Caroline Lucas: I am not making a blanket statement in that way. I am saying that if a whole load more safeguards were built into the Bill and if it were not based on a set of definitions that are being criticised by the scientific community, I would have rather more confidence in it than I do right now. As we have heard, several learned organisations have challenged the Government’s creation of this...
Caroline Lucas: The Secretary of State keeps using this language about precision breeding, but he will know that that is neither a specific technology nor a scientific principle. It relies on the creation of a hypothetical class of GMOs that could have occurred naturally. He will know that there is opposition to that definition from everyone from the environmental non-governmental organisations right through...
Caroline Lucas: The Secretary of State will know that section 20 of the Environment Act 2021 requires him to be able to affirm that this Bill does not weaken any existing environmental protections. Given that he has more or less just said that it precisely does, because it will weaken the EU legislation that we were following and will erode the existing regulatory system, how can he then sign section 20 in...
Caroline Lucas: The Home Secretary has the gall to talk about a moral response to this situation. The moral response would be to provide safe and legal routes for those people who are exercising their legal right—their legal right—to seek asylum. The Government do not even have a basic monitoring and safety process in place for this ugly policy. The monitoring committee promised in their memorandum of...
Caroline Lucas: I haven’t said anything about Rwanda.
Caroline Lucas: We rightly talk about the adaptation finance gap, but as the Minister will know, according to Oxfam the economic costs of loss and damage could be up to £580 billion a year by 2030, yet rich countries are continuing to drag their feet. Will the Government work to ensure that Egypt succeeds where Glasgow failed, so that the £100 billion in climate finance is not just met but exceeded, and so...
Caroline Lucas: rose—
Caroline Lucas: I wonder if there is a page missing in my copy of the Bill, because I was looking for the net zero test, which I am sure the Secretary of State would agree ought to be applied to all planning decisions, policies and procedures, yet it is conspicuous by its absence. Does he agree that if we are serious about using this Bill to really level up, then we need to have that net zero test? Can he...
Caroline Lucas: The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that if the Prime Minister —any Prime Minister—can always simply bail out a ministerial colleague, even if they have been shown to have clearly broken the ministerial code, that undermines not only the code and the role of the independent adviser, but the role of all of us? We are all besmirched by the same sense that we cannot...
Caroline Lucas: The right hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that, when faced with a rogue Prime Minister, a mere adviser on the ministerial code is dangerously inadequate? We must have an independent enforcer. So long as this unfit PM retains the ability to override his own adviser on the finding of a breach, the adviser—in the words of the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public...
Caroline Lucas: One of the fastest and most effective ways to protect people from the impact of rising energy costs would be an ambitious retrofit and insulation programme, which should have been at the heart of the Government’s approach but has been conspicuous by its absence. The Government support pledged so far for energy efficiency falls £1.4 billion short of their manifesto commitment, so will the...
Caroline Lucas: Just six short months ago, the UK hosted COP26, and it remains its president—not that we would know that from this appalling policy from this Government. The Glasgow climate pact, which the UK signed, commits to the “phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, so can the Financial Secretary explain on what grounds handing an 80% tax break to the dirty, dangerous and outdated energy...
Caroline Lucas: This is a deeply dangerous Bill, and I am pleased to support the reasoned amendments. The measures in the Bill represent a fresh outright attack on our fundamental rights. Indeed, as others have said, the human rights organisation Liberty has called it a “staggering escalation of the Government’s clampdown on dissent.” We are in the grip of multiple crises: a cost of living scandal that...
Caroline Lucas: As others have said, evidence-based stop and search—where there is evidence and a good reason—is not in question. What is in question here is stop and search on the basis of a whim. As others have eloquently said, there is a very real danger of antagonising some groups who are already most disadvantaged, and therefore making the situation far worse. The Government want to give the police...
Caroline Lucas: I disagree with the premise of the Minister’s intervention. I have been proudly at the forefront of moves to say that women seeking their right to healthcare should not be subject to the personal, direct and threatening individual harassment that happens all too frequently outside abortion centres. I would wager that I have been on more demonstrations than anyone on the Government...
Caroline Lucas: No, I will not. Protest is, by definition, disruptive. I can promise Government Members that the protesters I have been alongside include grandmothers who have never been on a protest before, nurses, doctors, teachers, care workers and people who collect the refuse. They are our community. I do not buy into the division that the Government are trying to make between a community on the one...
Caroline Lucas: We are in the grip of multiple crises: a cost of living scandal that is pushing millions of households into fuel and food poverty; a war in Ukraine with disastrous consequences; and the accelerating climate and nature emergencies. In the short time that I have, I want to outline their common roots in our fossil fuel-based energy systems. The cost of living crisis is the most visible part of a...
Caroline Lucas: The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I wonder whether he shares my anger at the news this week that the Government have underspent their net zero budget by a staggering quarter of a billion pounds, at exactly the same time as our constituents are struggling to keep their homes warm and deal with accelerating fuel poverty.
Caroline Lucas: Can I press the Foreign Secretary on why she is laying the ground for a trade war with our largest trading partners just as the Bank of England is warning of an “apocalyptic” rise in food prices? Those are the tactics she is using and the threats she is making. Will she meet the UK Trade and Business Commission to discuss our recommendations for a way of removing the bulk of checks in the...
Caroline Lucas: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is remarkable that, for a Government who say that they care about the cost of living crisis, there was absolutely nothing new in this Queen’s Speech around, for example, a mass home insulation programme? Such a programme would be the cheapest, most effective and fastest way of getting our emissions down, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and...
