Global Deforestation Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Martin Vickers
Main Page: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Brigg and Immingham)Department Debates - View all Martin Vickers's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Global Deforestation
Martin Vickers Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Martin Vickers (in the Chair)
Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak in the debate. I will not impose a formal time limit at the moment, but I will be calling the Front-Bench speakers at 10.28 am. Jim Shannon will show us how it is done.
Sir Roger Gale
The hon. Lady makes an unassailable point.
This should not be happening. Drax is felling trees in the southern states of the United States—in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana—and throughout Canada on an unimaginable scale. The people at Drax claim that they are using pulp wood from
“thinnings that help to open up the forest canopy and get light onto the forest floor”.
Oh no they are not! They are engaged in scorched-earth forestry. They are felling acres and acres of woodland in the southern United States and Canada, and that is not acceptable. And it is being subsidised by the British Government. Worse still, the health of the local populations in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi is being directly and adversely affected by Drax’s practices.
Drax has lied—there is no other word for it—to secure its contracts and licences. I shall do my damnedest to ensure that the renewal of those licences is contested in every way. I urge the Minister to go back to her Government, particularly the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, to expose the myth that is Drax, and to insist that we must find viable alternatives—not tomorrow, but now.
Martin Vickers (in the Chair)
If hon. Members restrict their speeches to four minutes, we will fit everyone in.