16:51 Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)

I shall be brief. It will be a massive challenge to recover the trade that we shall lose. We currently negotiate as Team EU; standing alone as Britain, negotiating with other countries—particularly large ones, such as the United States and China—will be very difficult. There is a debate about climate change in the main Chamber at the moment. It seems to me that we shall have to trade further afield, which will harm our climate. I hope we see the introduction of carbon pricing to save the climate, but that will not be good for trade.

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17:18 Bill Esterson (Labour)

It is fitting that we are debating the future of international trade at the same time as Members in the main Chamber are discussing Labour’s call to declare a climate emergency. The opportunities in the low-carbon economy for trade in goods and services as part of—as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said—the global economic benefits of $26 trillion, need to be at the heart of our industrial and trade strategy. However, before concentrating on the export potential of renewable technology, I will spend a few minutes on other topics.

I want to give the Minister plenty of time to respond, so in the time remaining I will speak about the low-carbon economy and the need to address the climate emergency. This Government’s record in international trade is a cause for concern in relation to the low-carbon economy: £2.362 billion of UK export finance over the past five years has been spent on exports to low and middle-income countries in the energy sector relating to fossil fuels, with just £1 million invested in the renewables sector. If we are serious about tackling climate change, those figures need to be completely reversed, so it is disappointing that after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report last autumn, this Government announced that they were considering support for a Bahrain oil refinery.

We have many success stories in renewable energy; we are often world leaders in technology—Windhoist, for example, sells wind turbines to Taiwan and Australia—but for other companies there is only frustration. Award-winning exporter Nova Innovation exports tidal energy equipment. Its chief executive officer, Simon Forrest, says:

We cannot afford to let that happen in sectors such as tidal energy. We can be leaders in the low-carbon economy. Meeting the challenge of the climate emergency can deliver future prosperity through a proper industrial and international trade strategy in renewables, not fossil fuels. It is time to develop the future, not the past.

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