12:27 Barry Gardiner (Labour)

Perhaps those who have the audacity to ask for a plan ought to be prepared to provide suggestions, so in that spirit, let me be clear that the Opposition will champion the United Kingdom as a leader on the world stage that uses its position to tackle injustice and the imminent climate catastrophe. That means that we want to invest in future technologies and next generation industries, foster innovation and grow jobs in the economy, and to do so in a way that helps our trade partners to do the same. We do not see trade as a zero-sum game of winners and losers. We see open and fair trade as a way of increasing global wealth, along with global justice and equality.

Later this year, the UK will host the crucial United Nations framework convention on climate change—COP26—in Glasgow. This is a truly global responsibility but, sadly, it will also be the moment when America finally pulls out of the Paris agreement, in accordance with the notification it gave two years ago. It will also coincide with the result of the US presidential election. Many countries that have been earnestly engaging in the Paris process, seeking to reduce their own emissions, may come to question their engagement if America continues to be absent from the process.

The pattern of global power is shifting dramatically and swiftly. It is turbocharged by big data, the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence, robotics and the internet of things. Above all, geopolitics will be affected by the energy transformation as the world moves towards a net-zero carbon economy.

Renewables, in many forms, are widely dispersed in most countries, promoting domestic self-sufficiency. They are not stocks that are used and then depleted; they are flows that are constantly recharged and so require less transportation and have no choke points. They lend themselves to decentralisation of production and consumption, and they can more easily be deployed at a local community scale. They also have marginal costs that approach to zero. So just as the geographic concentration of coal, oil and gas moulded our political landscape since the industrial revolution, the dispersed nature of renewable energy will erode those traditional patterns in a new global world. It is not clear that the Government have thought through the geopolitical implications of this energy transformation: which countries are likely to forge ahead and leapfrog the old technology; and which will fail to transform their subsoil assets of oil and gas into surface assets of human social and political capital quickly enough. It is often said that the stone age did not end because of a lack of stone, and nor will the fossil fuel age end because of a lack of oil, gas or coal. It will end with a lot of stranded assets that could pose severe financial risks that a global Britain must guard against.

The Government have sought to congratulate themselves repeatedly on our domestic progress towards net zero, but this has been achieved through the systematic exporting of our carbon emissions and an explicit policy of supporting activities overseas that we no longer support at home. I therefore welcome what the Prime Minister said:

UKEF has helped to finance oil and gas projects that, when complete, will emit 69 million tonnes of carbon a year. That is nearly a sixth of the total annual carbon emissions of the UK itself. Global Britain cannot be Janus-faced, with domestic virtue masking the international promotion of the very policies we say we want to prevent, freeing ourselves to embrace a net-zero future while locking other developing countries into fossil fuel dependency.

In the past 25 minutes, we have heard a lot of virtuous noises about renewable energy which we can all agree with. We know that the hon. Gentleman is against defence and security exports, against the US and against Saudi Arabia. He is against a whole number of things, and global Britain in terms of trade seems to mean for the Labour party “lining our pockets”. What is the Labour party’s vision of the role of the UK in the world? Does he not see enormous opportunities for us in working with continents such as Africa and Asia?

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13:32 Ruth Cadbury (Labour)

The Labour party, and many UK businesses trading with or in competition with other markets, fear that the Government’s aspiration for quick and dirty deals will undermine our standards, businesses and public services—the very things that many voters thought they were protecting when they voted leave. The “get Brexit done” party is talking about quick negotiations that, as far as I can see, will undermine so much. Such negotiations risk losing what we have achieved as fully participating members of the EU for the past 40 years, including high-quality food and safety, consumer and environmental standards, and workers’ rights. The climate emergency is now at the top of the international political agenda, and is another important aspect in which we risk losing out as we drop down in the pecking order through the international trade negotiations.

I very, very sadly and reluctantly accept that the UK is leaving the EU at 11 pm tomorrow night. But I and my hon. Friends will continue to demand the power to scrutinise and vote on trade deals so that we can make sure that UK values, and UK businesses and their interests, are at the centre of all future trade deals. It is shocking that the Government removed the power of Parliament to do this in the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. Labour Members expect parliamentarians to be at the centre of all future trade deals. The reason we want this is to protect our global and our national environment, and to protect our consumer standards and our workers’ rights, but most importantly, for the future of life on earth. Climate change, as I said, must be at the centre of all our trade negotiations. The UK should decarbonise export finance. As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, current projects supported by the UK export system, when complete, will dump 69 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. The Environmental Audit Committee said in the previous Parliament that this is

I also concur with the shadow Secretary of State about the atrocity of awarding export licences in respect of arms sales, products used for torture, and other controlled exports. This undermines further our reputation as a morally credible partner across the globe. Labour has called for robust enforcement of export licensing criteria in respect of arms sales and other controlled exports. Personally, I would like the UK to diversify out of the arms industry altogether and put those skills, technologies and jobs into productive technologies in areas such as renewable energy generation.

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13:42 Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)

There are two issues very much at the forefront that we need to focus on, perhaps in the longer term, one of which is climate change and its consequences. One in four of the world’s population will come from Africa. They are not producing the jobs there that they need, and that will lead to huge migrational challenges. Some 80% of the world’s population lives within 50 miles of the coastline. If sea levels rise, where will those people go? How will those economies be affected? How will Bournemouth be affected—my constituency and that of my right hon. Friend the Minister as well?

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14:15 Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour)

The case for being more internationalist could not be clearer. Fires are burning in the Arctic, the Amazon and Australia. In Indonesia, just like in parts of Italy and Britain, flash floods and heatwaves expose people and places to unimaginable risk. My right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North led this House to declare a climate emergency, but the Government have carried on as if it is business as usual. Brexit, coming tomorrow, looks set to weaken environmental protections, unless climate breakdown is confronted. What future the people on our planet have hangs in the balance.

This time of crisis is a test of the Government’s leadership and our duty to protect our citizens. Good leadership will create jobs, with a green new deal tackling economic insecurity and ecological crisis in one fell swoop. What leadership is it if we allow the Government to bury their heads in the sand as if the neoliberal pursuit of the profit for the 1% matters more than living within our planetary means in the interests of the 99%, citizens in constituencies like mine in Streatham? Our planet does not have time for the Government to check in with Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry about what we should do. The next generation needs real action on the climate crisis. From Britain came the industrial revolution. It is now time for us to lead the environmental revolution.

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14:35 Fleur Anderson (Labour)

On current evidence, the Government’s approach to trade does not take seriously our global responsibility to tackle the imminent threat of climate change, to defend human rights and to ensure trade democracy and transparency. Removing child refugee rights from the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill was not a good start, and I think doing so sent the wrong signals to the world. We have yet to see what will come up in the immigration Bill. I know that the Government say that that subject will be dealt with in the Bill, and I want to be optimistic. It is in that vein, and following that thread, that I will make my following comments.

We should also increase our environmental commitments to achieve a net zero future. Our now independent membership of the World Trade Organisation and our hosting of COP26 later this year provide a massive opportunity—I want to be as optimistic as I can about leaving the EU—to take global leadership of environmental trade policy and to outdo the EU in the implementation of environmental standards. However, that has to begin with getting our own ship in order. We need to take a more joined-up departmental approach to trade and climate change, and end the culture of siloism. We need to undertake environmental, gender and climate impact assessments before entering trade negotiations, which is why we as a House need to know what is going on in those negotiations. All too often, free trade can have a significant, detrimental impact on women in particular, which is why I mentioned gender impact assessments. We should ensure that all stipulations in future trade agreements are designed to meet our own climate and environmental targets, and we should seek legally binding climate commitments in trade deals, rather than too often ineffective environmental chapters.

To conclude, Brexit, tackling global poverty, achieving the sustainable development goals and taking urgent action on the climate crisis all bring huge challenges, but we must meet them with a very British commitment to fairness, by protecting rights and promoting peace, justice, equality, sustainability and prosperity in all that we do on the global stage.

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15:06 Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)

Although I intend to spend much of my time in this place speaking about fish, I would like to move on to a few other subjects. During the election, the Secretary of State for International Trade was kind enough to visit my constituency to see Valeport, which creates oceano- graphic, hydrographic and hydrometric instrumentation. This small but growing firm in the centre of Totnes encapsulates this country’s appetite for ingenuity and innovation. Be it in technology designed to innovate by monitoring the patterns of seal migrations, in machines that observe sea levels in the fight against climate change or in technology used for naval programmes, this is a firm of potential almost unrivalled anywhere in the world. Valeport’s export market is growing rapidly, and I know its global ambition will be supported by the Department for International Trade in the coming months and years.

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15:42 Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)

We now have in the Department for International Trade, so recently created, more trade negotiators than the US Trade Representative. We have exports that have risen 22% in the last three years—now over £654 billion—and that are contributing 30% or almost a third of our GDP, up from 27%. We now have in our diplomacy 14 new posts and, I believe, the greatest global diplomatic coverage of any nation in the world. On issues such as the environment, we are now hosting the climate change summit, COP26, in Glasgow.

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16:34 Judith Cummins (Labour)

As will become more and more evident over the coming years, trade deals have the potential to reach into all manner of policy areas, from food safety to workers’ rights, and from national security to climate change. It is vital that this Parliament has the tools that it needs to properly scrutinise any and all future trade agreements.

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16:43 The Minister of State, Department for International Trade (Conor Burns)

We have an enormous amount to offer, whether it is our world-class education sector—a passion of mine since I made my maiden speech nine and a half years ago on the subject of student visitor visas—a system that has led to one in six global leaders having part of their education in the United Kingdom; our internationally renowned tech sector, now home to over 70 tech unicorns; or our green energy sector, which has seen us become a world leader in offshore wind and green finance. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) not only on being elected to chair the Defence Committee, but on highlighting the opportunity we have to play a massive international role in combating climate change.

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