Alicia Kearns MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

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Alicia Kearns's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 13 Parliamentary debates in which Alicia Kearns has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 23 Oct 2024: Draft European Forest Institute (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2024

  09:30

  We are pleased to see key elements underpinning the agreement with the EFI now put on to the UK statute book. Ultimately, it allows the EFI to establish an office here in the UK, and for us to deepen our collaboration with the institute on forestry-related issues. I am grateful to the Minister for his praise of the programme the previous Government ran, which helped to avoid 413,000 hectares of ecosystem loss around the world. At the COP26 summit that we hosted, more than 140 world leaders committed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. Our Environment Act 2021 is helping to drive products derived from illegal deforestation from our supply chains.

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• 19 Jul 2024: Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs

  13:06

  Yet the King’s Speech offered very little for us. It continued in the same vein as the Labour party manifesto, which did not mention the word “rural” even once, by ignoring the concerns of rural communities and ignoring farmers. It has put forward a different approach to development, setting out centralised powers for Westminster to impose projects on the countryside and stripping away the voice of local people. The consequences of that approach were apparent last week when the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero imposed three mega solar plants on communities, two of which sit within Lincolnshire and Rutland.

  I want to delve more into the issue of slave labour. For years I have spoken out against what is taking place in Xinjiang. This House—including the new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero—voted to declare what was taking place a genocide. In opposition, Labour promised that should they become the party of government they would not only declare it formally a genocide, but would take the Chinese Government to court—I look forward to updates on that activity—but in government they have decided to carpet our countryside with solar panels produced by the blood of Uyghur slave labourers. The company behind the Mallard Pass, Canadian Solar, was found by our Foreign Office to have the highest complicity in Uyghur forced labour. It has been sanctioned by the United States Government for its

  Will the Minister apologise, on behalf of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, to the 32 anti-slave labour non-governmental organisations that opposed the Mallard Pass development. Will he apologise to the British people for signing over thousands of acres of prime agricultural land to such a company, and will he apologise to the 3,400 people whose petition I presented in the Chamber, with the highest number of wet signatures ever presented in this Parliament? Does he accept that the loudest statement made last week was not that we stand four-square behind renewables in this place but that we are giving the green light to all companies complicit in Uyghur slave labour to flood our country with bloodied solar panels? This Government are happy to go green on blood labour, and I will not stand for it.

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• 21 May 2024: Oral Answers to Questions

  I put on record my heartfelt thanks to the Secretary of State and the Minister for Nuclear and Renewables for the action they took last week to put food security, alongside renewable energy, at the heart of local planning decisions. What are the Government doing to ensure that all councils immediately enact that policy, because it is both for local councils and for Government? Will existing soil assessments stand for nationally significant infrastructure projects, or will they be redone?

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• 16 Apr 2024: Solar Supply Chains

  19:13

  The solar industry will play an important role in the Government’s net zero plans, with a target of producing 70 GW of solar energy by 2035—a fivefold increase on our current output. It is absolutely right that solar plays its part in increasing our renewable energy output, but the current roll-out lacks national oversight of land use, sufficient consideration of food security issues and the protection of agricultural land, and protections against the widespread exposure of solar supply chains to Uyghur forced labour and genocide.

  It is no surprise that the hon. Gentleman wishes to speak in this debate because he always brings compassion, heart and a real care for human rights. He is right that if green energy is to make up such a substantial part of our future energy grid, we must not tolerate slave labour within it.

  As of December 2021, Canadian Solar’s primary suppliers were Longi Green Energy, Hongyuan New Material and Tongwei Solar—all companies with subsidiaries operating in Xinjiang with links to Uyghur forced labour. I have provided full written briefs on each company’s links to forced labour to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in the past.

  Our transition to net zero is gathering pace, and we must not let up. I am so proud that we have decarbonised faster than any other major Government—what we have done is an incredible achievement—but we cannot go green off the back of slavery, genocide and blood labour. Our green and pleasant land is being tainted by solar panels produced with that Uyghur blood labour, and it is the responsibility of all of us and the Government to prevent it. I see it as a new form of great injustice that we will be going green off the backs of solar panels made in dirty circumstances in China, because we do not see how they are made—not least how they harm the environment where they are made, but also the slave labour that we then benefit from in our country. There is a really concerning historical parallel there.

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• 30 Jan 2024: Telegraph Media Group: Proposed Sale to RedBird IMI

  12:36

  When hosting COP28, Sultan al-Jaber said that there was “no science” behind the climate change emergency. The Sultan is head of the UAE media council, and influential in the Telegraph takeover. I worked for many years as a journalist; I understand that democracy requires plurality in the media landscape. Sadly, in the UK the vast majority of titles are already skewed to the right—in Scotland, as we know, half the population support independence, but only one title supports that position. We do not want the situation worsening. I am in favour of a free, diverse and vibrant press ecosystem, and not in favour of a newspaper being owned as a loss-making public relations arm of a foreign state through access to our daily news cycle. Does the Minister agree that allowing the UAE to take over The Telegraph would be unhealthy in principle for our democracy?

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• 19 Jul 2023: Planning and Solar Farms

  15:14

  Solar will be an important part of our push for net zero. That is what we in Rutland want, but we will not have it at any price, and communities in Rutland and the Stamford villages will not accept blood-tainted products. To ensure that solar’s contribution is truly a positive one, I call on the Government to make guidance against building energy projects on BMV land legally binding. I ask them to urgently investigate solar developments misrepresenting their applications as generating only 49.9MW and to punish any offenders, and to follow the US and EU in finally blocking solar imports made with Uyghur forced labour as part of genocide, because to fail to act would be immoral.

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• 24 Oct 2022: Topical Questions

  T8. When I visit schools in my constituency, it is often—quite rightly—to discuss climate change, and I am so proud of the passionate and smart young people across Rutland, Melton, the Vale and Harborough villages. However, I am concerned by the anti-dairy, anti-meat and, frankly, anti-farmer narrative I am starting to see, where students and children of farmers feel they are being silenced and cannot speak out in support of their families, who feed our country. ( 901801 )

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• 30 Mar 2022: Health and Care Bill

  19:45

  We are also committed to tackling climate change. Lords amendments 9, 18, 33 and 40 place duties on NHS trusts, foundation trusts, ICBs and NHS England to have regard to the Government’s key ambitions on climate change and the natural environment in everything they do. The amendments include a guidance-making power for NHS England that will assist in the discharge of these duties by different bodies.

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• 9 Mar 2022: Large Solar Farms

  14:52

  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) for allowing me to co-sponsor this important debate. I am a big advocate of green, clean, renewable energy, and a member of the Conservative Environment Network. I find myself at a difficult crossroads. The people of Rutland want to play our part but are faced with an impossible situation, where our heartfelt determination to go green is being attacked by egregious, cynical and unacceptable proposals that would destroy England’s smallest county.

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• 10 Feb 2022: UK-Taiwan Friendship and Co-operation

  12:34

  A trade deal with Taiwan would not only ensure access to semiconductor chips, but help the UK to achieve our net zero targets without compromising on our morals. In my Rutland and Melton constituency there is a 2,175-acre solar plant proposed on good agricultural land, which is being developed by a de facto Chinese company with supply chains reaching into Xinjiang, the site of the Chinese Communist party’s genocide. I will not see Rutland’s soil tainted by mass human rights atrocities. I urge the Government to pursue a bilateral trade deal, because we know Taiwan produces quality solar panels free of Uyghur blood labour.

  Taiwan is a country committed to net zero by 2050, producing high-quality green technology, and it shares our democratic morals. What better partner for a trade deal? Let us strike one and begin to develop the alternative supply chains we need to free Taiwan and to a lesser extent ourselves from economic reliance on the Chinese mainland. Let us focus on high-quality technologies and renewables. There is opportunity for us and for them.

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• 13 Jul 2021: International Aid: Treasury Update

  14:34

  Even with the reduction in UK aid, we remain the second largest donor in the G7. The taxes of residents of Rutland and Melton will continue to go towards saving lives, disaster relief, peacekeeping, and tackling climate change. We should be proud of that, and I hope that the reorganisation of the FCDO can augment our capacity to respond to crises outside of the ODA budget through the new conflict centre.

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• 9 Mar 2020: Commonwealth in 2020

  21:14

  Together with our leadership, the Commonwealth has become one of the great beacons of human rights and a champion of the values that unite us and all the democratic peoples of the world, but we must show leadership again today. LGBTQ+ rights, on which we must fight within the Commonwealth, have been raised multiple times today. We must ensure that we stand strong on domestic abuse and women’s rights, as well as on climate change—my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) rightly mentioned our work on oceans—on disability, as raised by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), and on terrorism. We must stand strong against the shared threat we face.

  Now, as we seek to rebalance our engagement with the wider world—I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich for his passionate statement of support for our independence as we leave the EU—the Commonwealth presents us with glorious opportunities. It represents an economy of £10 trillion, which we must tap into if we are to seize the global opportunities afforded to us by leaving the EU. When we negotiate with other Commonwealth members, we will negotiate not only as business partners but as friends. In the sometimes cut-throat world of international trade, that cannot be underestimated. At the same time, we can lead with the island nations on climate change. Many of the most forceful global advocates exist in places such as St Kitts and Bangladesh. The Commonwealth may not be the only place where we can balance the development needs of the global south while recognising the imperative of decarbonisation, but it is perhaps the only place where we can be sure that all voices will be respected.

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• 21 Jan 2020: Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

  15:09

  While certainty is delivered, I am also pleased the Government have promised, along with this Bill, to introduce a new payment scheme that will encourage farmers to tackle climate change, protect our water and improve animal welfare. Giving farmers certainty matters, because food is a national security issue. There are countries out there that seek to undermine our economy by flooding the market or withholding goods to achieve their strategic intent, so protecting our farmers matters, to protect our environment, to feed our people, and for our shared national security.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate