G7

Lord Campbell of Pittenweem Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

Britain is responsible for 2.6 million square miles of ocean: we are the fifth largest maritime estate in the world. The Prime Minister announced £7 million for the Blue Belt programme to extend our work to protect the vital marine ecosystems in conservation areas, although that was overseas rather than within the UK. As for biodiversity targets in particular, for a number of reasons the current set of global targets have not reversed the global decline in biodiversity; therefore we discussed at the G7, which accepted our proposals, that we should seek to ensure that the ambition of the new global framework matches the scale of the problem, and that targets are measurable and time-bound, with strong accountability through monitoring and review mechanisms.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

My Lords, I respectfully caution the Leader of the House when it comes to interpretation of the paragraph that begins:

“Speaking in Berlin of possible alternatives to the backstop, Chancellor Merkel … said: ‘Once we see and say this could be a possible outcome—this could be a possible arrangement—this backstop is a sort of placeholder which is no longer necessary’”.


The last part of that paragraph is a conclusion, not a statement of an unequivocal position, and the conclusion depends upon something that is regarded as a possible outcome or arrangement. Until the United Kingdom provides something that can be a possible outcome or arrangement, the conclusion is valueless.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As I said, the Prime Minister has had good initial conversations with Chancellor Merkel, President Macron and others, he is seeing the Taoiseach next week, and he has been encouraged by the fact that there has been a willingness to talk about alternatives to the backstop. We are picking up the tempo of the discussions between our negotiators over the coming weeks so that we can drill down into the issue that has really prevented MPs supporting the withdrawal agreement. That is what we will be focusing on, because we are committed to trying to get a deal.