Caroline Lucas: The NHS and social care are in unprecedented crisis, even if that is a word that the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister refuse to use. We know that resilience was stripped out of our NHS years before the covid pandemic, and I come back to the level of vacancies: there are 133,000 in our NHS and 165,000 in social care. Will the Minister admit that, as well as growing the workforce, we...
Caroline Lucas: A very Merry Christmas, Mr Speaker. With oil and gas companies making grotesque profits from high global prices, it is beyond belief that the Chancellor does not scrap the so-called investment allowance announced in the autumn statement, which means that companies are still able to claim £91.40 in tax relief for every £100 invested in oil and gas infrastructure. Will he now come clean about...
Caroline Lucas: The agreement on a framework that commits to halting and reversing biodiversity loss is of course very welcome. However, it is a bit staggering that the Government’s own environment targets, smuggled out late last week, will fail to deliver on that goal. They do not even include goals to improve the condition of protected nature sites or overall water quality. As a priority, will the right...
Caroline Lucas: The Home Secretary says that she is taking a deterrent approach, but it is plain that today’s judgment cannot and will not function as a so-called deterrent. The whole point of this vile policy of expelling asylum seekers to Rwanda is that expulsion was supposed to happen automatically and rapidly for anyone without a prior permission to come here via a refugee scheme. However, today’s...
Caroline Lucas: What steps she is taking to improve the asylum system.
Caroline Lucas: The Home Office is placing vulnerable, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels in local authority areas. It is directly commissioning those hotels and other services, because it knows that local authorities do not have the funding or capacity required. Will the Home Secretary finally admit that these vulnerable children are legally the Home Office’s responsibility, so that they are...
Caroline Lucas: I rise to speak to the amendments in my name. First, new clause 13 would recognise that everyone has the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and place a duty on public authorities to have regard to that right in decision making. Although simple in its drafting, I would argue that it could have a transformative effect in providing the legislative impetus for a significant...
Caroline Lucas: Does the right hon. and learned Lady accept that we also need to level up access to green space and nature? Right now, the distribution of green space is very unequal; many people on the lowest incomes simply do not have access to green space at all. Will she look at my new clause 13 and look again at the whole issue of ensuring a right of access to good green space?
Caroline Lucas: The Prime Minister talks about fairness, yet what he set out is the very opposite of a fair and efficient system. The best way to stop desperate people from dying in small boats and to stop the criminal gangs is for the Government to promote more safe and legal routes. Why are they so incapable of doing that effectively? Why can he find 500 new staff for his Albanian scheme but only eight...
Caroline Lucas: How many at-risk British Council and GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni in Afghanistan his Department has (a) assessed as eligible for and (b) resettled under the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme pathway 3 since 6 January 2022.
Caroline Lucas: The Foreign Secretary says that he is working quickly, yet we know that zero Afghans have been resettled under the ACRS. No wonder yesterday the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), admitted that we must do better when confronted with the staggering delay. I am in touch with Chevening alumni, for example, who have been living in fear of their lives for...
Caroline Lucas: This Bill should be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure a rapid, stable, co-ordinated and just transition to a low-carbon economy, to advance financial inclusion and to protect consumers, investors, banks, asset managers and other financial institutions against the catastrophic financial risks associated with climate and nature breakdown. Sadly, I believe that it fails to deliver on...
Caroline Lucas: The Bank of England’s climate stress test, published in May, showed that banks need to take climate action immediately or face a hit to annual profits of up to 15%. This is not just about airy-fairy words about the transition, but about banks that, as we have just heard, are bankrolling the fossil fuel industry, which will bring real risks to the finance sector as well as to the rest of the...
Caroline Lucas: I rise to speak in support of my new clause 1, on an assessment of the impact of the investment allowance. When the Chancellor delivered his autumn statement, he did so not just against a backdrop of recession and rising inflation, but in the context of the twin challenges of the climate and energy crises—both of which have fossil fuels at their core—and while millions of households face...
Caroline Lucas: I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman. If I had to make a suggestion about where the Government should look next, it would be the distribution network operators—the companies that run the grids. There has been no spotlight on them at all even though they are making massive profits right now. The hole at the heart of the windfall tax has led Shell—the UK’s fourth largest oil and gas...
Caroline Lucas: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because my anger is becoming so extreme that I might burst at any moment. Does he recognise that this country has the world’s most generous tax regime for oil and gas companies? Does he recollect that BP’s CEO said the company is raking in more money than it knows what to do with? He compared his company to a cash machine. Does the hon....
Caroline Lucas: The Minister will know that oil and gas companies are raking in obscene levels of profit. Why does she think it is reasonable to give incentives—through taxpayers’ money—to companies that are already raking in huge profits at a time when a cost of living crisis is driving so many families into real hardship?
Caroline Lucas: As a student of 16th-century literature, I enjoyed the Secretary of State’s Shakespearian rhetoric, but I am frankly staggered that he can possibly think that Sizewell C is cheaper—cheaper than what? It is massively costly. The RAB funding model basically means that consumers end up paying twice: once towards the cost of construction to lower the cost of borrowing, and again for more...
Caroline Lucas: The Rosebank oilfield would produce more than 200 million tonnes of CO2 when burned, which is equivalent to running 58 coal-fired power stations for a year and more than the combined annual emissions of 28 low-income countries. How does that make any sense in a world where heating needs to be constrained to below 1.5°?
Caroline Lucas: I rise to speak to my amendments 69 and 70, but before doing so I want to put on record my support for the amendments in favour of “true devolution”, as others have been saying, not delegation in all of its messiness. In particular, I support the amendments advocated by the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim...
