12:34 John McDonnell (Labour)

‘but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech fails to rebuild the UK economy, tackle the housing crisis, further pushes public services into crisis and contains no vision to bring this divided country back together; call on the Government to bring forward a plan to rebuild the economy so that it works in the interest of the many, not just handing out rewards to those at the top; and further call on the Government to address the climate emergency by bringing forward a green industrial revolution to decarbonise the economy and boost economic growth.’

The Tories will indeed protect their own. Under them, it will always be the people who are burdened with cuts in services and pay and benefit freezes. What people need now is real change. They need real change in our economy, so that we can face up to the existential threat of climate change through Labour’s green industrial revolution; real change to provide the scale of resources that our NHS, our schools and our police services need, funded by a fair taxation system in which we will tackle tax evasion and avoidance; real change to bring forward the scale of investment that our infrastructure needs to compete in the global economy and meet the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution; and real change to ensure that our people share in the prosperity that we will create through decent wages, ownership and an end to the rip-off of privatisation.

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12:59 The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sajid Javid)

I have been sitting here for the last 30 minutes or so listening to the shadow Chancellor, and I have to say, “The brass neck of the shadow Chancellor!” No mention of the jobs boom and rising wages; no mention of bringing the deficit down by four fifths; no mention of our huge investment in public services; and no support at all for this Queen’s Speech, which delivers on the people’s priorities and moves this country forward from a decade of recovery to a decade of renewal. It is a Queen’s Speech that backs our NHS with £34 billion a year of new investment by 2024, that backs law and order with 20,000 new police officers, that backs the next generation with £14 billion more funding so that every school has more money for every child, that takes great strides towards decarbonising our economy and that boosts our economic infrastructure, increasing investment in roads, railways and energy.

There are some who would have us abandon fiscal responsibility altogether, and to those people I say this: it is only because of the hard work of the British people that we can now afford to invest more, and that is what we are doing when we kick-start a decade of renewal in this country. Our top priority is economic infrastructure. High-quality and reliable infrastructure is essential to how we live, work and travel. The UK is the fifth-largest economy in the world, and it is not good enough that we have fallen so far behind other nations on infrastructure, so we are going to fix that. I can therefore confirm today that our national infrastructure strategy will be published at the Budget. That strategy will deliver better transport, faster broadband and wider mobile coverage. It will level up every region and nation of this great United Kingdom and deliver an infrastructure revolution. The strategy will take great strides for the decarbonisation of our economy, which is one of this country’s most important challenges, by building on our record as the first major economy in the world to legislate for net zero by 2050.

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13:33 Kirsty Blackman (SNP)

I wish to look at the economic impact of failing to support technologies that help to meet our climate change targets. In Scotland, we have the skills, ability, capacity and geography to become world leaders in these technologies, but we need the UK Government to stop messing around and to take their responsibilities seriously. We must have immediate action to support and invest in carbon capture and storage technologies. We are uniquely placed, with our geology, to capitalise on this and to become world leaders in this space, and we cannot have the situation that happened when George Osborne was in the Treasury: he pulled funding at the last moment for these vital future technologies for our country.

This is a hugely concerning direction of travel and it comes despite climate change and things potentially warming up. We need to have energy-efficiency measures. For example, if we want to decarbonise our gas networks, we need to do things such as adding hydrogen and biomethane into the mix. We also need to do things such as ensuring that we have incredibly energy-efficient homes, be that in new homes or through retrofitting older homes. Aberdeen has a campaign to put insulation in granite tenements, which are particularly difficult to insulate and particularly common in Aberdeen. That has made a massive improvement not just in terms of energy efficiency and climate change targets, but in terms of the wealth of those people, who no longer have to pay those immensely high heating bills.

I am shocked that the UK Government would try to convince us to vote for anything that they refused to do an impact assessment on. I take this opportunity to throw down the gauntlet to all MPs who represent Scottish or Welsh constituencies: they should all walk through the Lobby with us to support amendment (h). If they do not support the rights and desires of the people of Scotland and of Wales, they will be doing a disservice to their constituents, their constituencies and their countries. The amendment must be agreed tonight, because we must recognise the importance of freedom of movement and the negative impacts in respect of inequality that the Government are having, and we must do everything we can to recognise that there is a climate emergency and to ensure that solid action is taken to step up to the plate and become world leaders.

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14:27 Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

Take energy, for example. With the climate emergency, we must accelerate the pace of decarbonising energy, but instead Labour wants to spend years legislating for energy renationalisation—what a climate catastrophe! Liberal Democrats showed in government that if we intervene intelligently, we can harness the market to tackle climate change. Thanks to our decisions, Britain is now the global leader in offshore wind. Offshore wind farms now have much greater UK content than people ever imagined possible, and future offshore wind farms will no longer need a subsidy to be built. So if you want to go green, don’t go red, go yellow—and don’t destroy capitalism; decarbonise it.

On the likely eve of a general election, the voters are faced with a choice between two visions of the past and one vision of the future. In the blue corner, we have a return to the 1870s, in a colonial-style global Britain so well personified by the laid-back Leader of the House. In the red corner, we have a return to the 1970s, stoking up old class divisions when our country so desperately needs to come together. Fortunately, there is a yellow corner, from where we can go forward to the 2070s, full of hope and optimism that our country can survive this current nightmare, invest in our children and tackle climate change. As we vote against this damaging Queen’s Speech tonight and prepare to face the electorate—preferably in a referendum but, if not, in a general election —the voters can be in no doubt: the Liberal Democrats are the party for Britain’s future.

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14:58 Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)

As part of the greenest Government ever, we have an Environment Bill to protect our planet for future generations, with measures including a new office for environmental protection, more local powers to tackle air pollution and charges for single-use plastics. We do not just talk about climate change; we deal with climate change.

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15:22 Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)

The second key strand to the strategy is addressing the critical challenges posed by climate change, building on the UK’s world-leading commitment to achieve net zero emissions. I therefore welcome the Environment Bill. However, I urge the Government to consider what more can be done about flooding, because homes and livelihoods in my constituency have been put at risk. Repeated flooding has caused many people to be out of their homes for some time, yet they are unable to access resilience funding, so I ask the Government to consider a permanent resilience fund.

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15:42 Anna Turley (Labour)

Where is our investment for carbon capture and storage that could create 1 million jobs in the chemical industry? Where is the support for great institutions such as TTE Technical Institute and Redcar College to give young people the skills and apprenticeships they need? Where is the support for Teesside’s hydrogen economy to produce heat, to green our transport and to help us to hit our net-zero targets? Where is the Government’s backing for the huge Sirius Minerals project that is now at risk, along with 1,000 jobs? Three hundred jobs are already gone because the Treasury pulled the plug on its support. British Steel still sits on a knife edge. The people of Redcar and Teesside stand ready to get back on their feet. They are desperate to work, but they cannot do it alone. There is nothing in this Queen’s Speech for them.

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15:50 Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)

I want to try to be as positive as I can about the Queen’s Speech, although it will be difficult. I welcome the Environment Bill because we need to build consensus on the challenge of climate change and a low-carbon economy. I want to see a UK Government working with the devolved Administrations on this. There are good practices in other parts of the United Kingdom that we need to adapt into Bills here, including on a low- carbon infrastructure.

If we are serious about climate change, we need a revolution in renewables, but we also need to invest in carbon capture and storage—and, yes, in new nuclear. If we are to reach our target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, we need to double our low-carbon infrastructure. We have an infrastructure plan, but it is not ambitious enough. We need to work together on this now. We need a low-carbon revolution—not just in energy generation, but in our homes and the built environment. We need to do it street by street and community by community, with gas fitters being replaced by solar and underground storage engineers. It has to be done now and it can be done. Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I are old enough to remember North sea gas coming online. That revolution employed thousands of well-paid engineers and fitters, and that is what we should be talking about now.

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15:54 Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)

It is important to recognise the incredible, proven ability of producing clean nuclear energy over many decades in countries around the world. Nuclear is tried, tested and trusted. It is a vital component in reducing our carbon emissions and hitting the net zero carbon commitment. The renewables sector has been well supported by this Government. They have quadrupled our renewables capacity since 2010 and reduced carbon emissions by 42% compared with 1990, while growing the economy by two thirds. That is brilliant progress, but renewables alone are not the answer, because when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, we still need electricity, heating, cooling, power and transportation every hour of the day, and every day of the year. That must be consistent and controllable, working with renewable energy.

As a region, the north-west has lagged behind London and the south-east. The national infrastructure strategy recognises and tackles that. The investment in local skills and industries that the Queen’s Speech promises will rebalance the economy, empower communities and decarbonise the world. That is why I shall vote for it tonight.

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16:41 Peter Dowd (Labour)

The only threat we face that is equal to the continuation of this Government is the climate emergency. We need a green industrial revolution: a rapid and far-reaching transformation of the UK’s infrastructure, from our homes to our transport and energy systems. That requires investment on a scale that makes the Government’s programme pale into insignificance. Labour is offering—

Labour is offering a national transformation fund and a national investment bank that would invest £500 billion of lending and spending over 10 years, with tackling climate change as a central mission—a concept alien to that lot over there. It will include targeted investment to develop and commercialise new technologies so that they are designed here, assembled here, installed by a well-paid unionised workforce here, and then exported to the rest of the world. It is a far-reaching programme of economic revival that will create the industries of the future here. This is a Government of yesterday. We are the Government of tomorrow.

With its wind and marine resources, the UK has some of the best potential in the world for renewable energy. Renewable energy should be to the UK what tech has been to California, but the Government’s failure to support these nascent industries has held us back. We should be building on our existing strengths, such as the automotive sector, which could, with the right support, lead the world in electric vehicle and battery production. At the Labour party conference, my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), the shadow Business Secretary, announced a multibillion-pound package of investment to kick-start the electric revolution. That is the scale of targeted support that our automotive industry needs—not just green number plates. Today, she announced plans to create a carbon-neutral energy system by the 2030s, including insulation upgrades for every home in the UK and enough new solar panels to cover 22,000 thousand football pitches, including Anfield.

This is not just about avoiding a climate catastrophe. The green industrial revolution is about building the world we deserve, not the world that the Tories think we deserve. We will ensure that nothing is too good for the working people of this country. We can tackle climate change while transforming our economy so that it works for the many, not just the privileged few.

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16:50 The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrea Leadsom)

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) talked about how this Government are dealing with climate change, not just talking about it. Labour, however, has promised something that it cannot deliver and does not understand. Several unions have voiced their concern about the damage of a 2030 target for decarbonisation. The GMB dismissed it as threatening “whole communities” and “jobs”, as well as being “utterly unachievable”. The “30 by 2030” report put out by Labour today shows plans to hike up stamp duty on millions of homes, with home owners forced to spend tens of thousands to move home and local communities losing any say on onshore wind. However, this Government have a positive record on decarbonisation. We are the first major economy to legislate for net zero. Since 1990, we have reduced carbon emissions by 42% while growing our economy by nearly three quarters. We have shown that decarbonising can create jobs and prosperity. It has already produced 400,000 jobs in the low-carbon sector, and we hope that the number will reach 2 million by 2030. Our path to reaching net zero is realistic. It is based on science and has been supported by the Committee on Climate Change. We care too much about this issue to make pointless political promises that are just not deliverable.

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