Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Developed Countries

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

In my experience, you can only get action, especially in an international context, if you have constructive discussion. In terms of our contribution, the UK spent £2.4 billion on our international climate finance between 2016 and 2020 on adaptation and investment in areas that needed to address loss and damage. The Scottish Government fund is £2 million.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, there is no point in offering the least-developed countries support for loss and damage if our Government are removing funding from other areas of that community. For all the figures that the Minister has stated today from the Dispatch Box, how much is new money and how much of it is simply reallocated from the arbitrary cap of 0.5%?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We made very generous commitments to funding on climate change last year. We are sticking to those; the Prime Minister made it clear on the steps of Downing Street that he regarded protecting the environment as very important. Sometimes you change the priority which you give to different aspects of the climate change matter, but that is the way to move forward and do things better, and the announcements that have been made today are directed exactly at that. I am delighted at the progress that is being made today, but the question is whether the discussions will deliver what we want over the next two weeks. We look forward to reporting on that when COP 27 ends.