Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lisa Smart and Ed Miliband(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Ed Miliband)
At the Warsaw security forum earlier this month, I discussed with our allies our work to deter and disrupt threats to our democracy from foreign interference. The Prime Minister announced at the UN General Assembly that, in line with the recommendations of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we will establish a national centre for information defence to detect, deter and disrupt information attacks from hostile states. This is a very serious and important issue for our democracies, and all countries need to do more to tackle it.
Lisa Smart
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for those remarks, but with Russian-linked interference operations continuing to target democratic elections across Europe, does he feel that the current arrangements are sufficient? He will know that the European democracy shield is developing new structures to co-ordinate action against foreign interference and disinformation, so what discussions has he had with our European partners about ensuring that the UK is fully involved in those efforts, including the proposed European centre for democratic resilience, so that we can better identify and respond to Russian attempts to undermine democratic elections across Europe?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Lady raises an important issue, and Governments across the world, and indeed across Europe, need to do more. Since October 2024, this Government have sanctioned 106 entities and individuals responsible for delivering Russia’s information warfare. That includes, in July, sanctioning Rybar, the media company resourced by the Russian state and responsible for spreading false narratives about Ukraine and interfering in European elections, including in Moldova. I hope—indeed, I am confident—that the centre that the Prime Minister announced is something we will work on with our European partners to counter this grave threat to our democratic way of life, frankly, across the world.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lisa Smart and Ed Miliband(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
In 2025-26 alone, we will upgrade up to 300,000 homes through the warm homes plan and other measures. That is more than double the number of homes upgraded last year. Later this year, we will set out more details of a warm homes plan to upgrade up to 5 million homes, and there will be more details in the spending review tomorrow.
Lisa Smart
Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. My Lib Dem predecessor, the much-missed Andrew Stunell, pushed for the zero carbon homes programme during his time in the 2010 to 2015 Government, having brought in his first Bill on that subject back in 2004. Sadly, those standards were scrapped as soon as the Conservatives were governing on their own. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has estimated that, had those standards been reached in 2016, households would have paid £5 billion less in energy bills as a result of living in better insulated and more energy-efficient homes. The Secretary of State earlier mentioned the future homes standard, which is bringing in welcome steps on solar panels and so on. When will the Government go further to reach zero carbon homes standards with a fabric-first approach?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Lady raises an important question. The failure to have a zero carbon homes standard or future homes standard in place has meant that we have built over 1 million homes since then that are now going to have to be retrofitted. That makes no financial sense. It is right to put those upgrades in as standard from the get-go, and we have done a lot of work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and house builders to make sure that can be done in a way that also means we can build lots of homes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lisa Smart and Ed Miliband(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Ed Miliband
This is actually to do with the disastrous economic legacy that was left by the Conservative party. The truth is that, even in tough times, the Labour Government are showing with their decisions on the MPS how we can make our society more just.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
One of the questions I was most frequently asked when I was the trustee of one of the larger local authority pension schemes was what more the fund could do to tackle climate change, particularly in relation to investing in fossil fuel companies. Will the Secretary of State update the House on the conversations that he has been having with the Pensions Minister to ensure that pension funds do their bit to help get us to net zero?