emissions. We were the first major economy in the world to legislate for net zero and, of course, I hope she is pleased not just with the 10-point plan but with the very ambitious, nationally determined contribution that the Prime Minister set out last year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

The short answer is that they have been protected to an enormous extent as a result of measures brought forward by the UK Government. Over 400,000 people in Wales have benefited from the furlough scheme, £2 billion-worth of financial support has been provided through the UK Government’s self-employment income support scheme, and £5 billion extra has been given to the Welsh Government. Not all that money has yet been spent, so there is plenty more that the Welsh Government could be doing to support businesses and jobs in Wales.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues and representatives of the devolved Governments on trade negotiations with the EU.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (David T. C. Davies)]

The Secretary of State for Wales and I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues and Welsh Ministers on a range of issues, including EU trade negotiations. The Joint Ministerial Committee on EU negotiations meets regularly, and my ministerial colleagues frequently discuss the EU trade negotiations with Ministers from all the devolved Administrations.

[Deidre Brock]

The comments by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on Sunday that sheep farmers should just switch over to beef in the face of higher tariffs have been widely ridiculed in Wales and, indeed, in Scotland—quite a “let them eat cake” moment. Lamb exports are vital not only to farmers but to wider rural communities. What confidence can hill farmers have that the British Government have their interests at heart when it comes to EU trade negotiations after such a ministerial blunder?

[David T. C. Davies]

First of all, I assure the hon. Lady that this Government are working very hard indeed to ensure that we get a full trade deal with the European Union. The second point to remember is that her party has voted against or abstained on every single trade deal that has been put forward for the last 15 years. The third point that I put to her is that the UK Government have already shown over and again how much support they will give to any industry that gets into any kind of trouble as a result of covid, or indeed, as a result of anything else. She can rest assured that we are doing everything possible, and if she is worried, perhaps she would like to explain to her constituents why she and her party voted against a deal that would have kept us inside a customs union and a single market. I voted for it; she and her party rejected it.

Covid-19 Update

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that point. I am not sure that I want to put the Government’s chief economic adviser through the experience of the press briefings, but we are always aware of the economic consequences and the downsides of what, alas, we are forced to do at the moment. That is why it is vital that we work together and get the R down below 1 again; it is only just above 1, and I do believe that we can do it by 2 December. We can then open up the economy again in the way that I know both he and I would like to see.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Small businesses in my constituency of Edinburgh North and Leith, and right across the UK, are facing permanent closure. The rainy day funds are exhausted, the personal investments of owners and partners are about to be lost, and the millions of people that they employ are facing redundancy. Will the Prime Minister give a guarantee that this will be treated with the same urgency with which a UK Government treated a threat to the banks a few years ago, and will he commit to directing major cash resources to small enterprises and the self-employed to see them through this period? Any recovery will be built on their backs. What will his Government do to protect them?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member is completely correct in what she says about the recovery; it will be on the backs of small and medium-sized businesses up and down the land. As she knows, that is why we have extended a massive package of support including £25,000 grants, bounce back loans and all the investments that have been made—a total package worth £200 billion. For those now forced to close by these restrictions, there are grants of £3,000. There are also grants of £2,100 for those that may not be legally forced to close, but which are adversely affected. As she knows, we have also put in place cuts to VAT and deferred business rates until next year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Our new Office for Veterans Affairs is helping veterans to transition to new jobs and to secure homes. A discount railcard will be rolled out by Armistice day, and veterans will get guaranteed interviews for civil service jobs so that we have more veterans bringing their talents to government.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Q8. The Prime Minister’s junior Scotland Office Minister told the National Farmers Union last week that substandard food would be allowed into the UK under a US trade deal, but that it would have to be labelled as such. The Prime Minister has denied this in the past, so who is telling the truth and which of them does not know what is coming?

[The Prime Minister]

I can assure the hon. Lady that the UK has and will continue to have the highest standards in the world for our food.

Lobby and Media Briefings: Journalists' Access

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I welcome that glimpse of experience. It is important to say again that what we are discussing here today are the normal operations of the lobby. We are making sure that that is supplemented by these additional briefings.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

These are the words of the Prime Minister in 2017 when he was Foreign Secretary:

“Where governments fear freedom of expression they often try to shut down media and civil society, or clip their wings.”

He also said:

“A free media is vital to creating a vibrant, informed and engaged population and helps to support a safer, more prosperous and progressive world.”

Why does he now think that freedom of the press is important everywhere except Downing Street?

[Chloe Smith]

Because the hon. Lady is wrongly describing the situation. The Prime Minister stands by those words, as do I.

Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth (Jake Berry)]

The reason that, in just 10 days’ time, we on this side of the House are getting Brexit done is so that we can drive growth across our United Kingdom. From Clacton to Caithness, from Holyhead to Hull, we will be investing millions of pounds in communities, not least £2.5 million in the coastal community of Clackers.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

T2. I wonder whether the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster shares my concern about the lack of transparency in campaigns, and about rumours of wrongdoing in previous campaigns. Will he be responding to the recommendations of our all-party parliamentary group on electoral campaigning transparency, which include regulating the ability of campaigns to target voters on the basis of personal data, and streamlining national versus local spending with a per-seat cap on total spending?

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I will be taking a look at that report, and I shall be happy to talk to the hon. Lady further.

Early Parliamentary General Election Bill

Deidre Brock Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

A Government under siege from its own side, ignoring the advice of its more thoughtful friends and fearful of a mythical force of ultra-patriots, prepared to do irreparable damage to the UK’s international relations by charging ahead with a reckless and ill-considered Brexit, is now desperate for an election to turn its huge opinion poll lead into a parliamentary majority.

So much for the May Government and the election of 2017. That Government impaled itself upon its own hubris—and who thought that history would repeat itself so quickly? The thinking of this Government has appeared to be, “We will burn that bridge when we come to it”, and the blame has always been someone else’s. A Prime Minister who bemoans his lack of control of Parliament while disposing of great chunks of his parliamentary party, and who struggles to win any vote in the Chamber, betrays a lack of leadership, a lack of control and a lack of statecraft. His premiership is defined now, and no election can save it. This is a make-do-and-mend, hand-me-down Government that will limp forlornly from here to its end and pass unlamented into history. The only question left is how much damage it will do as it dies.

An election now may not, of course, solve anything for the UK. It may return another deadlocked Parliament. There may be a small majority for one party or another, but there may well still be a deadlock in this strange malaise that has so paralysed the English body politic. You lot have no escape, sadly for the people whom you represent, but Scotland has. This election will demonstrate how the nations of the UK are diverging, and how Scotland is charting a different path. A nation that regards the EU as being generally a force for good, a nation that sees other nations as possible allies rather than probable enemies, a nation that looks outwards instead of up its own fundament, Scotland sits more and more uncomfortably with this place.

This election, when it comes, will lay the foundation for the independence that will follow. Scotland will walk a different path, and we will forge a different future. I pity the people of England who are so poorly served by their politicians, but England’s people have overthrown broken systems in the past, and they can do so again. They can cast down the petty tribunes who have sat here for so long squabbling over trifles. This should be the last election to a UK Parliament: Scotland will be independent before another is due. We will have no need to die in a ditch; we will just get independence done without the buffoonery. No one can arrest the progress of a nation or shout down its ambition. This is the sunderance of the UK and the end of the song, and an auld song once ended in Scotland will start again.

Brexit has been the downfall of two Tory Prime Ministers and the decency of the Tory party, it has ripped apart the Labour party, and it has destroyed whatever credibility this Parliament once had.

Brexit Negotiations

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Now that the Prime Minister has established the principle that different parts of the UK can have different EU status, Scotland must at least be entitled to claim her place in the single market and customs union. When will that proposal be put to the EU?

[The Prime Minister]

I think most people in the House understand that the Good Friday agreement imposes particular requirements on the governance of Northern Ireland—it is a unique situation. As for the question the hon. Lady raises, the people of Scotland had a referendum in 2014. They voted very substantially to remain part of the UK and were told it was a once-in-a-generation decision.

Principles of Democracy and the Rights of the Electorate

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Graham]

My hon. Friend is right. SNP MPs and MSPs are on record as calling Scottish Conservatives traitors because they do not back SNP lines, and as saying that if we do not vote with the SNP we are somehow betraying Scotland. I do not think that that is true, and it is certainly not the rhetoric that we would choose to use on this side of the House. As I look across the Chamber, I see several SNP Members for whom I have the utmost respect, and I know that they do not use that language; but some others do. Indeed, there are Members in all parts of the House who probably need to review their use of language, both in this place and online.

I was making a point about proportions and how they are represented. Why should that 45% figure be presented to us, while the 42% who voted in Clackmannanshire, in my constituency, to leave the European Union are completely disregarded? Why is the 45 threshold so much higher than 42? It is completely arbitrary. It is the choice of a political party, the whim of a politician, to choose one percentage over another, and I do not think that that is good enough in a modern democracy. We need to respect the individual vote as much as we respect an individual life and an individual himself or herself. Their vote is worth just as much in Clackmannanshire as it is in Bristol, Cheltenham, Cardiff, or anywhere else in the United Kingdom, and we need to respect that.

Let me finally deal with my greatest concern and what is, I think, the greatest challenge to liberal democracies: nationalism. It can be of any hue, whether it is Scottish nationalism, English nationalism, Irish nationalism or American nationalism. Whatever guise it decides to take, nationalism is one of the most regressive political forces in modern politics and in the 21st century. The First Minister of Scotland experienced that when she went to Germany to receive an award. Elif Shafak said to her that, despite the different connotations, nationalism could never really be benign.

I was lucky enough to attend a meeting of European young leaders. Among them was the inspirational leader of the Liberal party, which had just won the elections in Catalonia on a unionist ticket, conveying a message of trying to unite Catalonia and unite Spain and take people forward. I think that that is an incredibly positive message. Something very clear came out of that meeting, and it stands for Donald Trump as it stands for any other politician. Nationalism is simply a manifestation of a set of ideas that are intended to divide people into “us” and “them”. It is a presentation of simple answers to incredibly complicated questions. It is not good enough for our constituents, and it certainly not good enough for the United Kingdom in the 21st century.

This issue is also important because what is said in the House, what is said online on Twitter and Facebook and what is said in print overlaps and spills over into everyday life. I had to raise a point of order in the House once because a member of my staff who was alone in my constituency office was threatened by two people claiming to be nationalist supporters, saying that if Scotland became separate, she would be hanged. Furthermore, that same staff member, when she was in her local Co-Op buying her almond milk, was told to go back to England. The person in question who challenged my staff member was very surprised when my staff member was able to inform him that she had been born in Namibia but raised in Stirling.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about nationalism, is he seriously trying to suggest that the Scottish National party can in any way be equated with the other types of nationalism that he is referring to? I am an Australian with an English father, but I have never felt anything other than welcome in the Scottish National party, of which I have been a member for 20 years. Will he explain that to us?

[Luke Graham]

The point I am making is about nationalism as a whole. Nationalism of any kind, regardless of the connotations, can rarely be benign because it divides people, and yes, the SNP—in its rhetoric and what it does—seeks to divide the United Kingdom. That is the raison d’être of the SNP; it wants to break up the country—

[Deidre Brock]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Luke Graham]

No. The hon. Lady says independence; I say separation. That is the purpose of this debate. I am quite happy to debate this robustly and to use facts and figures, but it is clear that nationalism and the SNP want to divide our nation on the lines of geographical boundaries. This is not about dividing the country on principles or ideas; if it were, we would be asking for a union with London, Bristol, Manchester and, I believe, Cardiff, who all voted remain in the European Union referendum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it is a Union of two countries? He is suggesting that Scotland is the same as Birmingham or any city—well respected as they are—within England, but that is not the same thing. We are talking about a Union supposedly of equals, that is anything but. I would suggest that the people of Scotland have every right to make a decision against—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order.