18:02 Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)

So how should Britain respond? We should have an integrated review so that we can clarify our long-term strategy relating to China, to Russia, to extremism that is once again on the rise. What are our intentions to help to resolve hotspots such as Yemen? What is our post-Brexit security relationship with the EU? Currently there is none. What are the latest assumptions about the security consequences of climate change and of future pandemics? Most fundamentally, what are our ambitions to repair our frail, rules-based order? Our history, connectivity, international reach, and soft and hard power strengths have traditionally allowed us to step forward when other nations hesitate. Today we hold the G7 presidency, and with the United States just last week reaffirming its resolve to lead the west in confronting global instability, we are overdue in clarifying what “global Britain” means.

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18:30 Jeremy Corbyn (Other)

Later this year, COP26 will meet in Glasgow, where I hope we will come to an agreement that we will get to net zero by 2030. That means that the priority for all of us should be looking at the issues that face the world—refugees, global poverty, environmental disaster and, of course, trade supplies and food chains for the future; we are a trading nation, and we need to be sure that we can still trade and buy things from elsewhere. We have a very big job on our hands, and I hope the review takes all those issues on board.

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18:45 Sarah Champion (Labour)

When the Foreign Secretary spoke to my Committee last month, he told us of his vision for the UK to be an international leader in conflict and dispute resolution. To undertake that role with credibility we must first remove the contradictions that persist in our international policy. How can the UK take the global lead in tackling climate change but continue to support the use of fossil fuels through UK Export Finance? How can we share our commitment to providing quality education for girls when one of the first casualties of aid cuts was a girls’ education programme in Rwanda? How does it make sense for the UK to be rightly providing humanitarian assistance to Yemen yet continuing to sell arms to the countries that use those weapons on the Yemeni people?

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19:14 Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour)

I appreciate that this is a difficult review. It is vast in scope and it comes at a time of global instability, emerging threats and increasing risks on the back of a decade of decline, the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, non-state actors, allies who do not always behave in the way we expect them to, and enemies we know of and those we do not know yet, but the actions of this Government to date have not increased our status and standing in the world; they have diminished them. We are isolated from Europe and out of step with the new US President when it comes to arms sales in support of the Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen. We need to be consistent in our approach to human rights abuses. We should call them out in every single country where they happen. The fact that we do not do so is leading to questions about our values and priorities on the international stage. The merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office has damaged our soft power and our reputation for international humanitarian co-operation.

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19:21 Claire Hanna (SDLP)

In December, a report estimated that covid-19 would push a further 200 million people into extreme poverty, while, at the same time, commercial interests from the global north extract resources many times greater in value than those that we invest in aid and development. Climate change resulting from our overuse of those resources will have massive impacts on developing countries and could lead to mass displacement, natural disasters, instability and the potential for conflict and a refugee crisis.

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19:40 Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) [V]

I congratulate the Chair of the Defence Committee on securing the debate. In the year of COP26, and the year we hope to start to put the pandemic behind us, the debate is rather timely. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said, it seems curious that we are debating a document that has not yet been published. Of course, that is not the only curious thing about the integrated review. The other curious thing about it is that, certainly as far as the defence element goes, all of the budget has been published months in advance of the integrated review being finalised; that happened before Christmas.

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19:51 James Cleverly (Conservative)

The world has not stood still, and neither have we. The UK endures as an active global leader. In the past year alone, we have led the global efforts to deliver a vaccine, raising $8.8 billion for Gavi through our hosting of the global vaccine summit; we have demonstrated global leadership in tackling climate change, including doubling our international climate finance contribution to help millions around the world; and we have pushed back on those who would attack our values through the new bespoke immigration route for British national overseas status holders. This is global Britain.

The integrated review will build on that, setting out our vision for the next decade, based on our values and grounded in the UK national interest. We will announce the full conclusions of the integrated review in March, unleashing our independent foreign policy outside the European Union as we launch our presidencies of the G7 and COP26. 2021 will be a year of leadership for global Britain as a force for good in the world.

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