G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party group on small island developing states, I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister acknowledged the imminent threat to them in his statement. Two things would really help them: one is to have access to the finance that hopefully is now on the table—because, as countries with very limited resources, it is very difficult, they tell me, to get their hands on the money and to do the bids—and the other is to develop blue finance. We know that the City of London leads on green finance. Blue finance for the blue economy and marine conservation would really help them, and we could take a lead on that.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is completely right about the imperative to help the small island states. I must say that, at COP and in the last few months, they have been incredibly valuable in getting the world to focus—the Maldives, the Seychelles, Bangladesh, where people face catastrophic flooding, Mauritius and Barbados, which was brilliant the other day. They are helping to focus minds on the issue and attract massive sums of investment.