Iain Duncan Smith MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

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Iain Duncan Smith's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 11 Parliamentary debates in which Iain Duncan Smith has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 16 Dec 2024: United Front Work Department

  15:37

  The Government have also set out our approach to China, which will be consistent and strategic. We will challenge where we must in order to keep our country safe, compete where we need to, and co-operate where we can—for example, on matters such as climate change. That is acting in the national interest, as the Prime Minister reiterated earlier today. However, the threats we face from foreign states are pernicious and complex. The work of our intelligence agencies is unrivalled in mitigating them, and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to them for the amazing work that they do to keep our country safe. Today, as ever, they will be pursuing those who wish to do us harm, including those from foreign states. We support our intelligence agencies in their efforts, and we always will—and they will know that at any point when the UK’s national security is at risk, we will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal to keep our country safe.

  The west certainly learned a lesson about energy supplies and where they come from when Russia invaded. To build on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, I want to press the Minister on solar and renewables. The Government have an agenda to push this country quickly towards renewable energy, yet China manufactures and processes a lot of the materials that we need for it. Before we accelerate towards that goal, will the Minister undertake an assessment of the risk to our energy supply? That is a crucial piece of our national security.

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• 28 Oct 2024: China: Human Rights and Sanctions

  15:35

  I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s confirmation that he will meet the family of Jimmy Lai, but does he agree that as China is the world’s largest emitter, we need to engage with China pragmatically as we work to tackle the climate crisis?

  The Foreign Secretary is enthusiastic about giving trillions of pounds of UK taxpayers’ money in reparations for slavery that occurred hundreds of years ago. However, when it comes to modern-day slavery in China, despite what he states was said privately, all we get publicly is a mealy-mouthed press release—a read-out from the Foreign Office that does not even mention the issue specifically. Why is that? Is it because the Government realise that we are now dependent on China for many things, including the delivery of the net zero policy? China controls 70% of the rare earth metals that we will need to deliver renewable energy. We have left ourselves open to that kind of blackmail, and now we cannot speak up against human rights abuses.

  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Foreign Secretary for making it clear that Jimmy Lai’s release is a priority, and I join hon. Members in saying that the issue is urgent, not just because of his failing health, but because once the trial restarts on 20 November, it will be more difficult to bring the situation to a positive conclusion. The Foreign Secretary mentioned the need for a consistent strategy towards China—consistent not just from him, but from the whole of Government. China reacts to naked economic self-interest, so can he make sure that the matter is raised across Government—by the Business Secretary on issues of trade, by the Net Zero Secretary on issues of green energy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) mentioned, and by the Education Secretary when it comes to education, so that we appeal to that self-interest?

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• 21 May 2024: Oral Answers to Questions

  As we go to net zero, surely we also need to retain our sense of human rights. Polysilicon mostly comes from Xinjiang, where it is mined using slave labour. To what extend are we prepared to say that net zero trumps slave labour, and are we checking on slave labour products in the arrays?

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• 19 Mar 2024: Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords]

  14:33

  (i) the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; and

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• 5 Dec 2023: Road Humps and 20 mph Speed Limits

  09:30

  Yes, I agree. The funny thing, which I raised the other day, is that if we are moving towards low-emission or zero-emission vehicles, electric vehicles, hydrogen-propelled vehicles and so on, which is the generally accepted plan for where we want to be, are we now aiming for road usage by low or net zero vehicles, or is it just a blanket anti-car problem? That is an issue that I never settle. In a way, we will be defeating ourselves as we head towards that process. Will the measures be lifted as more people have zero-emission vehicles?

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• 5 Sep 2023: British Nationals Detained Overseas

  16:51

  When the Chinese Government trashed the Sino-British agreement, the Americans sanctioned 12 of the most senior people responsible—and the same with Xinjiang, by the way, when they sanctioned something like that many as well. We have sanctioned nobody in Hong Kong since the start of this saga. Why are we not sanctioning them? Why are we so worried about what they might say or do? If it is to get their help in stopping the Russians in the war, then they are busily supplying them with weapons, parts and all sorts of stuff at the moment. When it comes to net zero, there is nothing zero about their net. It is off the charts, and we are the ones who will pick up the pieces.

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• 13 Jun 2023: Procurement Bill [Lords]

  14:15

  I conclude on this simple point. The new clause is there to try to make it clear that we face a most significant and dangerous threat from the Chinese Communist party in control of China today. It is everywhere. It is using slave labour to produce polysilicon to collect solar rays. We all beat our chests proudly and proclaim that we are heading towards net zero, but on whose backs is that? It is people working in slave labour conditions to produce these things, people under surveillance, and people taken away on genocides. A Government already doing this internally are now referring it out to us. We must make it clear beyond peradventure that Government Departments must now rid themselves of equipment and never place contracts with other companies on equipment that comes under the rule of the national security law. I am looking for commitments from the Government today that, by the time the Bill gets to the other place, that will finally be resolved. If so, they will have my approval and that of many others in the Chamber.

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  15:30

  The UK spends about £300 billion a year on public procurement. We could question whether that is a good thing. That has already been hinted at—whether some of these services at least would be better off delivered in-house by public bodies themselves rather than via contracts. However, this is probably not the place to go into that debate. I want to focus on the need to use that procurement spend as a force for good—to keep wealth in local economies, to ensure that public money goes to responsible companies and not those that exploit people and nature, and to help us meet our climate goals and to preserve a liveable future for all of us. I want to see values, not just value, at the heart of the public procurement process in public life.

  That brings me to amendment 60 on the national procurement policy statement, which sets out the strategic objectives that the Government want public procurement to achieve. The amendment would require the Government to assess and report on the impact of the national procurement policy statement on meeting environmental and climate targets and to set out any steps that they intend to take to meet them.

  Thanks to the efforts of climate campaigners across the country, we are now seeing the net zero goal and the need for climate action acknowledged in strategies and policy statements across the public sector. But these acknowledgements remain meaningless unless we assess the real world impact of those statements. Are our plans to reduce emissions actually being implemented and are they working? The amendment would signal to contracting authorities and businesses that the Government are serious about aligning procurement with climate and environmental goals. It would also enable Government to see where policy might need to be strengthened if it is not having the intended impact.

  New clause 17 would require public contracts that include the supply of food to be aligned with nutritional guidelines and to specify options suitable for a plant-based diet. We know that animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to global heating and biodiversity loss, representing around 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. More and more people are choosing to move to more plant-based eating and almost one quarter of people in Britain now follow a mainly or entirely meat-free diet.

  The 2022 progress report to Parliament by the Climate Change Committee urges the Government not to ignore the role of diet and notes:

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• 20 Apr 2022: Nationality and Borders Bill

  17:30

  The fourth and final thing that needs to happen is that we need a new international convention. The 1951 convention, which Britain played a big part in setting up, is now completely out of date. That is because, since then, as colleagues will appreciate, there has been a revolution in travel. We also now have the tremendous push of climate change, which is pushing migration up very high. So we need a new international convention. I put this point to the Prime Minister on 25 July last year, and he described it as an “excellent point”, but I fear that since then nothing has been done. Britain needs to use its leverage and its experience at the United Nations as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, and it also needs to use its brilliant diplomatic experience and knowledge to negotiate a new convention.

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• 20 Jul 2021: Cyber-attack: Microsoft

  12:35

  The success or failure of the COP26 rests heavily on whether the UK, as chairman, can persuade China—the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide—to set tough targets to cut its output. Is this affecting the Government’s response to this issue? What is the UK’s strategy to influence China across the piece, as there are many areas where it needs to do so?

  I can assure my right hon. Friend that the actions of the UK Government in response to this cyber-attack are driven by this cyber-attack and our complete unwillingness to accept it as a pattern of behaviour. He does make an incredibly important point though, and it reflects the point that I have made that we cannot simply ignore China. A previous question this morning highlighted the fact that China is still heavily reliant on coal as an energy production source, and we know the climate change implications of that. We want China to behave better on the international stage both on things such as cyber-security, intellectual property and human rights, but also on the incredibly important agenda that will affect our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, which is the protection of the environment and a move towards greener energy generation.

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• 24 May 2021: Finance Bill

  21:00

  If we are serious about levelling up, building back better or indeed about climate leadership, we have to switch to long-term preventive spending, and we need to do it fast. I want briefly to offer some further evidence of why we should be assessing each and every provision of the Finance Bill for their impact on human and ecological health and wellbeing. The case for new clause 21 is made splendidly by the Treasury’s own Dasgupta review of the economics of biodiversity, which calls for

  “A COVID-19 recovery strategy based on growth first and sustainability second is likely to fail the Paris Agreement.”

  Robust alternatives do exist. None of them is perfect, but none is anywhere near as flawed as using GDP growth as our main measure of economic success. The time for the Treasury to change is now. The UK, through the G7 and COP26, should be leading the world towards a wellbeing economy. One modest step should be adopting new clause 21, which recognises, as the Treasury’s Dasgupta review states:

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• 29 Jun 2020: Xinjiang: Uyghurs

  16:29

  My hon. Friend puts it absolutely correctly. As I said earlier, our approach to China should be clear- eyed and rooted in our values and our interests. China is a leading member of the international community and we have a strong and constructive relationship in many areas. It has to be part of the solution to many major global problems, whether that is global health, as we have seen in the past few months, or climate change. It has always been the case that where we have concerns, we raise them, and where the United Kingdom needs to intervene, we will.

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