VoteClimate: European Union (Withdrawal) Bill - 13th December 2017

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill - 13th December 2017

Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

Full text: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-12-13/debates/77F256AC-E26E-48F1-99B8-99DDD554B289/EuropeanUnion(Withdrawal)Bill

20:15 Desmond Swayne (Conservative)

I shall speak to amendment 352, which seeks to maintain for future trade deals the EU rights and protections that are currently enjoyed in other trade deals. A problem that has already been mentioned is that we are going to move away from the comfort zone of the EU, a massive trading bloc which, on 8 December, agreed the key provisions for a trade deal with Japan that will embrace 30% of global GDP and 600 million people and that has integrated in it the Paris agreement. It does not have investor-state dispute settlement, but it does have various protections. One of my key fears about that particular agreement, which will come into effect in March 2019, is that such agreements take a long time to put together. If we want to come along after the event and say, “Can we join in?” the chances are that the terms will not be as good.

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20:45 Suella Braverman (Conservative)

I want briefly to deal with the environmental regulation that the Minister talked about. The Government currently have a “one in, three out” rule. Many of our environmental regulations come from international mixed agreements signed and ratified, as he said, by the UK and the EU; some are bilateral and some are multilateral. The Environmental Audit Committee has been looking at our progress in reducing fluorinated gases. These are very powerful greenhouse gases with a global warming potential 14,000 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. They are in commercial refrigeration systems, in our car air-conditioning systems, and in 70% of the 60 million asthma inhalers that we use in this country every year. Targets for reducing those gases are set and monitored by the European Union, but we are also a signatory to the UN framework, so it is a mixed agreement. We have just ratified the Kigali amendment to reduce F-gases by 85% by 2036. That agreement is monitored by the EU, so the Bill will convert the regulation into UK law and we will need new regulations.

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