The Climate Emergency

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sue Hayman]

That is an extremely important point, and we could do that straightaway, but we need a proper, comprehensive transport Bill to tackle things more widely.

My team will be going through the Environment Bill line by line, but there already seems to be evidence of some weaknesses. The proposals are weak on funding commitments, on enforcement, on genuine independence and on cross-departmental, centrally driven leadership. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has talked about the time it takes for things to come in, and Greenpeace has exposed the serious loophole in the Bill which means that no legal action could be taken against Ministers on any potential failings in air and water quality, plastics or nature restoration until 2037 at the earliest. The Secretary of State talked about interim targets, but we need serious action now and targets that come much earlier.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

If we are to reach the World Health Organisation’s targets by 2030, does my hon. Friend agree that is imperative to bring forward the date on which we will stop selling new diesel and fossil-fuel cars from 2042 to 2030? We also need a staged plan of how to get to 10 micrograms per cubic metre by 2030, but there is no such detail in the Environment Bill at the moment.

[Sue Hayman]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The matter was mentioned during Labour’s party conference this year, because we are taking this very seriously.

My concern is that the Conservative Government have a track record of missing environmental targets on air quality, major pollution incidents and biodiversity, and last year a leaked document showed that the Government had abandoned altogether an agreed target to restore 50% of England’s sites of special scientific interest to a favourable condition by 2020. It is therefore disappointing, but unsurprising, that the legally binding targets will not apply for nearly two decades.

Once the Government’s record on climate change and the environment is examined more closely, we find practices and policies that completely undermine and work against efforts to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. The Government continue to use UK export finance to support fossil fuels, but it is totally hypocritical for the UK to limit extraction at home while promoting extraction abroad. The Natural Capital Committee recently concluded that only half of our habitats currently meet minimum quality targets, with bees, butterflies, birds and many plants species continuing to decline.