Environmental Protection and Biodiversity

Debate between Roger Gale and Barry Gardiner

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

The speech by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) was one of the finest on the environment that I have heard in this House for a long time. One day, the Government will see sense and he will become Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I will cut most of what I wanted to say. The national security assessment, mentioned by my hon. Friend, says:

“Cascading risks of ecosystem degradation are likely to include geopolitical instability, economic insecurity, conflict migration and increased inter-state competition for resources.”

Why is that not the subject of a great debate in Parliament? Yesterday, we had the Prime Minister’s vital statement on Iran. The whole House sat in a packed Chamber to discuss the US bombing of that evil regime and the security implications for the world. Yet we have our own national security assessment telling us that global ecosystem degradation and collapse is one of the most serious threats to UK national security, and we still have had no debate on it.

The collapse of biodiversity over my lifetime is not a matter of spreadsheets. It is felt in silent fields that were once singing meadows, in poisoned waters that were once shimmering streams, in children who have grown up in a depleted world without knowing how much has been lost, or how abnormal is the world they inhabit. The monitoring and enforcement system currently in place under environmental regulators lacks capacity and is chronically poor.

Take our water sector: of the 2,778 serious pollution incidents reported in 2024, officials downgraded 98% as “minor incidents”, yet only 496 were actually attended or inspected before being downgraded. There can be no doubt that the regulatory system is as rotten as the pipes the water companies have abandoned since 1989. I welcome the Red Lines for Nature campaign as far as it goes, but that is scarcely far enough when it talks of no further weakening of environmental protections and no funding cuts to environmental bodies.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. Sorry, Mr Gardiner.

Kashmir: Self-determination

Debate between Roger Gale and Barry Gardiner

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) spoke with great passion, but it is a passion that I fear clouded his recollection of some of the history. Under the Indian Independence Act 1947, the rulers of each of the princely states had the responsibility to choose between the two emergent nations, and Kashmir’s ruler Maharaja Hari Singh had to decide whether to accede to India or to Pakistan. As he was doing so, Pakistan’s militia and troops invaded the part of Kashmir now known as Azad Kashmir. He then signed the legal instrument of accession to the dominion of India. That clarified the position of Kashmir in international law: Kashmir became a part of India.

It is also clear that Pakistan was the primary aggressor in the dispute. On 1 January 1948, India referred the situation to the UN Security Council. After much deliberation, the United Nations passed resolution 47, which my hon. Friend adverted to. However, again he showed a selective memory, because in fact the plebiscite had the precondition that Pakistan should secure the withdrawal of all its tribesmen and troops and Pakistani nationals from occupied Kashmir and put an end to the fighting in the state. That never happened, so the plebiscite that would have followed did not follow either.

The subject of this debate is the issue of self-determination, so I propose to examine the total lack of self-determination that the Kashmiri people actually have in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. As a constitutional entity, so-called Azad Kashmir, which is better known as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is not just strange but unique. It has been given the trappings of a country with a President, Prime Minister and even a Legislative Assembly, but it is neither a country with its own sovereignty nor a province with its own clearly defined devolved authority from the national Government of Pakistan.

Under section 56 of the AJK interim constitution of 1974, the Pakistan Government can dismiss any elected Government in AJK, irrespective of the support they might have in the Legislative Assembly—no respect there, then, for self-determination. Strangely enough for an entity that purports to be a country, the constitution bars anyone from public office and prohibits them from participating in politics unless they publicly support the principle of Kashmir acceding to Pakistan. Imagine that—a country whose politicians can be politicians only if they say they do not want to be a country.

It will therefore come as little surprise to hon. Members when I say that all the major civil and police administrative positions in AJK are held by Pakistani civil and military officers. It may also come as no surprise to find that the putative country has no representation in the Parliament of Pakistan. The territory’s local representatives are excluded from not just Pakistan’s Parliament but even those Pakistani bodies that negotiate inter-provincial resource allocation or federal taxes—so much for “no taxation without representation”.

It is not a country. It is not a province. It is not a state. It is a satrapy. Were I not a British MP conscious of the fact that much of this mess is a legacy of our colonial past in the region, I might also describe it as a prize of war. But then, of course, that is precisely what Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is: a territory taken by force, not permitted even the freedoms of other Pakistani citizens—

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Mohamed, you have three minutes.