Tom Tugendhat MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

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Tom Tugendhat's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 7 Parliamentary debates in which Tom Tugendhat has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 22 May 2023: Interpol General Assembly 2024

  Interpol and the UK have agreed that the General Assembly will take place between 4 and 7 November 2024 in Glasgow. The city brings experience of hosting COP26 in November 2021, the largest event of its kind that the UK has ever hosted. The agreement followed consultation with the NCA, Scottish Government, Police Scotland and other delivery partners and stakeholders.

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• 16 Dec 2021: FCDO Staffing

  11:15

  Does the Minister recognise that the Government are overseeing a downgraded role for Britain nationally? These cuts could not have come at a worse time. Alongside the pandemic, we face challenges from an aggressive Russia and a more assertive China. We see persistent poverty and conflict, as well as climate change running out of control. We need a properly funded diplomatic and development Department to take on those challenges.

  The hon. Gentleman said that we have had to spend less on ODA this year and, of course, that is the case. I remind the House that that is because we have experienced the largest economic contraction in three centuries as a direct result of the pandemic. Nevertheless, we still remain one of the largest ODA-donating countries in the world. We maintain one of the largest diplomatic networks in the world. The Foreign Secretary hosted G7 Foreign Ministers in Liverpool, showing global leadership on a range of issues, including girls’ education and humanitarian issues. At COP26, we saw the UK demonstrate global leadership on the existential crisis of our generation—climate change. We will remain a top-tier diplomatic powerhouse.

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• 10 Mar 2021: COP26

  17:07

  It is a great pleasure to be in the Chamber today talking about COP26, because it really is the absolute key event this year. We are going to get through covid, and we are already well along in the right direction due to the brilliance of various people in Government, in science and in the NHS, and many, many thousands of volunteers around the UK. That will free us and the world to focus on the real existential threat that we face, which is, of course, climate change.

  I am delighted to follow my friend the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), under whose chairmanship the BEIS Committee has begun to expose some of the questions that we need to answer in the coming months. I am also delighted that we are working together on that, because one of the things I have discovered since taking the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee is how little of our international reach is exercised by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I thought that the largest and most seminal conference absorbing our diplomatic network and shaping our diplomatic output for this year would be run by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, but it is not: it is run by the Cabinet Office, and run very ably by my right hon. Friend the COP26 President; I am delighted that he is supported so well by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It was a bit of a surprise to me, but then again, I suppose I should not be surprised, because our Europe policy is also run by the Cabinet Office, and not even in this House, so perhaps I should expect our Americas policy and our Africa policy to be run by the Cabinet Office. Eventually, perhaps only our Scottish policy will be run by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, but that would be a great shame. Maybe that can bring us back to talking about the importance of focusing on the joined-up policy that we need to see.

  While the Select Committees have come together and have been working together, it is also worth pointing out how well the Government have begun to work together. When the French started their process, it resulted in the Paris COP21 that everybody remembers. That was not only a success at the time, but with the election of President Biden, it has become a renewed success as Paris has just been signed up to again by the United States. It took them two years, hundreds of diplomats and a former Prime Minister to bring all that together. That work was really, really tough. What my right hon. Friend has picked up on is that he started later with fewer staff and in the middle of the covid pandemic, and that makes it really difficult. However, I can report from, if he will excuse me, spies in other camps that the pace at which he is producing results is already very well received. I am delighted to say that in conversations I have had with representatives from other countries—I am not going to name them, but they are people who have spoken to him in recent days and weeks—they have reported that he is certainly well on the way to delivering a result.

  This year, the World Food Programme was rightly awarded the Nobel peace prize— a well-earned prize. I was fortunate enough to speak to its director general, Governor David Beasley, who is an amazing individual and a great friend of our country. He pointed out what I think is well worth remembering: if we think that the migration crisis that we saw in 2015 out of Syria was something serious, just imagine the crisis that would be caused if my right hon. Friend the COP26 President and his friends and partners around the world were to fail in Glasgow. I hope he knows that he will have the support of the whole House, and he will certainly have the support of the Committees, as we try to help him to shape and achieve the results that we all need.

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• 30 Dec 2020: European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

  12:16

  Wars are not won by defence but, as NATO doctrine puts it, by offensive action. We need to be bold if we are to chart a different future and we need to build on the Prime Minister’s coming visit to India and the wider alliance that is coming together in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. We would be welcomed hugely, and I have been told clearly by many, particularly by the Pacific democracies. We have a chance to renew international co-operation and commit ourselves to the environmental revolution that is so essential as we chair the G7 and COP26. This Government have the chance to set the agenda that the world needs to protect democracy at a time of autocracy and to defend the rule of law. We can make Glasgow the next milestone after Paris in the path to a greener world. Britain will succeed if we remember our friends in Europe, the Commonwealth and the world, if we renew our alliances and build new partnerships, and if we develop new, greener markets and industries, innovate and invest in ourselves. This is a new beginning and we alone are responsible for seizing it.

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• 4 Feb 2020: Topical Questions

  My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has touched on the COP26 preparations. Will he talk a bit about the strategy that the FCO will take on the Kunming biodiversity conference and the UN ocean conference in Lisbon, because clearly, climate change diplomacy will be absolutely front and centre of his agenda?

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• 1 May 2019: Environment and Climate Change

  16:59

  The local infrastructure starting to emerge in west Kent is extremely impressive, and the work done by our local councils in greening the areas where we live is fantastic. This is not just a domestic debate, however. In fact, it is particularly not a domestic debate. As we declare a climate change emergency today, it is essential that we remember that. Privileged as I am to chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is important to look around the world and see where the threats appear. For example, when we look at the low-lying fields of the Mekong and the threats to rice production, which feeds so many millions—indeed, billions—in south-east Asia, or when we look at the south-east of China and see many intensively inhabited areas of that country at threat, it is important that we talk about this question not just for ourselves but for the whole world.

  Many Members will have heard me being critical of one aspect of China this morning, so they will perhaps forgive me if I reflect on a different aspect. China’s work on reforestation and changing and reversing the desertification of many areas of land is inspiring. What that country has done to promote better green policies in certain areas is in many ways an example to all of us from which we need to draw very important lessons. The threats we see are not just problems for south-east Asia; they affect us here in the west. For example, when we look at some of the triggers—I do not mean all—of the Syrian civil war, which has led to mass migration and very severe political repercussions in Europe, it is impossible not to look at the challenges of climate change in that country and the impact they have had on farmers. Talking about the rise of al-Shabaab in the Maghreb and the Sahel without talking about climate change is just impossible.

  As we talk today about climate change, we are talking fundamentally not just about the environmental security of our homes and the dreadful curse of fly-tipping poisoning some of our waterways, which we see in west Kent and, sadly, probably in other areas too, but about how we structure a world to deal with the inability to address those threats unless we reverse some of the impacts of climate change. I welcome this debate very much and I agree that this is an emergency.

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• 4 Apr 2019: FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

  13:57

  China is seeking a role in the world commensurate with its growing economic power, and the UK should welcome its desire to take part in global governance. We do not believe that China wants to jeopardise the benefits that it has reaped from a stable, rules-based international system. However, it has consolidated power in the hands of the Communist party under President Xi, and the UK’s China strategy needs to reflect that. On many issues, China is a viable partner for the United Kingdom. The threat that environmental degradation, for example, poses to the Communist party’s legitimacy has led China to join international efforts on climate change and sustainability.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate