Global Plastics Treaty
Debate between Karl Turner and Emma Hardy(1 month ago)
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Emma Hardy
Absolutely. The global plastics treaty, which I will talk about in more detail, is crucial, and it is really encouraging to see how everybody is getting behind it.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
The Minister talked about being lobbied by children, and we all know how effective kids are when they lobby their MPs. I also want to mention the education work that The Deep in Hull does with children on plastic pollution, which is impressive, to put it mildly. On the topic of education, the University of Hull has recently carried out research showing that 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the sea, making up 80% of the debris in our oceans.
Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend. I am not meant to show bias, but The Deep is fantastic; we should all go and visit it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right—it does incredible work in educating children about ocean conservation, nature and plastic use. It is an amazing asset for the constituency I represent, and its work is highly regarded internationally.
I move on to talk about the treaty in more detail. After two years of negotiations, we are approaching the fifth and final scheduled meeting of the intergovernmental negotiating committee, which starts on 25 November. The executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Inger Andersen, has referred to this treaty as
“the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord.”
We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to agree an ambitious treaty to end plastic pollution, and that is why an agreement at Busan this year is critical. If we are to stop plastic entering the environment at an increasing rate, we need a treaty that provides actions at all stages of the plastics life cycle. We are proud, as a country, to be a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution. That coalition includes more than 60 countries, and calls for an ambitious and effective treaty that will end plastic pollution by 2040. In September, the High Ambition Coalition published a ministerial statement calling for an ambitious treaty that covers the full life cycle of plastics, including design, production, consumption and end of life. Then, on 24 September, the UK signed the Bridge to Busan declaration, which makes the case for an ambitious treaty that includes upstream measures to ensure the sustainable consumption and production of primary plastic polymers.
It is critical that the new treaty on plastic pollution takes action across the entire life cycle, including production and consumption. The evidence is clear that we cannot solve the problem of plastic pollution unless we take action at every stage. Global plastic production is projected to double by 2050, reaching 800 million metric tonnes annually. Evidence shows that on current trends, waste management infrastructure will not be able to keep up with the pace of plastic production and consumption, and the level of mismanaged plastic waste will continue to rise. That is why the UK supports binding provisions in the treaty to reduce the production and consumption of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels, and to enable the transition to a circular economy.
To end plastic pollution, we need all actors in the plastics value chain to act. That includes national and local governments, and the private and financial sectors. We need to bring everyone along with us. That includes the marginalised, undervalued and unrecognised waste pickers, most of whom are women. They handle more than half the world’s plastic waste for recycling, so it is important that their voices are heard.
We have partnered with the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network to run the UK treaty dialogues ahead of each round of negotiations. The dialogues include actors at all stages of the plastic value chains, as well as from academia and environmental non-governmental organisations. Those dialogues have helped us understand the views on the treaty to inform our approach to negotiations.
On 6 November, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I, in conjunction with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, hosted a plastic pollution treaty roundtable for business leaders, retailers and financial institutions. We discussed the importance of agreeing an ambitious, legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution. Participants also signed a statement setting out the key elements that the treaty must include in order to end plastic pollution by 2040.
Many businesses and organisations are leading the way already. An example of this is the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which has been joined by more than 85 organisations, including major global businesses, financial institutions and NGOs. The UK scientific community is also world-leading and playing an active role in ensuring that the treaty negotiations are grounded in science, as well as developing the solutions and innovations that will help us take action on this issue.
However, we also recognise the importance of mobilising support for countries most in need, in order to implement the treaty, and this is an essential element of its effectiveness. We can end plastic pollution only through globally co-ordinated action and by mobilising and aligning financial flows from all sources, including all actors and stakeholders across the full plastics value chain at both the global and the local stage. The UK supports the use of the Global Environmental Facility to support the implementation of the treaty. It has established a track record of supporting environmental agreements on climate and biodiversity.
P&O Ferries and Employment Rights
Debate between Karl Turner and Emma Hardy(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
Madam Deputy Speaker, you have known me a very long time, and you know, as others do, that I often get very angry about the policies of this Government. I get angry about injustice, I get angry about inequality and I get angry about the rich and the powerful deliberately stifling the reasonable aspirations of people—and the majority of people—in my constituency of east Hull. However, in the nearly 12 years since I was elected, which is 4,336 days, I have never ever been so angry about a single act of brutal contempt for decent working people as I was on Thursday last week, when loyal workers were sacked by a pre-recorded Zoom call, with replacement crews and balaclava-wearing, handcuff-trained and Taser-trained private security waiting on the quayside.
This thuggery against workers must be an ultimate new low, but this day has been coming for a long time. I have spent years—years—telling anyone prepared to listen to me about the unscrupulous employers using loopholes and ambiguities in maritime law to get away with gross exploitation. If this was happening to any workers in any business on the mainland, it would not just be illegal; it would be the most grotesque act of illegality in industrial relations most any lawyer or indeed most any employment tribunal judge had ever seen.
Imagine any of the big employers notifying its staff that they had been sacked with immediate effect, only to be replaced with exploited eastern European, Filipino, Portuguese or Indian agency workers paid less than two quid—less than two quid—an hour, but that is what happened. That is what happened here, and it is a scandal that the national minimum wage legislation does not apply to seafarers on international routes, despite me, members of the Labour party and Opposition Members begging successive maritime Ministers to sort it out. It is a disgrace that this Government have allowed this practice to carry on unchallenged.
For how they have stood up to the onslaught on the terms and conditions of their members, we should all pay tribute to the RMT union and Nautilus International. Since Thursday, they have been tirelessly defending the workers, and I want specifically to thank Gary Jackson, the RMT’s regional organiser, for the unflinching support for the crew on the Pride of Hull, and the ship’s captain, Eugene Favier, for his efforts. Captain Favier is a very modest man, and he said he was only doing what was right when he instructed—ordered—his crew to lift the gangway. These trade unions do this work year round, day in and day out, and the general secretaries, Mick Lynch of the RMT and Mark Dickinson of Nautilus, are here in the Chamber for this debate. I thank Mr Speaker’s Office for kindly for facilitating other trade union members being in the Gallery here today watching the debate.
The Government have continually refused to listen to me and the unions, and refused to close the loopholes. Now, 800 families are suffering the consequences. By kowtowing to unscrupulous bosses and refusing to back the Bill that would have outlawed fire and rehire, this Government have allowed these predatory capitalists—pariah companies like P&O and its parent company DP World—to exploit cheap foreign labour at the expense of British maritime professionals. Kids in east Hull grow up in the shadow of ships in ports but are shut out of rewarding and prosperous careers at sea. In 2020, a further blow was dealt to their aspirations when P&O axed the Hull-Zeebrugge route at the cost of many more seafarer jobs.
You can see that this is deeply personal to me, Madam Deputy Speaker, as my late dad Ken was a proud trade unionist. He was a full-time official for the National Union of Seamen, predecessor to the RMT, from 1971 until his retirement as national secretary in 2000. He fought for years, along with other trade unionists, to achieve the decent terms and conditions enjoyed by British crews in Hull and across the country until Thursday last week.
The British seafarers sailing out of Hull worked long and demanding hours at sea but got proper rest breaks and were paid rates that they could live on. They had work stints of two weeks on and two weeks off.
Emma Hardy
My hon. Friend is making an incredible speech, and I want to state that Hull is of course united on this issue. The leader and deputy leader of the council were at the demonstration, as of course were the people of Hull West and Hessle.
Karl Turner
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. and she is right: Labour councillors from Hull attended that rally and were incredibly supportive.
The work stints of two weeks on and two weeks off allowed seafarers proper rest times for safety at sea. Steward jobs are not just pulling pints behind the bar; they require skill and experience, and safety and survival training.
Once upon a time British seafarers were treated with respect. In my office in Parliament there is a painting of the MV Norland, predecessor ship to the Pride of Hull. It was presented to my dad and my predecessor Lord Prescott by Captain Don Ellerby CBE. When she sailed to the Falklands we were all proud of her: proud of her crew, fighting for Queen and country, supplying our Navy and the military personnel. The painting illustrates the vessel as she was under fire at sea. In those days the owners of P&O, and then North Sea Ferries, were also proud of British ratings and British officers.
Emma Hardy
Yes, just to say again that my hon. Friend is making a wonderful speech.
Karl Turner
Of course, I am bound to agree.
I am not going to spare my anger and wrath at this Government today for enabling this industrial vandalism. We now know that Ministers were told in advance, and we know that officials thought it acceptable to sack 800 men and women with immediate effect, ignoring any liability in law that might apply. It is absolutely despicable, and it is the fault of the Prime Minister and his Government. The ideology of the small state, a leave it to the market, full speed ahead, devil take the hindmost Thatcherite philosophy that allows, defends and incentivises this shocking corporate arrogance and this most malicious act of violence on workers’ rights is their absolute shame.
I spoke with the Secretary of State on Thursday and I think he was angry, but the Government can do something about it now. They should support this motion, or they should expect the electorate to sack them at the next election. Unlike our British seafarers sacked last week, they are on good and proper notice: do something now—close the loophole. It is possible; it takes a few minutes in a statutory instrument—get on with it.