Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine West and Greg Hands

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

What discussions she has had with UK trade partners on maintaining environmental protection standards in future trade agreements.

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

The Government are committed to meeting their ambitious environmental objectives. We are exploring environmental provisions in the design of our free trade agreements to ensure we continue to uphold the UK’s very high environmental standards. The precise details of each individual UK free trade agreement are a matter for the formal negotiations.

[Catherine West]

As we can see from the Extinction Rebellion protestors outside Parliament today and from our own inboxes as MPs, people hold environmental standards very close to their hearts. High climate standards are put at risk by leaving the European Union, which has the gold standard on environmental protections. What will the Government do, whether abroad with a country like Brazil or here in the UK, to protect the climate? The climate does cross borders so, whether at home or abroad, what steps will the Government take, with some energy, to protect the environment?

[Greg Hands]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question, which I think was very reasonably put, but actually we are doing a huge amount right the way across the board. We guaranteed in our manifesto no compromise on environmental standards in our future free trade agreements. The UK global tariff, which we published earlier this year, goes significantly further than the EU’s common external tariff in making sure that environmental goods are low-tariff or tariff-free. There are 104 tariff lines, including steam turbines, vacuum flasks and thermostats. We are also providing export finance in areas of renewable energy, such as solar energy and wind farms in Taiwan.