10:23 Bill Esterson (Labour)

To succeed in international trade, we must align our domestic and international strategies. That means delivering on the Government’s stated aim of moving to a zero-carbon economy. Labour recognises the benefits to be had in jobs and prosperity from investing in the $26 trillion global opportunity of moving to a zero-carbon world. That figure comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Government say that they are committed to net zero by 2050. However, that does not stack up when we remember that we are funding fossil fuel development overseas; 99.4% of UK Export Finance provision in the energy sector went on fossil fuel development in places such as oil refineries in Bahrain. Just £1 million was spent on renewables, but £4.8 billion went on oil and gas. Raiding the international development budget—something announced yesterday by the Secretary of State—is not the answer. We should use aid to help developing nations, not to give further support to the fossil fuel industry.

UK Export Finance should be helping with the development of renewables; otherwise, we are just exporting our emissions to the developing world and elsewhere, as of course is the case when we do not include emissions from shipping and air freight in our carbon reduction targets. The emissions do not go away as if by magic just because we pretend they are not part of our carbon footprint. Christian Aid rightly says that the support for fossil fuels is incoherent. We have world-leading marine technology in tidal energy. Where is the focus on renewable energy at the heart of an exciting and financially rewarding export strategy?

Under article 2(c) of the Paris agreement, the Government’s policy priority should be:

“Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”

The figure of 99.4% going to fossil fuels from UK Export Finance is the exact opposite of the stated policy of our Government. As Global Witness told the Select Committee, UK Export Finance should measure the greenhouse gas impact of the projects it funds. The US Overseas Private Investment Corporation adopted a greenhouse gas cap for its projects in 2007, and it is no surprise that it has shifted towards clean energy investments. If the private sector in the United States can do that, why cannot we? Labour believe we can.

Global Witness says that, for trade and domestic policies to match, UKEF should no longer invest in fossil fuel projects. Ministers like to remind us that UKEF is an award winner—but why should it not win awards for its low-carbon policy? The Canadian and French export credit agencies have more stringent controls on fossil fuel support. One of the two Swedish agencies did not lend to any fossil fuel projects in 2015 or 2016. If they can do that, why cannot we? Global Witness also says that the Department for International Trade should realign export support to renewable energy. There is an export opportunity for us, if we want to grasp it, in what it describes as floating offshore wind. Why not? UKEF has stopped investing in businesses that rely on child labour. Why not take the same approach to global warming?

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10:56 Julia Lopez (Conservative)

I appreciate that the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) finds himself within a party that perhaps now welcomes only newspeak from its comrades, but I am fairly certain that my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is not advocating no deal as his primary objective. I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that his dystopian imaginings about the DIT’s work and the trade figures are rather wide of the mark. He expressed concern about an absence of green objectives in our trade work. He might be reassured by some of the exciting things that we are doing on green finance initiatives with the likes of Singapore, and might be interested to know about some of the work that we saw with the Select Committee in South Korea—in particular, on renewable energy and how that is helping it to reach its targets.

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