Liam Byrne MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

• Timeline
• Votes
• Speeches
• Tweets
• Contact

Liam Byrne's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 12 Parliamentary debates in which Liam Byrne has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

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

  19:21

  The question that follows on from size is about standards. There were controversial topics that we took evidence on last week, and we will capture what we learned in the report that we publish. There were questions about environmental and climate impacts; there are general provisions about those in the treaty, but they are not enforceable and there is not much mention of net zero. If we think about the treaty as something that is fairly marginal for trade today—it represents about a 0.09% GDP uplift over nine years—but is geopolitically important, we need to think about how it becomes a load-bearing structure for more of our ambitions in the world, such as the race to net zero. Maybe when the Minister is winding up he could say a bit more about how we can freight this treaty with some of our other national interests.

  [Source]

• 28 Jun 2023: Global Climate and Development Finance

  That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to publish proposals for increasing the on-lending of UK Special Drawing Rights via the IMF, for transferring the capital returned to the UK by the European Investment Bank to the World Bank, and for increasing the UK’s support for the African Development Bank, for the purpose of reducing debt burdens and the cost of capital and contributing to the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

  If anything, this Bill is overdue. Eight years ago, the world came together to agree an ambitious plan to spread freedom, security and justice to every corner of the planet. The sustainable development goals agreed in New York in September 2015 offered hope, progress and a better life to billions of people. Months later, we came together again, not in New York but in Paris, to agree the climate change agreement that would help us guarantee that there would be a planet left on which to make those goals a reality.

  However, the truth is that such ambitions are in deep trouble. There are just 10,000 days to go before the Paris climate agreement deadline. A perfect storm is now threatening the world’s potential to deliver on the goals that we agreed just eight years ago. In fact, seven giants now stand in the way of progress: want, hunger, disease, lost learning, conflict, debt and climate change. They are a cascading, connected set of challenges with lethal force.

  Looming deadly over all of that are the changes in our climate and the chaos of extreme weather. Across half the world and most of Africa, the seasons are simply no longer predictable. The sun which once brought life now brings death because it burns so ferociously. The rains, when they fall, fall with such force that life-giving water floods and destroys the land it once nourished. Against that murderous maelstrom, low and middle-income countries need to mobilise some $6 trillion between now and 2030 to hit their Paris climate targets.

  Poor countries did not cause climate change, but the world’s poorest are somehow expected to pick up the pieces. We cannot go on like this and, as President Macron said in Paris last week, we must not go on like this. If the world fails to act—if we fail to act—all of us may fall prey to those who preach that the rules-based order is not fit for purpose. New institutions outside the World Bank, the IMF, and perhaps even the United Nations, will come forward beyond our influence, so we must change.

  [Source]

• 8 Jun 2022: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

  15:31

  Secondly, as chair of the East Birmingham Inclusive Growth Taskforce, I can say that East Birmingham is a city the size of Derby, that it is the land between the two high-speed stations, but that it is also the capital of Britain’s unemployment. The potential is enormous, because of the new jobs that will be created by High Speed 2, but we have to make sure that we are not the oasis of inequality in between that wealth. That is why Bridgid Jones, the Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, has today written to Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands, to ask that we make East Birmingham the key focus of the west midlands trailblazer devolution deal. We have a number of asks. We want to see: multi-year whole place public funding—pooling budgets between the Department for Work and Pensions and others; a levelling-up zone that would give us tax increment financing, potentially for a new urban development corporation; net zero powers; support for early intervention and preventive work, particularly in health; an enhanced transport package that would allow us to see our metro built through East Birmingham; a lot more funding for schools and for skills; tailored employment support; and greater housing powers.

  [Source]

• 8 Jun 2021: 0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

  16:03

  My final point is simply this. The Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), helpfully set out the extraordinary range of cuts that are now being confronted. As chair of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, I asked the IMF this afternoon for an update on the sheer scale of investment that is needed to get the global community back on its feet. Low-income countries will now need $200 billion extra to step up their covid response, followed by $250 billion extra in accelerated investment as we try to move from the pandemic to the Paris agreement. We are now going to—

  [Source]

• 3 Mar 2021: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  16:08

  I am grateful for the help in the short term that will make a difference, but the truth is that, over the medium term, we saw today £66 billion-worth of tax rises—tax rises that will also fall on teachers, nurses and police officers for the years to come. I think that is the biggest tax rise that we have ever seen in Budget history, and it is so high because the growth rate for this country is coming further and further down. That is why what we needed from the Chancellor today was a meaningful strategy to go from the pandemic to the Paris agreement—a plan to reindustrialise our country and create new green manufacturing jobs, avoiding the perils that the International Monetary Fund is warning about of a K-shaped recovery where the rich go in one direction and the poor go in another.

  [Source]

• 8 Oct 2019: Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions

  10:33

  I will be extremely brief, Mr Gray. Labour Members are proud of the Climate Change Act 2008, but we are even prouder of the green new deal that we passed at the Labour party conference, which takes forward the principles of decarbonisation, jobs and justice. That is why we held a citizens’ assembly in Birmingham within 24 hours of Parliament declaring a climate emergency. Several ideas emerged from that, which I will touch on.

  Secondly, we need to decarbonise our transport system. We cannot do that unless we connect transport together. That is why we need powers over bus and rail franchising. Crucially, we need to transform the number of electric vehicle charging points. There are more EV charging points in Westminster than in the whole of the west midlands; that is not acceptable. We need to decarbonise our housing stock, which means we need devolved control of the £175 million of ecofunding that is our entitlement. We need to start building homes to A plus standards.

  [Source]

• 3 Oct 2019: Internet of Things: Regulation

  15:55

  The speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) was important in setting the wider stage and the bigger story, because the new technology required a revolution in law and regulation. Over the course of the 19th century there was not one factory Act but 22 different factory Acts and Bills, and over this century there will no doubt be just as many different attempts to reform, revise, regulate, legalise and make lawful or unlawful different aspects of the technology that we are debating here today. So my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham was right to say that what is needed from the Government is a plan for a just transition. We now understand what “just transition” means when it comes to climate change, but we need a plan for technology just as much, just as we need a plan for just transition given the new trade conflicts that are now ensuing. The rise of temperature, robots and conflicts will define our economy over the next 20 or 30 years, so we need not only just transition but just transitions, and at the moment we have nothing from the Government to tell us how that journey will be steered over the years to come.

  [Source]

• 10 Jul 2019: High Speed 2

  17:01

  However, that is not all I treasure; I also treasure tangible action to decarbonise our economy and our region. I want the west midlands to lead the first zero carbon revolution. Back in 1712, when the Newcomen engine was demonstrated up at Dudley castle, we sparked the carbon revolution the first time around. We need a radical plan that allows us to move trucks off the road and on to rail. Only with the capacity that comes with HS2 can we reopen 36 new freight lines that can take a million lorries off the road each year. We cannot de-clog the M6, the M5 or the M42 unless we get that freight off the road. It is impossible to see how we can drive forward the decarbonisation of a sector that contributes 40% of our carbon emissions each year if we do not drive ahead with HS2.

  I share the right hon. Gentleman’s aspirations, but for Scotland. To meet the UK-wide net zero carbon targets we have set for 2050, we need to make sure that these new rail lines work for the entire country. Does he agree that we need to review HS2, not only on its business case, but on making sure that it works for the entire United Kingdom and connects the powerhouses in the midlands with the true northern powerhouse, which is of course Scotland?

  [Source]

• 1 May 2019: Environment and Climate Change

  17:51

  From our region, we are very proud of our role in this nation’s industrial revolution, but we are conscious too that, as the region that sparked the carbon revolution, we have a moral responsibility now to lead the zero-carbon revolution. That task would be an awful lot easier if the Government could provide to our region four basic ideas—four basic bits of support. First, on energy, we produce just 0.3% of the country’s renewable energy. It is pretty difficult to install onshore wind in a place as dense as the west midlands, but we could absolutely roll out solar. It would be much easier if the Government reintroduced the feed-in tariffs that they so unwisely eliminated just a few years ago.

  Thirdly, on homes, we could decarbonise our housing stock much faster and lift 300,000 people out of energy poverty if we had control of eco-funding at a regional level. Finally, when it comes to replanting our forests, we should be insisting that our airports become carbon-neutral and ask them to pay an endowment to help us replant the Arden Forest and let it reconnect with the national forest planted just north of Lichfield. These are all things that we can do. We want to lead. We need a Government who help us.

  [Source]

• 23 Oct 2018: Addictive Technology

  17:06

  We have to recognise that the technology companies that now pervade everyday life will need a very different kind of regulation in the years to come. I was delighted to meet representatives of the Centre for Humane Technology, from the United States, earlier this afternoon. They had a very good analogy. They were looking at various tech scandals around the world and made the point that sometimes, when we look at those symptoms, they are hurricanes, but the addictive technology at the centre is actually more akin to climate change. What we need to do as a legislature is figure out how to introduce a new regulatory regime that will control that climate change. As Tim Berners-Lee said,

  [Source]

• 29 Jun 2016: UK Economy

  16:14

  Finally, we need a big debate about sharing the burdens of our neighbourhood. Good neighbours do not shirk their duties, whether on climate change or common border protection. There will be countless other burdens regarding which Britain has to step up and say, “Yes. We are going to take on the obligations that come with sharing this part of the world.” The Prime Minister was right to say that we will not turn our back on Europe. We have to send a very clear signal that we will be not just good neighbours, but the best of neighbours.

  [Source]

• 2 Feb 2010: Oral Answers to Questions

  My hon. Friend will know of the virtues of the scheme that was introduced in England. It can not only deliver a reduction in families’ heating bills, but have an impact on reducing the country’s carbon emissions. The requisite spending is a devolved matter in Scotland. Barnett consequentials were provided on the £20 million addition that was made to the budget of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, but the argument will of course need to be prosecuted in Scotland.

  [Source]

See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate