Wednesday 21st July 2021

(2 years, 8 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Portrait Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
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That is an interesting question. The UK’s priority, as I said, is to reform the court so that it functions more effectively and to take a leadership role in persuading international parties of the importance of the environment. On the oil and gas industries, the noble Lord will be aware of a number of initiatives, such as the 10-point plan, the White Paper and the North Sea transition deal, which seeks to show the oil and gas industries a pathway to decarbonising and to reskilling many of their workforce towards more environmentally friendly things, such as carbon capture and storage and hydrogen technologies.

Viscount Trenchard Portrait Viscount Trenchard (Con)
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My Lords, the emotive term “ecocide” conjures up horrific images of serious and deliberate crimes against humanity, such as genocide. I understand that an application was made to the United Nations International Law Commission in 2010 that a crime of ecocide be added to the Rome statute, defined as

“the extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been … severely diminished.”

Does my noble friend not agree that it is hard to consider ecocide as so defined as a crime at all, let alone one equivalent to such serious war crimes, if it does not even need a person or a—

Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Portrait The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)
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My Lords, I am afraid we need to move on. We will hear from the Minister.