Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

Obviously, we are keen for tree planting to expand everywhere, including Scotland. Scotland already does a lot of tree planting, because the nature of its landscape is somewhat different from ours. We have a raft of measures, and our officials will be speaking to officials in Northern Ireland. It is very important that we keep all that contact and do this as a joint thing. Trees work on the atmosphere: they hold the carbon dioxide, and that goes everywhere, so we need to be doing this jointly.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is absolutely right that we vastly ramp up tree planting to help with carbon capture, but may I ask the Minister not to overlook kelp? It absorbs more than six times the amount of carbon as trees. We have vast tracts of seabed available, not least off Sussex. It helps with marine conservation, and it is also a food source. Please could we look at that more closely, and at how we can promote it, as we want to do, in Sussex?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly interesting point. It is something I am personally very interested in. As we speak, there is a project under way to plant kelp and to look at how its carbon capture is going. Mudflats are similarly really important, as are salt marshes. There could be a big future for this on our new horizon of dealing with the land and the landscape. All this carbon capture is a new feature in relation to climate change, and I think kelp will definitely be part of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

May I suggest that one form of marriage support the Church of England might like to get on with is enacting clause 1 of my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Act 2019, which became law a year ago now and will overhaul marriage registration and allow mothers’ names to go on marriage certificates for the first time since 1832? Can he give us a progress report on whether this is at last going to happen?