Greg Smith MP: Climate Timeline

• Timeline
• Votes
• Speeches
• Tweets
• Contact

Greg Smith's Climate-related Tweets, Speeches & Votes

We've found the following climate-related tweets, speeches & votes by Greg Smith in the last 90 days

See Full History

• 11 Nov 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  Of course, that was not the only threat to British farming in the Budget. There was the attack on basic equipment such as pick-up trucks, whereby farmers face paying an extra £5,000 simply for having the audacity to want back seats for their children. Then there is the carbon tax, which will see the cost of fertiliser rise by between £50 and £75 a tonne, which will have a detrimental impact on either farmers’ margins or food prices, or potentially both. Across the country, either outcome would be devastating.

  Full debate: Rural Affairs

• 4 Nov 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  The APR changes are not the only changes that will hammer our farming families and agricultural communities. I am sure there is a joke somewhere along the lines of “When is a pick-up truck not a pick-up truck?”, but it is no laughing matter for farmers. For them, it is just a basic bit of equipment that they need to operate, but this Government are hammering them on the cost of that equipment if it happens to have rear seats. As I raised earlier today in this House during the urgent question, the Government’s carbon tax will put up the price of fertiliser by between £50 and £75 a tonne. Either that is going to have a direct impact on the cost of food, or the Government are asking farmers—already operating on incredibly tight margins, often with no profit at all—just to swallow that extra cost. I urge them to reconsider.

  Full debate: Income Tax (Charge)

• 04 Nov 2024: Tweet

  My question to the Farming Minister earlier on the impact of carbon taxes on fertiliser prices - which will have only one of two consequences - farm bankruptcies or higher food prices. Labour just don’t get the realities of farming. https://x.com/gregsmith_uk/status/1853522926139507153/video/1 [Source]

• 29 Oct 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  What is slightly more controversial, however, is the limit of the order and the wider questions that it poses about the Government’s approach to the ZEV mandate, our domestic automotive sector and the transition to de-fossilised and decarbonised forms of private transport. The Labour party had previously been clear that it wished to reverse the Conservative Government’s practical, pragmatic and sensible delay from 2030 to 2035 of the banning of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, yet the draft order will do no such thing: it leaves the 2035 date intact. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government are leaving the 2035 date in place, which would be sensible, or whether we are set to see more orders coming forward? If so, will they come with a wider debate in the main Chamber?

  Can the Minister explain why the draft order does so little? It is just tinkering at the edges, with no practical steps to solve the real-world problems that we face. Can he confirm what the Government’s actual plans are to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel internal combustion engine cars? Is there even a plan? What confidence can he give to motorists and car manufacturers alike that the Government value—in a de-fossilised, decarbonised way—the freedom to drive?

  Full debate: Draft Vehicle Emissions Trading Schemes (Amendment) Order 2024

• 22 Oct 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  Cornwall, and South East Cornwall in particular, has the potential to lead the way in the renewable energy revolution and in relation to our food security, offering significant opportunities. Does the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) agree that it is essential to have a balanced approach that respects our farming and fishing communities, which play a vital role both locally and in national food security and in relation to the environment, on which they depend? We must seize this opportunity to address Cornwall’s economic challenges and ensure that we do not damage ecosystems, as they play such an important role. A partnership approach would enable these essential areas across the UK, and Cornwall in particular, to succeed.

  This debate is about efficiency and proper land use. It is about getting to renewable energy production, but it is also about using technology that does not destroy our countryside and that does not fundamentally take away our other core source of national security, which is food production.

  Full debate: Large-scale Energy Projects and Food Security

• 16 Oct 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  The Minister knows that Scunthorpe is now the only site in the UK with the ability to produce virgin steel. If she allows it to close on her watch, we will be left open and vulnerable to cheap imports from China, and that must not be allowed to happen. Equally, I understand that the Government are not prepared to support virgin steel manufacturing while new electric arc furnaces are being commissioned and are coming online. Is that correct? If so, how does it chime with the Secretary of State’s previous commitment that decarbonisation must not mean deindustrialisation?

  What we are seeing on the ground right now is something different, however, because we have returned to the Labour party playbook: scrap jobs, scrap production and become reliant on higher-polluting countries for imports. That is not what I call decarbonisation, so I ask the Minister to come clean. What has gone wrong so early in this Government’s tenure? Why are she and the Secretary of State unable to fulfil their manifesto commitments? Can the Minister explain what will happen to those thousands of jobs in the steel sector across our country? We need the steel strategy now, not a promise of it for the future. Time is running out.

  Full debate: Steel Industry

• 16 Oct 2024: Tweet

  Good to host @OFTEC and @UKIFDA in Parliament this afternoon, talking practical steps to decarbonise off grid households via renewable liquid fuels such as HVO. @FutureReadyFuel https://x.com/gregsmith_uk/status/1846542082074116380/photo/1 [Source]