Climate Change, the Environment and Global Development

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr). We were talking about batteries earlier, and before the hon. Gentleman made his speech my hearing aid battery was working; it has now run out. [Laughter.]

There has never been a truer saying than “Out of the mouths of babes”. As the effects of global warming and pollution become alarmingly evident, wise young voices in our communities are calling for us to take urgent action to take care of our common home, all united by the same concerns and by the threats that we ourselves—we human beings—are posing to our planet. Children in Scotland and across the globe believe that adults in power have not been doing enough to address environmental issues. Some positive steps to cut down on plastics and attempts to reduce carbon emissions are seen as too little, too late.

The young Swedish national Greta Thunberg went on strike, refusing to go to school until Sweden’s general election in September, to draw attention to the climate crisis. Her protest has captured the imagination of her country, which has recently been plagued with wildfires during its hottest summer since records began. Greta has made her message global; she even came to Westminster to spread the word in the UK. She has shown us that the actions of just one person can make a difference.

I have visited schools in my area, including St Bernadette’s RC Primary School and Denny High School, and the local Baptist church. I have furnished the schools with Greta’s book and had fantastic conversations with the children about deforestation in the Amazon rain forests, the loss of orangutans and the use of palm oil in providing us with probably cheap food. They were so aware—they knew everything that was going on. They even had a mural of Greta up in the classroom. It was so impressive. Greta’s message was not lost. Those children care, and many of us in this House—most of us, I think —care and are taking some action.

Over the years, I have fought to highlight issues of pollution. I have made a stand against fracking to protect the purity and the worldwide reputation of Scotland’s water and land. Like others, I have voiced my anger at the plastic pollution all around us, from nurdles found in our waterways to the plastics that make up our clothes and are present in toiletries and cosmetics. I thank the local charities and voluntary groups I work with for keeping up the pressure and raising the profile of the detestable waste that those products cause in our natural world.

As the hon. Member for Stirling and others mentioned, the natural historian Sir David Attenborough has apologised to younger generations for the damage that we have done to their planet. We are so fortunate and privileged to have that great man speaking out and, we surely hope, being listened to by the decision makers. On the sustainable development goals, he said:

“Over the next two years there will be United Nations decisions on climate change, sustainable development and a new deal for nature. Together these will form our species’ plan for a route through the Anthropocene.”

This crucial time presents an opportunity to reach an agreement on the political will and the resources needed to address the crisis together and to make certain that no one is left behind.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman, a fellow member of the Environmental Audit Committee, is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the COP process is vital? We expect to hear that the UK will host the 26th COP next year, 2020. Does it not need to be a zero carbon COP, when we get global agreement on this, so that we can pursue our own international development goals and ensure that everyone shares the burden globally?

[John Mc Nally]

I absolutely agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. We serve on the Environmental Audit Committee, where we have received invaluable evidence in the past two or three years. I agree that we cannot just set a target; it has to be achievable at a very early stage. We simply do not have the time, and I will speak more about that as we go on.

We have been put to shame by the urgency demanded by the new breed of young environmentalists. They have had enough of taking baby steps. They know that time is running out, and I agree with them. In October 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us that we have only 12 years to make the unprecedented and unparalleled changes needed to prevent a rise in global temperatures of more than 1.5° C. Mike Thompson, the head of carbon budgets at the Committee on Climate Change, told the EAC that it is now or never on that. Exceeding this by even half a degree risks global catastrophe, with flooding, fires and famines, which other hon. Members have mentioned. Those are clear and challenging messages that we simply cannot fail on.

A decade ago, in 2009, Scotland set itself the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target, when the Scottish Parliament voted unanimously to cut the country’s emissions by 42% by 2020—next year. The latest statistics show that we remain on track to achieve that. In her recent speech at the Scottish National party conference, our leader, Nicola Sturgeon, acknowledged the situation’s urgency. Her speech was inspiring, strengthening my resolve and that of many others, from all parts of the community, not just politics, to do what we can to make this a dominant issue.

How are we helping? Thanks to a green initiative, I and fellow MPs are forming climate youth ambassadors groups to generate public interest in initiatives we can help with locally. As with the SERES education for sustainable development youth ambassadors programme in South America, we aim to build a cohort of facilitators to inspire, mobilise and grow community resilience to climate change. UNESCO is recruiting youth ambassadors, again with the aim of developing organisers and future leaders to build this resilience to climate change. We in Scotland certainly want to be part of the environmental ambitions. This is very much about, “If you can change the world, get busy in your own little corner.”

UK Steel Industry

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On that point about opportunities, my hon. Friend’s constituency was the cradle of stainless steel, and it now has ITM Power, which makes hydrogen. Does she agree that hydrogen steel furnaces are part of our commitment to address climate change, and could create a whole new steel industry in the UK, leading the world?

[Gill Furniss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I absolutely agree, and I very much look forward to my home town of Sheffield taking up those opportunities, because it is well placed to lead a green industry.

As I was saying, we always need steel, which literally forms the fabric of everything we see. I sincerely worry that both contenders to be the next Prime Minister are advocating a no-deal Brexit. As UK Steel has clearly stated, that would be catastrophic for the sector. It could cost it £70 million and lead to further collapses.

The steel industry has many strengths and is able to thrive, but, for that to be achieved, we need the Government to commit to help. The future of UK steel can be bright, and the Government’s own analysis has identified a £3 billion opportunity by 2030, sustaining good jobs in the areas that need them the most. The news last week that Jaguar Land Rover will invest £1 billion in building electric cars in the UK was an enormous boost, with the company leading the way on electrifying the cars on our roads and signalling a commitment to a greener economy. The opportunities for end-to-end supply in that process—making the steel at home to support the building of those vehicles—could be enormous. That could support and encourage growth in the steel sector while spearheading a green revolution.

It is disappointing that the opportunity to secure a steel sector deal has never come to fruition. I am pleased to see the new Minister in his place, and I urge him to give that issue the greatest importance. The steel sector needs that deal for innovation, for user research and development, and to be there to take on exciting opportunities for the future. The steel industry is there and waiting to be helped with the challenges ahead and the opportunities to make it thrive.

UK steel companies pay 50% more in energy costs than their competitors in the EU. On procurement, we know that UK Government decisions are a hugely powerful policy tool to boost British steelmakers’ orders. The decision to use our steel for the royal fleet, mentioned, I believe, by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), would be much welcomed. It would also make complete sense for our national defence. Please, Minister, look at that, because those are the opportunities that need to be put forward.

I commend the UK steel charter, which is aimed at enhancing and maximising procurement opportunities for UK steel producers. The Welsh Labour Government were the first to sign up to that commitment. They are leading the way, but Departments in Whitehall appear to be resistant to signing up. Will the Minister commit that all Departments will sign up to the charter?

On business rates, the perverse inclusion of investment in machinery, which increases a company’s business rates, is patently a barrier to investment. Some British steel companies have huge disparities in their business tax bills across their plants in Europe. For example, Tata pays a business tax bill in Wales that is 10 times that of its operation in the Netherlands. Will the Government join the Labour party in our pledge to remove machinery for steel companies from business rates to ease that burden and invite more investment back into the steelworks? I am not saying it will be easy, but what is a Government for if not to support our foundation industries and encourage their growth?

Our steel industry is fabulous, innovative, flexible and resilient, and it can thrive. Please help us to make sure it stays that way.

Whistleblowing

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) has made a good and wide-ranging speech, and he is right that this is the start of the process, not the end of it: there is clearly a need for significant legislative reform. I thank the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) for getting this debate under way and for the consistency he has shown over a number of years in supporting those who blow the whistle, and indeed for how he set out today why there is a need for a fundamental review of the regulations. It has been clear for some time that we are simply not protecting people in the way I think we would all like to see.

We have had piecemeal reforms, often as a result of case law, which have given some notable advances in protection, but that has also left gaps and loopholes, and it still remains the case, as we have heard on a number of occasions today, that the best-run organisations with the most comprehensive policies in place can be very daunting places for someone to blow the whistle in, and it does not come without consequences.

I know from my own experience as an employment lawyer before I was elected to this place about the issues employees face across a range of sectors when they are brave enough to speak up. We must not underestimate how difficult that is and how brave people are when they decide to blow the whistle, because there are many examples of how people have suffered, with careers destroyed, and worse, as a result of sticking their head above the parapet. This can involve anything from being shunned by colleagues to being dismissed on spurious charges. There are a number of unfortunate consequences that can arise from blowing the whistle, so we really should support those who have the courage to do it. Sadly, the treatment that some people receive can continue even after they have left their employment. This is far from being the benign environment that we would like to see. We are having new laws in Ireland and Australia, and a new EU whistleblowing directive is coming in in 2021, so if we are to ensure that our workers’ rights at least keep pace with those in the EU, which is what the Government have committed to, we must begin to think about how we can strengthen workplace protections for whistleblowers.

I have spoken before about whistleblowing in the NHS and the importance of providing a workplace environment where NHS staff are able to raise concerns about things they are worried about. It should be an environment where there is no fear of repercussions or unfavourable treatment and where staff feel confident that action will be taken to resolve their concerns.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Department of Health is based in Leeds, and one of my constituents whistleblew about the DH2020 process in her role as a trade union representative. She was not supported, and she was hounded out of the job she loved, incorrectly. She won her case at an employment tribunal, but that was no compensation to her because she is no longer in that job and has had her career ruined by whistleblowing on behalf of all the employees in the Department of Health who have been affected by DH2020.

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and that is something I will come on to later. The current legislation is retrospective. It is righting wrongs after they have occurred but, as we have heard, it is too late to put a career back in place after the event.

In the NHS, it is particularly important that people feel able to blow the whistle safely, not only because they have general obligations as an employee, but because many staff have a professional duty to raise concerns where they see them and could actually be in trouble with their own regulators if they do not do so. NHS England and NHS Improvement policies are very clear on this. They say:

“If in doubt, please raise it. Don’t wait for proof. It doesn’t matter if you turn out to be mistaken as long as you are genuinely troubled.”

The NHS constitution pledges that NHS employers will support all staff in raising their concerns. As we have heard on a number of occasions, however, that clearly has not happened. Fine words are not enough. Sadly, staff do not have the confidence to raise concerns without fear of repercussions.

The most recent NHS staff survey, in which staff were asked whether they would feel safe raising concerns about unsafe clinical practices, found that only a fifth said that they strongly agreed that that was the case, and three in 10 said that they did not feel safe raising such concerns. When asked whether they were confident that their organisation would address their concerns, just 14.8% of staff strongly agreed with that statement. Given that 17.8% of staff said that they had seen errors, near misses or incidents that could have hurt patients in the last 12 months, it should be deeply concerning to all of us that staff in the NHS do not feel that their concerns are being acted on.

As the right hon. Member for North Norfolk mentioned, junior doctor Chris Day was a prominent example of someone who blew the whistle and was treated appallingly. He raised legitimate concerns about staff ratios, then lost his job. The tribunal action that followed resulted in a lengthy and, in my view, wholly unnecessary legal battle in which Health Education England effectively sought to remove around 54,000 doctors from whistleblowing protection by claiming that it was not their employer. Four years and hundreds of thousands of pounds later, it eventually backed down and accepted that it should be considered an employer after all.

Climate Change

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome this statutory instrument, but have to say that although it is necessary it is insufficient. The Government lack ambition in this area; an 80% reduction on 1990 levels and a 2050 date are not the levels of ambition that I would expect if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. This is not net zero; this is net zero-lite.

I am also concerned about the Government’s ability to meet even this modest ambition. For instance, the Minister raised the matter of the Leeds and Birmingham city councils’ clean air zones, and those councils do a magnificent job; however, the Government have not stepped up to the plate because they are delaying the implementation of vehicle charging and the payments system, which means that we cannot implement those clean air zones in January 2020 as planned in Leeds.

The Green Alliance has briefed me that the Government will be unable to meet their fourth and fifth carbon budgets, and I am hosting a roundtable on this subject tomorrow. The Minister is welcome to attend. The explanatory notes to this statutory instrument state that the Government

“will continue to leave headroom for emissions from international aviation and shipping”,

but I urge him to take that headroom out. We cannot allow headroom in aviation and shipping to take us even further away from our carbon budget targets.

As others have said, the implementation date for the diesel and petrol car sales ban is far too far into the future and needs to be moved up to 2030 at the latest. In this House, I have raised the need six times for electric vehicle charging points in my constituency, mainly with the right hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry). The Minister will be pleased to hear that we are getting our first vehicle charge points in three weeks’ time, so I will no longer be annoying members of the Government about installing points in Leeds North West. We have achieved that ourselves through Leeds City Council, which has a fleet of more than 100 electric vehicles. When the Environmental Audit Committee raised this same issue with the NHS, it told us that it had no plans to transition to an electric vehicle fleet. Why can the Government’s own fleet not transition to electric vehicles just as local councils are doing?

On housing, the code for sustainable homes was set up by the last Labour Government but scrapped by the coalition. We have had eight wasted years with houses being built to poor standards that will not meet our carbon budget targets under the Paris agreement. And where is the onshore wind? I want the Minister to commit today to returning onshore wind.

However, I will finish on a positive note. I acknowledge that the UK has been a climate leader for the last 25 years or more and that that is reflected in our being awarded the COP 26 conference in 2026, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) referred to earlier. I wrote a letter with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) on this matter, and I welcome the conference coming here, but I want it to be a net zero COP. I want to see Britain having a real net zero strategy and leading the world on net zero, not just this net zero-lite that we have been presented with today.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Net Zero Emissions Target

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

As I said to the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), the Committee on Climate Change, which advises not only the Government but the House and the country on this issue, recognises the need for a transition and that gas and oil will be required in that context. As we recognise the jobs and exports generated by gas and oil, it seems to me that we should do that as efficiently as we can and with the best deployment of technology that we possibly can.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Secretary of State knows, I am usually supportive of our bid to host COP 26, on which I led on a joint letter with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) that was signed by more than 100 Members, but I am concerned that we are due to miss the fourth and fifth carbon budget targets. The explanatory notes that accompany the statutory instrument laid this morning say that the Government will leave headroom for emissions from international aviation and shipping. When will we adopt a Norwegian-style plan on aviation and shipping emissions that will eradicate those emissions and mean that we can meet our carbon budget targets?

[Greg Clark]

We have followed the advice of the Committee on Climate Change and our plans for net zero cover the whole economy, including international aviation and shipping. We await the committee’s advice on how to legislate. One opportunity that our hosting the COP would bring forward is the ability to accelerate international agreements. I hope the hon. Gentleman would welcome that.

Amazon and SMEs

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Amazon and the treatment of SMEs.

It is Kevin Brennan, actually, Mr Chope. I was once briefly knighted in the Mail Online by a journalist making exactly the same mistake, but I always consider myself more shovelry than chivalry.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate today about Amazon. I will tell a story about my constituent, Roland Brana, who this year should have been celebrating 20 years of his successful and growing family business, selling motorcycle protective clothing. He spent 11 years as a sole trader, then eight years as a limited company, and in each year he achieved continued growth. It was a successful, viable business with quality products that were competitively priced and in demand.

In 1999 his business, Bikers Gear, began importing self-designed own brand motorcycle clothing from a factory in Pakistan and sold it online via his own website and on eBay. In 2001 he opened a high street shop in Barry, south Wales, and in 2002 he accepted an invitation from Amazon to become a merchant on its newly launched non-video and book UK marketplace. His business continued to flourish. In March 2010, Bikers Gear UK was incorporated as a limited company and in 2013 the brand launched across Europe via Amazon’s European platforms.

In 2013 Bikers Gear registered for VAT in both Germany and France, and in 2014 a German and French speaking customer service team was launched, based in Leipzig. In 2015 Mr Brana completed EU-wide registration of the Bikers Gear trademark logo. This should be the story of a lad from a council estate and a single-parent family who made good. Instead, it is the story of a small businessman who finds himself having to start all over again, having had to close his business, because of the way that his small company, Bikers Gear UK, was treated by the global conglomerate Amazon.

The real problems started when Amazon approached Mr Brana in May 2016 for a retail manufacturer partnership. He accepted that as an opportunity for the business to go to the next stage. He would concentrate on expanding the manufacturing of the product and Amazon would concentrate on selling. Amazon forecast great potential for growth. He was aware that one of his manufacturers in Pakistan had a family relative trading in Australia, who sold similar motorcycle garments, so in 2010 he created an image user agreement to protect his online images from any potential infringement by this Australian brand.

Following the agreement, during 2017 Mr Brana began to receive offers of orders for more than €1 million from Amazon. To begin with he could not accept many of the orders because of delivery windows and not holding enough stock in south Wales. The problem lay with his main supplier in Pakistan, which was refusing many large purchase orders. He took action to drop this supplier. Because of this and complaints from Amazon regarding poor order acceptance rates, Mr Brana travelled to Luxembourg twice in 2017 and met Amazon buyers. Mr Brana reassured them that he would increase the stock in the south Wales warehouse to improve the order acceptance rate for 2018. He explained to Amazon buyers that the low acceptance rate was due to the problem at one particular factory, and explained that, to resolve the supply issue in 2018, he planned to introduce another supplier. He informed them that he would personally be investing £75,000 to increase his holding stock as he was fully committed to the Bikers Gear UK business, and that he would do so by re-mortgaging his home.

In 2018, Mr Brana approached Barclays Bank, obtained the mortgage and, as promised, began increasing the stock in his south Wales warehouse. All should have been well but, at the same time, he noticed that the Amazon order had by now almost stopped. He started investigating and noticed that the Australian brand had started selling its brand on the Amazon UK platform. At that point, it appeared to be offering different garments from the Bikers Gear UK garments and not selling products with his barcode or European article number—now known as the international article number—that delineated the product on websites. With the exception of the new 2018 range, however, no orders were being received from Amazon by Bikers Gear UK. Even its best-selling garments were not being ordered.

Mr Brana presumed that Amazon holding stock would run out and he would be able to return to selling the garments successfully, as he did prior to the 2016 Amazon agreement. He started checking the website stock level, which is clearly visible when someone makes a purchase on the Amazon website. It would state things such as, “Four left in stock—more on the way.” He checked back days later, and the stock available had gone up on his product from four to 18. It was clear that, even though Amazon had not purchased any new stock, its inventory was going up, not down. Something was clearly wrong.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent is not uncommon. Many people who allowed Amazon to take the business end away found that Amazon started to sell on their behalf and their business was squeezed. In Germany, a company called Cancom said:

“To team up with Amazon is like to team up with the devil. We team up with Amazon but not in a transactional area.”

This is a common business practice of Amazon’s.

[Kevin Brennan]

I can only say that I know my constituent would entirely endorse the view of that German company given his personal experience. As I outline the rest of the story of what happened, I think it will become clear why.

Solar Industry

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I agree with that assessment, which is why I argue that a minimum floor is needed. I am afraid that failure to extend that kind of certainty to small-scale prosumers will give the impression that the Government are more comfortable with big business than with small producer-consumers.

A fair minimum export price will ensure that consumers are not ripped off while the industry and the new regulation sort themselves out. It will also encourage suppliers to get their systems in place in readiness for market-wide, half-hourly settlement, which will help accelerate the smart energy transition. If a minimum floor price was to be informed by the system imbalance price, it would ensure that all other generators and prosumers could be treated equally, as required by article 21 of the renewable energy directive, without inhibiting innovative smart offerings.

Additionally, the commitment to a zero floor price, while welcome, is insufficient. No country in Europe asks prosumers to pay to put electricity into the grid. Likewise, in 2018 just 0.4% of daylight hours were a negative pricing period. Therefore, given the rarity of such an occasion, this is not what prosumers need. What is needed is the minimum floor price, which would have a transformative impact on the prospects for the sector, not simply a zero floor price.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing the debate and for her eloquence in introducing it. I completely agree about the need for a minimum floor price. Before I entered this place, I was the lead on this issue at Leeds City Council, and we put 2,003 solar roofs on council properties. Without being a prosumer, we could not have a FIT reduction, which would allow us to fit more roofs. This is therefore not only about individual consumers; it is about social housing and housing associations, which cannot afford not to have a repayment scheme. The minimum floor price would enable such schemes to be brought forward.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I completely agree. I know that councils and housing associations have certainly taken advantage of the ability to install solar power, which is a great development.

The decision needs to be made quickly, to meet the tight deadlines, but it would be a shot in the arm for a sector that has faced a series of difficulties. It would also help to deliver our climate change targets. Yesterday’s Carbon Brief analysis shows that the UK’s CO₂ emissions fell in 2018 for the sixth consecutive year—something we should celebrate—and if we are to continue that record-breaking trend, we must double down on investment in renewables.

Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Time is short for this debate and for the planet. I am going to speak up for the 3,000 young people who came out in Leeds two weeks ago on the youth climate strike and all the other thousands of young people who came out in every other town and city in the country. I spoke to those young people and said that I would come to the House and support their call for us to address the climate emergency. I call on the Minister today to say that the Government will declare a climate emergency as they would a civil emergency, because we are on the precipice of disaster.

NASA’s latest measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 411 parts per million. The historic high for this planet is 300 parts per million in 325,000 BC. In 2005, it was 380 parts per million. We are on a trajectory towards the global extinction of humanity. The insects are the canary in the coalmine of our planet. There has been a 75% reduction in flying insects in Europe in the past 25 years. Where the insects go, we will follow. How are we going to tackle this scale of emergency?

We need a rapid programme of decarbonisation. We need to become a leader in decarbonised technology in this country and in Europe. We need a world in 2030, not 2050, that looks radically different from the world we have today, a world where petrol stations are as common as coaching inns, if we are to avoid climate disaster. We need electric vehicle charge points in every parking bay. All new houses need to be made in factories from airtight and energy-efficient timber. We need to harness the internet and open and smart data, so that everybody knows everything about their lives, from the quality of the air to the amount of carbon in their clothes.

This is the brave new world we need to aspire to. We do not need gradual change; we need a paradigm shift in our system. I call on us not to have a green new deal; I call on us to have a Marshall Plan for the environment across Europe and across the planet.

[Vicky Ford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Sobel]

Time is very short, so I am going to continue.

After the second world war, we got together and we rebuilt this continent. We need to rebuild a planet free of emissions. That needs to be our single, unifying goal. We need to readdress the COP process to that point. We need to re-energise our relationship with our European Union partners—I say that in the strongest sense—to engage and to create this plan. That is where we need to be. If we do not get there we are failing not ourselves, but our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. At the end of the century, they will look back on the Governments of the early part of the century and say, “They failed us. They did not do what was needed.” They will be looking at their own extinction—the extinction of our race.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and particularly to my involvement with community renewable energy and solar energy.

Many colleagues have talked about the huge challenge that is climate change, and they were absolutely right to do so. We must act much more quickly. If we are to do that, however, we must ask what is the real barrier. Of course there are political barriers, whether they are represented by President Trump in America, President Bolsonaro in Brazil or Brexit, and we need to break them down. There are also some technological barriers, such as the need to improve the efficiency of storage, although that is coming along much faster. But the biggest barrier now, in my view, is finance. We must change the way in which our financial system works.

Fossil fuels have been the energy leader for 200 years, so they have seeped throughout our society and our economies. Whether we are talking about the City, our banks, our pension funds or hedge funds, fossil fuels are entwined with their investments in a very deep, profound way. In our stock markets, we have Shell and BP, which are very successful companies, but a significant part of someone’s pension may well come from the returns expected from a BP or a Shell investment. That is the challenge that we face. If we are to green our economy, we really must get serious about finance.

In my experience—both my experience as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and my experience of working in the renewables sector—too many of our financial institutions do not really get the fact that investments in renewable energy can be fantastic; nor do they get the fact of climate risk, which will cause investments in fossil fuels to fail. The so-called carbon bubble will burst and people who thought they would get returns from fossil fuels investment will have their fingers burnt, and that could affect the pensioners of the future.

[Alex Sobel]

Does the right hon. Gentleman regret signing off the Hinkley Point nuclear power station? Surely that will be a stranded asset in the future.

[Sir Edward Davey]

No, because Hinkley Point is a low-carbon asset—and I did not actually sign it off; I did the heads of terms agreement. It was the current Government who signed it off. We could have a discussion about nuclear, but the difference between Hinkley Point and the fossil fuels investment to which I am referring is that Hinkley Point is low carbon.

The real issue that I am trying to bring to the House’s attention is the huge number of vested interests in the fossil fuels sector that seep throughout economies and finance. If we are to be really radical, we need to decarbonise capitalism. We need new regulations and new laws to change the incentives completely, so that any investor will need to factor in climate risk. Let me give some practical examples.

I hope to meet the Governor of the Bank of England in due course. It will be a private meeting. What I want to say to Mark Carney—whom I consider to be a hero in this area—is that I think the Bank of England should include in its reserve requirements a requirement for banks to be weighted according to how carbon-intensive their investments and portfolios are. That will encourage banks to lend to green initiatives.

I want to ensure that the pension regulators are looking at the pension portfolios and determining which are low carbon and which are high carbon, and supporting the low-carbon initiatives. I want to ensure that, through corporate governance, there is complete disclosure in a company’s accounts and its assets and liabilities of how much of that involves fossil fuels, so that investors can decide whether they really want to invest in a company that is so exposed to carbon risk. I want to ensure that if a company wants to be listed on the UK stock exchange, it must be transparent and disclose how much of its activities will be in fossil fuels.

I want a new treaty to back up the Paris treaty. I would call it a fossil fuels non-proliferation treaty. It would be a global treaty, and it would say, “We have enough fossil fuels. We do not need any more. In fact, we will not be able to use those that we have.” That is the sort of radical change that we need if we are to tackle climate change. This is not just about the policies in this country, although we have made some real progress.

Universities: Financial Sustainability

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

We have set out clearly in the Government guarantee, when it comes to EU students studying at UK institutions, that we want to put financial provision in place for those students up to 2020. There is obviously a separate issue, which I am working on, about exchanges when it comes to the Erasmus scheme. Ultimately, I say to Members that a lot of the exchanges that take place and a lot of the ability to create educational partnerships rely on a deal with the European Union. The Prime Minister’s deal set out clearly the opportunity to protect those education partnerships. If anyone has any concerns about making sure that those can continue, I urge them to vote for the deal.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Staff at the universities in Leeds talk to me constantly about the twin threats they face: first, financial sustainability; and secondly, Brexit, including the issues of Erasmus, Horizon 2020 and the £30,000 threshold the Government want to apply to EU migrants. What assessment has the Minister made of universities’ ability to recruit and retain staff?

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is not just about the financial numbers; it is about ensuring we have the human capital and that we are a welcoming place for higher education leaders and academics to come and continue their research. On the immigration White Paper, there is a consultation period, so we are consulting on the £30,000 cap, and I am keen to ensure that all HE institutions can feed into that consultation, both through the Home Office and by writing to me. I have also commissioned the Government Office for Science to model the potential impact on the scientific and research communities. So I am attuned to his concerns. We need to ensure that in leaving the EU we do not leave behind our European partnerships in academia, but we must also reach out much more widely and adopt a more international outlook.

Sustainable Seas

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a former and much esteemed member of our Committee, for that question. I saw the CEFAS ship on a visit to his constituency when I was shadowing the DEFRA brief. He is right that we have world-leading marine biologists and marine scientists. The world looks to the UK for our brilliance and thought leadership on the subject. One criticism that we have of Government is that they have stopped funding our long time series around ocean certification measurements. One key recommendation is that we need to measure the acidity of the ocean. We know what it was going back decades, but we need to have more monitoring sites around the UK, so I hope that he will help us in pushing the Government on that task.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee for her leadership on this report, which built on our report on plastics. Does she agree that Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials did a great job in trying to make the Weddell sea a marine protected area, but that they need to redouble their efforts with the Chinese, Russian and Norwegian Governments? However, our work on plastics is well behind. We do not have a compulsory deposit return scheme guaranteed, and the target for eliminating single-use plastic is not until 2042. We need to have both those things in place much quicker.

[Mary Creagh]

Again, I appreciate the input of my hon. Friend and neighbour into the Committee and this report. He is right: we need to speed up our ambition. The scientists have warned us that we have 12 years to tackle climate change. It is no good putting targets in place for 2042—that is far too little, far too late. We heard about some of the interesting foreign policy discussions that are going on around Antarctica, particularly some of the negotiations with the Norwegians and the Russians. Clearly a lot of politics is involved in the oceans, and we have to be mindful of that.