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  • Liz Kendall – 2021 Speech to the National Children and Adult Services Conference

    Liz Kendall – 2021 Speech to the National Children and Adult Services Conference

    The speech made by Liz Kendall, the Shadow Social Care Minister, on 25 November 2021.

    I want to start by thanking all of you and all of your teams for everything you’ve done over the last 18 months during this awful, awful pandemic.

    I know from my Director Martin Samuels and my local lead for social care Cllr Sarah Russell the pressures you’ve been under week in, week out relentlessly, and my constituents would not have got through this without everything you’ve done – so thank you.

    I think that transforming social care is the challenge of our generation. And this was true way before the pandemic struck, but that Covid 19 has exposed more than ever the urgent need for reform.

    So far, the Government has fallen woefully short of the mark.

    Their National Insurance tax rise wont “fix the crisis in social care” let alone build a system fit for the 21st century. The so-called ‘NHS and Care Levy’ won’t provide any additional resources for social care until at least 2023, with little if any guarantee of extra funding after that.

    As ADASS have said, It won’t provide a single extra minute of care and support or a better quality of life for older and disabled people. It won’t tackle endemic staff shortages and low pay or do anything to help millions of unpaid family carers who’ve just been pushed to breaking point trying to look after the people they love.

    And I’m afraid that the Government’s cap on care costs won’t stop people from having to sell their homes to pay for care either, despite repeated promises from the Prime Minister.

    This week, the Conservatives voted through changes to the cap that mean those with low and modest assets won’t be protected from having to sell their homes, but those with houses worth £1 million will end up with 90% of their assets protected.

    So millions of working people will have to pay more tax – not to improve care services, or to protect their own or their parents’ homes, but only to protect the homes of the wealthiest.

    It’s unfair, it’s wrong, and the Government must think again.

    Ministers should go back to the drawing board, starting with the White Paper on Social Care, which we hear is ‘imminent’.

    This should be a ten year plan of investment and reform which deals with the immediate challenges, as we emerge from the pandemic and head into a difficult winter, and puts in place the longer-term reforms our country desperately needs for the future.

    Because whilst extra resources are essential, simply putting more money into a broken system won’t deliver better results for care users, or better value for taxpayers’ money.

    Today, I want to set out the tests the White Paper must meet if the Government’s going to deliver real and lasting change.

    The first test is improving access to social care. After a decade of cuts to local authority budgets, 300,000 people who have been assessed as needing care are now stuck on council waiting lists. Even more need help with the basics of daily living but are going without: around 1.5 million older people, according to Age UK.

    Ensuring all older and disabled people get the right support when and where they need it is essential to improving their quality of life, and its crucial to delivering better value for money too, so people don’t end up having to use more expensive hospital or residential care before their time.

    Increasing access to care must be part of a much more fundamental shift in the focus of support towards prevention and early intervention.

    We will always need residential and nursing homes, and there are huge challenges to address including the modernisation of facilities, but most people want to stay in their own home for as long as possible.

    The Government should enshrine the principle of ‘home first’, to help people live as independently as possible for as long as possible.

    That means bringing together all the different staff into one team – care workers, district nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists – to focus on keeping people at home and so families don’t have to battle their way around the system.

    It means ensuring people have the home adaptations they need, with new monitoring technologies – which can make a huge difference in supporting independent living – alongside early help from local community groups with things like shopping, cleaning and visits to tackle loneliness.

    I think the Government should also expand the range of housing options between care at home and a care home like extra care housing and retirement villages, which are much more common in other countries.

    The third test for the White Paper is delivering for disabled people.

    A third of the users and half of the budget for social care is for working age adults with disabilities and yet their needs have been almost entirely excluded from recent debates about social care reform, particularly the cap on care costs.

    The needs and concerns of disabled people must be at the heart of the White Paper: based on the principle of independent living and underpinned by greater choice and control, including through expanding the use of Direct Payments and Personal Budgets.

    The Government must also end – once and for all – the scandal of people with physical and learning disabilities being kept in long stay institutions. Ministers promised to do this over a decade ago but have repeatedly failed to deliver. This scandal is one of the worst public policy failures I’ve seen in my 20 years working in this sector.

    Today is Carers’ Rights Day, so the fourth test for the White Paper is transforming support for England’s 11 million unpaid family carers.

    Before Covid struck, almost half hadn’t had a single break for 5 years. Since the pandemic, 80 per cent of family carers say they’re doing even more. 1 in 3 now have to give up work or reduce their hours because they can’t get the help they need to look after the person the love. This makes no absolutely no sense for them or our economy.

    So the White Paper must set out how the Government will ensure councils can deliver the rights of unpaid carers which have already been set out in the Care Act; provide families with proper information, advice and breaks; and how they’re actually going to change the world of work, and improve flexible working so unpaid carers can better balance their work and family lives as we all live, and work, and care for longer.

    None of these improvements will be possible without radical improvements in the workforce.

    I don’t need to tell you that across the country staff, shortages are the most pressing issue the sector faces.

    There are currently over 100,000 vacancies in social care and we need half a million additional care workers by 2030 just to meet demographic demand.

    Labour is calling for a New Deal for Care Workers, to transform their pay, training, terms and conditions, ensure proper career progression and so frontline care staff are equally valued with those in the NHS. We will never improve the quality of care unless this happens.

    But there’s something even more fundamental that needs to change if we’re going to deliver lasting reform.

    Every time I speak to people who actually use care and support, I am struck by the yawning chasm between what they want for their own lives and what ‘the system’ – and let’s be honest, wider political debate – actually offers.

    Social care isn’t only about helping older and disabled people get up, washed dressed and fed, vital though that is.

    At its best, social care is about something both more simple and more profound: ensuring every older and disabled person can live the life they choose, in the place they call home, with the people they love, doing the things that matter to them most.

    In other words, an equal life to everybody else.

    The brilliant group Social Care Future has pioneered this vision. Making it a reality means ensuring the people who use services, and their families, are equal partners in determining services and support.

    You simply cannot get social care right or deliver high-quality personalised care unless this happens.

    Take an older person with dementia. If you don’t work with their family to understand what their food they like, or the songs they like listening to, or the films they like watching, then you won’t be able to provide them with the best quality care and support.

    Or the disabled woman in her 30s who told her council she needed a couple of extra hours support to go and see her friends, but was instead referred to the locally commissioned ‘befriending service’ of people she had never met. No wonder she turned them down!

    We have got to stop doing things ‘to’ or ‘for’ people and start doing things with people. That includes ensuring care users shape how staff are trained, how services are locally commissioned and nationally regulated, and how support is delivered on the ground.

    Quite frankly, unless the White Paper is absolutely explicit about this, and how it will be achieved, I fear it will end up gathering dust alongside the many other White and Green papers we have seen before.

    In conclusion, when the welfare state was created, average life expectancy was 63. Now it is 80 and 1 in 4 babies born today are set to live to 100.

    Social care was left out of the initial post war settlement but is now essential to ensuring older and disabled people can live the life they choose. It is essential to helping families stay in work as we all live and care for longer, and it is crucial to an effectively functioning NHS too.

    In the century of ageing, social care must be at the heart of a modernised welfare state. It is as much as part of our infrastructure as the roads and railways, but it urgently needs investment and reform.

    That is the scale of ambition we need from this White Paper.

    It is time the Government delivered.

  • Boris Johnson – 2021 Speech to the CBI

    Boris Johnson – 2021 Speech to the CBI

    The speech made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 22 November 2021.

    Great to be here in Tyneside, the number one exporting region of the UK.

    Great to be with the CBI.

    And I want to begin with a massive thank you to British business.

    For keeping going.

    For looking after your employees.

    For rising to the challenge.

    For responding to the call for ventilators in those first dark days.

    Dozens of you,

    Kitchen appliance makers,

    Hairdryer makers,

    Formula one motor car manufacturers,

    Turning your production lines over in days to try to save lives.

    For making the masks and the gowns and the gloves at such speed.

    Turning things round from that awful moment when we realised we simply didn’t have the domestic production.

    So we have gone from being able to supply 1 per cent of our domestic needs to 80 per cent.

    And thank you British industry, enterprise, commerce,

    For producing not just one but perhaps half a dozen vaccines.

    Because without you, let’s face it, we would simply not be here,

    And nor would tens of thousands of people in our country and millions around the world,

    Who owe their lives to your resourcefulness and inventiveness.

    And while I’m on the subject, can I ask who has had your booster?

    You all look far too young and thrusting to need a booster but get your booster as soon as you can.

    Because it is by vaccinating our country that we have been able to get your staff back to their place of work, to open our theatres, our restaurants and to get back for longer now than any other comparator country to something like normal life.

    Even if we are still bumping elbows and wearing masks.

    I am not going to pretend that everything is going to be plain sailing.

    We can see the state of the pandemic abroad.

    The supply chain issues that we’re facing.

    The pressure on energy prices that we’re all facing.

    The skills shortages.

    But don’t forget folks, my friends, it was only last year they were saying we would have an unemployment crisis now on the scale not seen since the 1980s or 1990s.

    They were forecasting 12 per cent unemployment.

    And what have we got?

    Thanks to you, thanks to the resilience of British business, we have employment back in work at pre-pandemic levels.

    It was only last year that we experienced the biggest fall in output in a century.

    As we were forced to lock down the economy.

    Well look at us now.

    Thanks to you and thanks to British business bouncebackability, we are forecast to have the fastest economic growth in the G7.

    And I was there in the 70s and 80s and 90s.

    And I remember mass unemployment.

    And the misery and the drain of the human spirit.

    And I would much rather have our problems today – which are fundamentally caused by a return in global confidence and a surge in demand.

    Because now we have a massive opportunity to fix these supply-side problems.

    To transform whole sectors of our economy and to tackle the chronic problems underlying the UK economy.

    The woeful imbalance in productivity across the country.

    But also the imbalance between British business.

    Between the go-getting world-beaters represented by so many people in this room,

    And the long comet tail whose potential is frankly yet to be realised.

    That don’t have the skills – particularly the IT skills – as Rishi the Chancellor so often points out.

    That don’t have the banks behind them, that don’t have the investment.

    And that is the mission of this country – to unite and level up.

    Of this government – to unite and level up across the whole country.

    And I’ve got to be honest with you, it is a moral mission.

    As you get older, the funny thing is you get more idealistic and less cynical.

    It’s a moral thing, but it is also an economic imperative.

    Because if this country could achieve the same kind of geographical balance and dispersion of growth and wealth that you find in most of our most successful economic comparators,

    And if all our businesses could reach more balance in their levels of productivity,

    Then there would be absolutely no stopping us.

    And we would achieve what I believe we can.

    And become the biggest and most successful economy in Europe.

    And today fate has handed us an opportunity to do that.

    When the first industrial revolution began 250 years ago it was British industry that had first-mover advantage.

    For hundreds of years, we maintained that pace.

    Right up until the beginning of the 20th century we were producing more coal, smelting more iron, building more ships and boilers and making more machines than virtually any other country on earth.

    And today we are on the brink of another revolution.

    A green industrial revolution.

    And again there are many ways in which we have first-mover advantage.

    And today I want to tell you in the CBI how Britain is going to win in the new green industrial revolution.

    Provided we act and act now.

    I have had some pretty wonderful jobs in my life, but among the most purely hedonistic I would rank motoring correspondent of GQ magazine.

    I drove:

    Ferraris
    Maseratis
    Nissan Skylines
    Proton Sagas
    You name it, I drove it.

    And I learned to admire the incredible diversity of the UK specialist motor manufacturing sector, which is actually the biggest in the world.

    And I have spent hours in the traffic, listening to the porridge-like burble and pop of the biggest and most sophisticated internal combustion engines ever made.

    And I have heard that burble turn into an operatic roar as I have put my foot down and burned away from the lights at speeds I would not now confess to my protection officers.

    In that time, that great era, I only tried two EVs – electric vehicles.

    An extraordinary wheeled rabbit hutch that was so tiny you could park it sideways.

    And I tried the first Tesla for sale in this country, for GQ, that expired in the fast lane of the M40.

    They’ve got a lot better.

    And when a few years later as Mayor of London I tried to get London motorists to go electric and we put in charging points around the city, I must confess that they were not then a soaraway success.

    And they stood forlorn like some piece of unused outdoor gym equipment.

    But ten years after that – the tipping point has come, hasn’t it?

    UK sales of EVs are now increasing at 70 per cent a year.

    And in 2030 we are ending the market for new hydrocarbon ICEs, ahead of other European countries.

    And companies are responding.

    Here in the north east, Nissan has decided to make an enormous bet on new electric vehicles and together with Envision there is now a massive new gigafactory for batteries.

    And around the world, these cars are getting ever more affordable.

    And at Glasgow two weeks ago the tipping point came, as motor manufacturers representing a third of the world market – including the EU and America – announced that they would go electric by 2035.

    And of course, Glasgow was far bigger and more important than that.

    250 years after we launched the first industrial revolution, we are showing the world how to power past coal.

    When I was a kid, 80 per cent of our electricity came from coal.

    And I remember those huge barges taking coal up the Thames to Battersea power station and those four chimneys belching fumes into the face and lungs of the city.

    By the time I became mayor, Battersea was a wreck.

    Closed for being simply too polluting.

    And good for nothing except the final shoot out in gangster movies.

    But in 2012, we were still 40 per cent dependent on coal.

    Today – only ten years later – coal supplies less than 2 per cent of our power.

    And by 2024 it will be down to zero

    And Battersea of course is a great funkapolitan hive of cafes and restaurants and hotels and homes

    Thanks to the vision of the former Mayor.

    And every time I made that point to leaders in Glasgow,

    About the speed of the switch that we’ve made from coal,

    I could see them thinking about it and I could see them thinking: right, ok, maybe this is doable.

    And when I was a kid literally zero per cent of our energy came from wind.

    And it seemed faddish and ludicrous to imagine that we could light and heat our homes with a technology that dated from 9th century Persia, I think.

    And yet today – look at the coast of the north east where we are today.

    Row after row stretching out to the north sea, of beautiful white mills as we claim a new harvest,

    Rich and green from the drowned meadows of doggerland.

    And on some days we derive almost half this country’s energy needs,

    With the biggest offshore wind production anywhere in the world – and growing the whole time.

    And that tipping point having been reached, the pace of change is now going to accelerate like new a Tesla.

    Because I can tell you as a former motoring correspondent, EVs may not burble like sucking doves, and they may not have that arum arum araaaaaagh that you love,

    But they have so much torque that they move off the lights faster than a Ferrari.

    And we are now embarked on a new epoch.

    And in just a few years’ time, after almost a century of using roughly the same technology, we are going to change radically.

    We are going to change radically:

    our cars
    our trucks
    our buses
    our ships
    our boats
    our planes
    our trains
    our domestic heating systems
    our farming methods
    our industrial processes
    our power generation
    And much else besides.

    And I can tell you the force driving that change.

    It won’t be government, and it won’t even be business – though business and government together will have a massive influence.

    It will be the consumer.

    It will be the young people of today,

    The disciples of David Attenborough,

    Not just in this country but around the world,

    Who can see the consequences of climate change and who will be demanding better from us.

    And I confidently predict that in just a few years’ time it will be as noisome, offensive to the global consumer to open a new coal fired power station as it is to get on a plane and light up a cigar.

    And as the world reaches this pivotal moment, post Glasgow, it’s vital that we recognise not just the scale of the challenge, but the opportunity now for British business and industry.

    Because in the end it is you, it is business people, who will fix this problem.

    Governments don’t innovate.

    Governments don’t produce new products and get out and sell them in the market place.

    And though governments can sell, governments can spend tens if not hundreds of billions,

    We know that the market has hundreds of trillions.

    And yet we also know that government has a vital role in making that market, and in framing the right regulation.

    And to ensure that you, the British business succeeds in this new world, we have set out a ten point plan for government leadership.

    A new Decalogue that I produced exactly a year ago, when I came down from Sinai and I said to my officials the new ten commandments thou shalt develop:

    Offshore wind.

    Hydrogen.

    Nuclear power.

    Zero emission vehicles.

    Green public transport, cycling and walking.

    ‘Jet zero’ and green ships

    7: greener buildings

    8: carbon capture and storage

    9: nature and trees

    10: green finance

    And for each of those objectives we are producing a roadmap, so that you in the private sector can see the opportunities ahead and what you need to do.

    And we are regulating so as to require new homes and buildings to have EV charging points – with another 145,000 charging points to be installed thanks to these regulations.

    We are investing in new projects to turn wind power into hydrogen.

    And the net zero strategy is expected to trigger about £90 billion of private sector investment, driving the creation of high wage high skill jobs across the UK, as part of our mission to unite and level up across the country.

    Not just in the green industrial revolution of course, but in all sectors of the economy.

    And to help you, and to build the platform, to give you the advantage you need, we are now waging a cross-Whitehall campaign to solve our productivity puzzle and to rebalance our lopsided economy.

    Fixing our infrastructure with investment on a scale not seen since the Victorians.

    And we must begin with energy and power generation,

    if we are going to have, allow, our manufacturing industry to succeed, we must end the unfairness that UK, high energy-intensive manufacturing pays so much more than our competitors overseas.

    And that’s why we are going to address the cost of our nuclear power and we are all now paying for the historic under under-investment in nuclear power.

    Which country first split the atom?

    Which country had the first civilian nuclear power plant?

    It was this one.

    And why have we allowed ourselves to be left behind?

    Well, you tell me.

    So we are investing not just in big new nuclear plants but in small nuclear reactors as well.

    And we are consulting on classifying this essential technology as “green investment”, so that we can get more investment flowing in and ahead of the EU.

    Lenin once said that the communist revolution was soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

    Well, I hesitate to quote Lenin, Tony, before the CBI, but the coming industrial revolution is green power plus the electrification of the whole country.

    We are electrifying our cars, we are electrifying our rail.

    Last week we announced three vast new high speed lines.

    Cutting the time from London to Manchester by an hour.

    And creating a new Crossrail of the north

    Cutting the time from Manchester to Leeds from 55 to 33 minutes.

    A crossrail for the Midlands,

    Cutting journey times from Birmingham to Nottingham from one hour and 14 minutes to 26 minutes.

    But these plans are far richer and more ambitious than some of the coverage has perhaps suggested.

    To solve this country’s transport problems, you can’t just endlessly carve your way through virgin countryside.

    You have to upgrade, and to electrify.

    You have to use the tracks that already exist and bring them back into service.

    And we are doing the Beeching reversals – that’s putting in lines that were taken out sadly in the last century.

    You have to put other transport networks as well.

    You have to put in clean buses, you have to improve,

    4000 new clean green buses we’re putting in.

    And of course, you have to fix the roads as well.

    We cannot be endlessly hostile to road improvements.

    And we have to do it now, we have to fix it now.

    I know that there are some people who think that working habits have been remade by the pandemic, and that everyone will be working only on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, in an acronym I won’t repeat.

    I don’t want to be dogmatic about this, but I have my doubts.

    And it is not just that young people need to be in the office to learn, and to compete, and to pick up social capital.

    There are also sound evolutionary reasons why mother nature does not like working from home.

    So I people prophesy that people will come back, Tony – they will come to the office.

    And they will come back on the roads and the rail.

    But people also want choice.

    And that is why we must put in the gigabit broadband – as we are – which has gone up massively just in the last couple of years from 7 per cent when I became PM to 65 per cent at the beginning of next year.

    And with safer streets,

    With great local schools,

    With fantastic broadband,

    People will have the confidence to stay nearer the place they grew up.

    To start business.

    And business will have the confidence to invest.

    And then of course there is one thing that business wants and that this country needs,

    Far more than a hundred supersonic rail links,

    Far more than broadband,

    And that is skills.

    And the people that you all need to staff your business.

    It’s an astonishing fact that the 16-18 year olds in this country are getting 40% less time and instruction than our competitors in the OECD, and so we’re turning that round.

    We are focusing on skills, skills, skills,

    Investing in our FE colleges, our apprentices, in the knowhow and confidence of young people.

    And since, as everybody knows, 80 per cent of the 2030 workforce are already in work,

    We are giving every adult who needs it the chance to get a level three skill.

    £3000 for a lifetime skills guarantee.

    We are supporting bootcamps for everything from IT to entrepreneurship.

    And at this pivotal moment in our economic history, we are taking advantage of our new freedoms.

    To deliver freeports as well as free trade deals.

    And to regulate differently and better,

    To lengthen our lead in all the amazing new technologies of the 21st century:

    AI cyber quantum computing

    And all the rest and all the applications of those technologies to the areas in which we excel.

    So you get fin tech, ed tech, bio tech, med tech, nano tech, ag tech, green tech,

    So you sound basically like 15th century Mexico.

    And that is what this country is doing

    There are only 3 countries that have produced more than 100 tech unicorns

    and they are, as you will know, well which are they? Let’s see who’s been paying attention to any of my speeches in the last few … which 3 nations have produced more than 100 tech unicorns?

    Correct. They are the US, China and the UK

    And the wonderful thing about the more than the 100 tech unicorns is they are dispersed now far more evenly across the whole of the UK than the tech unicorns of some of our rival competitor economies.

    And that is a fantastic thing.

    We want to see the dispersal of this growth and development across the UK. That’s why this government has doubled investment in scientific research – and again, we want to see the benefits of that research across the whole of the country

    But in the end

    And this is the most important message of all.

    There are limits to what governments can do.

    And I just want to be absolutely clear about this – because this has been an extraordinary period.

    There has been the financial crisis of 2008, where government had to intervene on a massive scale.

    Then Covid, when government had to intervene on a massive scale.

    But government cannot fix everything and government sometimes should get out of your hair.

    And government should make sure there is less regulation and indeed less taxation.

    And the true driver of growth is not government, it is the energy and dynamism and originality of the private sector

    And Tony, yesterday, I went as we all must to Peppa Pig World.

    Hands up if you’ve been to Peppa Pig World – [not enough]

    I was a bit hazy about what I would find at Peppa Pig World, but I loved it.

    Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place.

    It had very safe streets.

    Discipline in schools.

    Heavy emphasis on new mass transit systems, I noticed.

    Even if they are a bit stereotypical about daddy pig.

    But the real lesson for me about going to Peppa Pig World was about the power of UK creativity.

    Who would have believed, Tony, that a pig that looks like a hairdryer, or possibly a sort of Picasso-like hairdryer,

    A pig that was rejected by the BBC,

    Would now be exported to 180 countries,

    With theme parks both in America and in China as well as in the New Forest,

    And a business that is worth at least £6bn to this country, £6bn and counting.

    I think that it is pure genius, don’t you?

    No government in the world, no Whitehall civil servant in the world, could conceivably have come up with Peppa.

    So my final message to you.

    As we stand on the brink of this green industrial revolution.

    As we prepare to use our new regulatory freedoms in what I believe will be a very strong post-Covid rebound.

    We are blessed,

    We are blessed not just with capital markets and the world’s best universities and incredible pools of liquidity in London, the right time zone and the right language and opportunity across the whole country,

    We are also blessed with the amazing inventive power and range of British business.

    And that above all is what fills me with confidence, members of the CBI, for the days ahead.

    Thank you very much for your kind attention this morning, thank you.

     

  • Cherilyn Mackrory – 2021 Speech on Glue Traps

    Cherilyn Mackrory – 2021 Speech on Glue Traps

    The speech made by Cherilyn Mackrory, the Conservative MP for Truro and Falmouth, in the House of Commons on 19 November 2021.

    I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

    First and foremost, I pay tribute to my good and hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson), who has put in a huge amount of hard work to bring this private Member’s Bill forward, and is hugely disappointed that she cannot be here today due to illness. I am sure that everybody in the Chamber will wish her the very best, and I know that she is watching proceedings as we speak. She would like to thank the team at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the House Clerks and all the animal welfare organisations that have helped her to bring the Bill to this stage.

    Perhaps it would help if I started by explaining why I consider it to be crucial to ban the use of glue traps to catch rodents in all but the most exceptional circumstances. For those who do not know, these primitive traps are exactly what they sound like, and the way in which they are often used is every bit as barbaric as Members might imagine. Glue traps are cardboard or plastic boards with non-drying glue applied to them, and are set to catch rodents that walk across them. To quote the British Veterinary Association, animals caught in these traps can suffer from

    “torn skin, broken limbs and hair removal and die a slow and painful death from suffocation, starvation, exhaustion and even self–mutilation.”

    In modern Britain—a country that seeks to achieve the highest animal welfare standards in the world—we simply cannot allow these traps to be used in everyday life anymore. If countries such as New Zealand and Ireland can restrict these traps without any demonstrable impact on rodent control, I can see no reason why we cannot follow suit in England.

    Hundreds of thousands of glue traps are sold every year in the UK, with many users unaware of how to deal with the animals that they may catch. Like many organisations, Humane Society International has worked hard to raise awareness about the harm that glue traps can cause. A survey that it conducted in 2015 unearthed some truly upsetting information.

    Just 20% of the people surveyed would recommend killing a trapped animal using the method advised by the professional pest control industry—a manner that is regarded as humane by experts. Some 15% said that they would recommend drowning an animal, throwing it away alive or just leaving it to die in such a trap. All these are inhumane and could be considered an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. More than two thirds, or 68%, of respondents agreed that glue traps should be banned.

    People who have used glue traps have shared their experiences online and say things such as:

    “Please don’t use glue traps. I naively didn’t think what they would entail when our next door neighbour had a rat and when we put a glue trap a small mouse got caught and I cried for hours because it was so horrific. It was dying slowly and all its limbs were broken. I gave it some water and food and my husband had to end its life because it was obviously in so much pain.”

    Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)

    My hon. Friend is outlining the reasoning behind the Bill and the horrific deaths that these poor creatures can endure. Will she explain why the Bill refers only to rodents and not some of the other small wild animals that can be affected and hurt dreadfully?

    Cherilyn Mackrory

    Glue traps are generally bought to be put down for rodents, so we can legislate for that. They are often used to catch other animals—and other animals can be caught unintentionally—but they are not necessarily put down for that purpose. Legislation is already in place—I cannot quite remember, because it is not my Bill, but it is either the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981—to protect wild birds, but the Bill will go one step further to protect all animals, not just rodents, albeit that we can only really legislate for that.

    Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)

    A housing estate in my constituency has plagues of rats—so much so that I have seen them going round on the fencing and into people’s houses where their young children are trying to play. What is my hon. Friend’s view about rats?

    Cherilyn Mackrory

    Where do I start? That is a horrendous problem; once such problems get out of hand they can be extremely difficult to get under control. I hope my hon. friend will forgive me if I make some progress; perhaps he will hear how we can tackle such things later in my speech. In short, though, in all these circumstances prevention is better than cure, and alternative methods can be used to help with situations such as the one he described.

    Let me return to the experiences we have read about online. Another lady said that her husband

    “found three mice last winter stuck to”—

    a glue trap—

    “and told me never ever again to use it. He said they had started to bite their legs off to get free.”

    I must make a confession. When I discovered that I had to step into the breach for my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East, my mind went back to when I lived across the river in Kennington 20 years ago. We were on the third floor of an old house that had been made into flats and we had a mouse problem. I was quite squeamish—I still am, to a certain extent—so my housemate decided that he would take care of it and put down one of these glue traps. The next morning, I got up for work early—much earlier than him—and saw a mouse in the trap. It was horrible: it was twitching and had not quite died but I could not bring myself to do anything. I feel so guilty, but I am not the sort of person who could just plonk an animal on the head, so I had to wake him up and ask him to deal with it. So I have seen this with my own eyes and it is just horrible. Nobody would do this on purpose to a cat, dog or any other living creature; I do not know why we think it is acceptable for animals by which we are repulsed, such as rats or mice. We really need to do better.

    The examples I have given are far from exhaustive. Glue traps also pose a risk to other animals—as mentioned, wild birds, hedgehogs and cats have all been caught on glue traps, often fatally. Those are just some of the incidents that have been reported to the RSPCA, which has seen hundreds of cases over recent years—and those are just the tip of the iceberg. Some Members may remember the harrowing story of Miles, a black and white cat who was found in an alleyway in north London last year with four glue traps stuck to him. Miles was scared, in extreme pain, and suffering with such horrific injuries that unfortunately he had to be put to sleep.

    Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)

    I thank my hon. Friend for filling in for my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson). How can she be sure that the proposed restrictions on the use of glue traps will not lead to problems with rodent control?

    Cherilyn Mackrory

    As I said earlier, many alternatives can be used. For example, similar legislation was introduced in New Zealand some time ago. The Bill would introduce a licensing scheme, to which I will refer later; in New Zealand, with its population, the number of licences and instances of use is still in single figures and we are not aware of an overwhelming rodent problem in New Zealand. The industry has moved on. It is about managing problems in a better way, similar to how pest-control professionals use chemicals and such like.

    James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)

    I commend my hon. Friend for stepping into the breach because of the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson). She makes a persuasive case about the unpalatable nature of this treatment. Does she have a view on the overall effectiveness of glue traps in the totality of pest control? Does she think that, by banning these awful things, there will be a negative effect on our ability to control rodent populations?

    Cherilyn Mackrory

    As I alluded to earlier, that does not seem to be the case because of the alternatives already available to the industry and the examples that we see in other countries.

    What can people use instead? As always, prevention is better than cure, and effective rodent-proofing is always the best solution. However, when the problem has already been identified and got out of hand, people can consider live capture and release, which is much more humane, and lethal options such as the good old-fashioned snap traps from “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, which are designed to kill instantly. Although that might be horrific, it is a better, quicker and more humane death for the rodents. Many businesses already stock those alternative traps, and an increasing number of people are refusing to stock glue traps, already believing them to be inhumane and entirely unsuitable for amateurs.

    The Bill, as we see in clause 1, would make it an offence to set a glue trap for the purpose of catching a rodent or in a manner that gives rise to a risk that a rodent could become caught in it. That would also prevent such traps being used where they pose a risk to other animals. The maximum sentence of six months in prison and/or an unlimited fine is consistent with sentences for similar trapping offences in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

    In exceptional circumstances, the use of glue traps by professional pest controllers may unfortunately still be necessary. Glue traps may capture rodents more quickly than other methods, so they could still be needed when a rapid capture is required for reasons of public health or safety, such as in the cockpit of a jumbo jet before it is due to take off or if there was a risk of a fire in a hospital. If rodents have got in and are gnawing wires where other types of traps cannot be placed and we think that public safety is at real risk, glue traps might need to be used. To cover such eventualities, clause 2 sets out the provisions for a licensing regime that will allow the Secretary of State to authorise a pest controller to use a glue trap to catch a rodent if that is needed to preserve public health or safety and—this is key—no other satisfactory solution is available. Such situations are expected to be very rare, as I mentioned in the New Zealand example. A licensing regime has the benefit of allowing strict conditions to be imposed on the use of said glue traps, such as the frequency of checking traps, to minimise any detrimental impacts on animal welfare. That is key. If such traps must be laid, a qualified pest controller would be on hand to put the poor thing out of its misery, should it get trapped.

    Clause 2 would allow the Secretary of State to delegate the licensing functions to any competent public authority. That is currently expected to be Natural England, which is already responsible for administering other licences relating to wildlife. Provision is made to charge fees for licence applications to enable the recovery of costs for processing applications and monitoring for compliance.

    The Bill would grant enforcement powers to police constables and, in clause 5, to authorised inspectors. Inspectors would be authorised by the Secretary of State and are expected to be employed by the licensing body. Authorised inspectors would have the powers to inspect pest control businesses authorised to use glue traps under licence to ensure that those licence conditions were being complied with.

    Clause 10 would allow for the Bill’s provisions to be commenced by regulations made by the Secretary of State. The expectation is that offences in clause 1 will be commenced two years after Royal Assent. That will allow the users of glue traps ample time for any transition to other legal methods of rodent control that are already available. It will also give sufficient time to put a suitable licensing regime in place, in consultation with the pest control industry and other stakeholders. Regulations relating to the licensing regime may be commenced prior to the two years to allow the said licensing regime to be in place before the offences in clause 1 are applicable. As wildlife management is a devolved matter, the Bill applies only to England. I am aware, however, that the Welsh and Scottish Governments have indicated an interest in legislating to restrict the use of glue traps.

    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) for promoting the Bill, and she would like to thank everybody who has been involved—I will probably miss some names out, so forgive me—including Animal Aid, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Humane Society International, the British Veterinary Association and many more, not least the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.

    It is often said that we are a nation of animal lovers, and I believe that we are. All Members will recognise the truth of that through the correspondence that we receive from our constituents on animal welfare matters. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) and I have been on the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill Committee this week; this issue is very emotive and we always strive to do the best that we can on a cross-party basis. We must take this opportunity, therefore, to continue to raise the bar on animal welfare in this country and ban the use of glue traps in all but the most exceptional circumstances. I urge all hon. Members to support the Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East in its smooth passage through the House and on to the statute book.

    Several hon. Members rose—

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)

    Do you not wish to speak, too, Ms Marson? Oh, sorry—I call Dr Ben Spencer.

    Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I was worried I was in a bit of trouble there.

    Madam Deputy Speaker

    Even though it is a Friday, for the avoidance of doubt—as there seems to be some confusion—if hon. Members wish to speak, they should stand up; that means, “I wish to speak”. If they do not stand up, that means that they do not wish to speak and they will not be called. Let us get that absolutely straight.

    Dr Spencer

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) on her powerful speech about glue traps and particularly on her confession about having used them. I rise to make the same confession: I have used glue traps and I deeply regret doing so. Although they look very good in terms of their effectiveness and getting rid of vermin, I had to deal with the consequences of trapping a mouse using glue traps. I had to dispatch it to put it out of its suffering when it was caught in the glue trap, and it is exactly as she said: it is a very brutal and horrid form of vermin control and it is absolutely right that we are introducing a Bill to get rid of them.

    As for our personal vermin control in my household, I have a Frazzle—a ginger rescue cat who is the No. 1 enemy of vermin in my local area. If anything, Frazzle is too effective at vermin control, because every day he brings us gifts of the vermin that he has got rid of locally.

    It is clear that other methods can be used that are not as cruel. An important point is that although we all recognise the very negative impact of mice and rats as carriers of disease, all the damage that they cause and the fact that we need to keep them under control, they are sentient creatures who can feel pain. They have the neurological structures in their brains that mean they can experience suffering. They are not stupid creatures and it is correct that we bring forward measures to control them in the most humane way possible. Banning glue traps is absolutely appropriate in order to drive that forward and I commend my hon. Friend for introducing the Bill today.

    Several hon. Members rose—

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)

    I call Julie Marson.

    Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)

    It is a pleasure to rise to support the Bill prepared by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson). Her commitment to animals and their welfare is absolutely not in doubt, and I congratulate her on the Bill. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) on introducing it so brilliantly; she did our colleague proud. I am pleased to support both colleagues.

    My mother—I hope she is not watching—has an almost cartoon-like reaction to rodents of any description. She would leap on to any elevated surface—a chair or whatever—to avoid them and would be absolutely panicked. I recall from when my son was younger a film called “Ratatouille”, which was a brave attempt to rehabilitate and rebrand rats in kitchens. That did not quite wash with me, and I am sure it did not with other people.

    However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth said, we are a nation of animal lovers; it sounds clichéd, but we are, and we should be proud of that aspect of our national character. I listened to her with horror. I have not seen one of these traps in action—following this debate, I hope I never will—but I certainly would not want to see animals suffering in the way that she described.

    I think this all comes down to humanity. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) raised an important point about circumstances where rodents need to be controlled, which can be horrific for people. Clause 2 plays into that very clearly; if something is potentially so inhumane in the wrong hands, we should give it to a professional to deal with it properly in order to reduce the risk of really inhumane consequences, even though there might be circumstances in which they can be justified, while there are other options that are more appropriate in less trained hands.

    That is the important distinction that the Bill makes. If something is humane, I could use it. If the general public do not have to be trained in it and do not need to mind the consequences of what they are doing, they can handle it. However, if its potential consequences, not just for rodents but for other animals—birds, small mammals and pets such as cats—are so catastrophic and upsetting, then we should leave it to a professional to use it in very prescribed and definite circumstances. That is an issue that the Bill addresses effectively.

    There is no hierarchy of animals and whether they should suffer. Even those of us who eat meat—I am a meat eater—do not want animals that are slaughtered for that purpose to be treated in an inhumane way. That is the important principle in legislation and in what this Bill is trying to achieve. Let me give an example. For those of us who supported Brexit, one of its important features was that, as a nation and as a Government, we could stop cruel, long and unregulated animal exports because of the inhumanity involved. I remember seeing pictures of the carnage of 50 dead sheep at Ramsgate port a few years ago, and I remember the passions that that cruelty raised in people. As I say, there is no hierarchy of suffering for animals; where we see it, we should address it.

    That is what this Government are trying to achieve; that is our direction of travel. We have put restrictions on imports from the ivory trade, on trophy hunting and on primates as pets. We have the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill and, in the Ministry of Justice, we have the pet theft amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. That all plays into a very welcome direction of travel, which I think most of us across the House want to see, on humanity to all creatures.

    I think I have reached the end of my comments. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth for introducing the Bill so brilliantly, and I am pleased to support it.

    Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)

    I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) on the Bill, and wish her a speedy recovery. May I add that the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) did an excellent job in opening the debate?

    Although Labour Members have some reservations about the scope of the Bill, which I shall come to later, it is definitely a big step in the right direction. The proposal to ban glue traps is backed by an overwhelming number of people and organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Royal Humane Society and the British Veterinary Association, and earlier this year more than 40,000 people signed a petition asking for a ban. Ending this inhumane practice also featured in Labour’s animal welfare manifesto. It is good to see that greater regulation is now supported in all parts of the House, including on the Government Front Bench.

    Glue traps are clearly cruel and inhumane. I was shocked to read the report from the RSPCA that in just four years it had received 236 call-outs to animals caught in these traps, and that many suffered long drawn-out deaths owing to the horrific injuries that they sustained in trying to escape—as described by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth—or simply from hunger, stress, dehydration, exhaustion, or suffocation. That is not humanity in any form, and it is a horrible way for an animal to die. The traps are also indiscriminate, affecting not only rodents but all small vertebrates. Again, some of the stories are quite shocking, with kittens, hedgehogs, squirrels and even parrots and snakes becoming trapped and killed or seriously injured.

    I should also point out that glue traps are not the only cruel and indiscriminate form of trap in use. We have just finished the Committee stage of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, and it was disappointing to see the Government vote against a ban on the use of snares in areas where kept animals could become trapped. I hope that the consultation on snares about which we heard in Committee will bring their thinking more into line with their approach to glue traps. Labour certainly believes that snares should also be banned.

    As I said at the outset, the Bill is a step forward, but there remain some issues which I hope can be resolved as it proceeds further. The first is its limited scope. I pointed out earlier that rodents are not the only animals affected by the traps, and while I take on board what was said by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth, we feel that the language is rather too exclusive. We hope that that can be rectified in Committee. Secondly, I know that many organisations have expressed concerns about the licensing arrangements described in the Bill. Those concerns are well founded, certainly in so far as they relate to who licences might be issued to and what kind of training those people would need to possess a licence. The Bill could be strengthened with far clearer language on both those issues.

    Finally, we should revisit any training required of licence holders, given the guidance issued by the industry. Currently, the British Pest Control Association recommends that traps should be visited within 12 hours, but it seems to me that that allows plenty of time for animals to do harm to themselves as they try to escape: 12 hours is an incredibly long time for suffering to continue. It is hard to envisage a feasible, economic way of using these traps humanely without having to return to them frequently over short periods. For that reason, an outright ban seems more feasible than a licensing regime, and I do wonder why that was not considered by the Member for Wolverhampton North East. The Bill is extremely welcome as a stepping stone towards a further reduction in the use of glue traps, but a ban would be in line with the view of the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission, which has said that

    “there is no way that glue traps can be used without causing animal suffering.”

    The commission recommends an immediate outright ban, which is what our animal welfare manifesto calls for.

    The Opposition welcome the Bill, which brings Government Members into closer alignment with our thinking on the use of traps. They are not quite there yet, either on glue traps or on other traps such as snares, but I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East on introducing the Bill. If it receives support today, we will wish it well through its remaining stages.

    Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)

    When I was preparing for this debate, my mind was drawn to the question of how long we, as a community, have been considering our responsibilities for and relationship with the animal kingdom. I thought of Genesis 1:26:

    “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

    Genesis is traditionally attributed to Moses, who lived at roughly 1,200 BC, but modern scholarship suggests that it is slightly more modern, from about the 6th century BC. Either way, we have been considering our relationship with the animal kingdom for at least 2,500 years. During that time, public attitudes towards our relationship with animals have developed enormously, although perhaps not so much in the first 2,000 years; right hon. and hon. Members will recall that man traps with teeth were outlawed only in 1827. I wonder what the devout members of our community would have thought of the Bill if we had introduced it in 1826. As a matter of passing interest, man traps were not outlawed in their entirety until 1861, which was not actually that long ago.

    I am very pleased to say that public attitudes towards animal suffering—and human suffering, for that matter—have developed over the past 150 years or so. Section 8 of the Pests Act 1954 introduced restrictions on trapping animals, including restrictions on non-approved spring traps, albeit with an exception for

    “rats, mice or other small ground vermin.”

    The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 included further prohibitions on cruelty to animals. It focused particularly on traps and snares, whose use was controlled but not outlawed entirely; from memory, there were exceptions for agriculture and public health. A wider, more all-encompassing approach to our relationship with animals was taken in the Animal Welfare Act 2006. As hon. Members will recall, it created a wider offence of allowing or causing unnecessary suffering to any animal—including trapped animals, of course.

    The underlying factor in all that legislation was an increasing concern, reflected in the views of the public, about suffering—particularly the suffering, over time, of animals that might need to be controlled for public health or other reasons. Public attitudes have changed, so I think it is right to consider the prohibition of glue traps for vermin. They do not cause a quick death; the animal is just stuck. It is not like fly paper; these are intelligent animals, as hon. Members have said, and they are physiologically capable of suffering.

    The British Veterinary Association has expressed concerns about how animals caught in glue traps die. It notes that they

    “can suffer from…torn skin, broken limbs and hair removal and die a slow and painful death from suffocation, starvation, exhaustion and even self-mutilation.”

    Should we really allow that kind of animal control in the society that we have the honour to represent? The RSPCA has received about 200 reports of non-target species being caught, often fatally, in just the past five years. That includes birds and hedgehogs, as well as people’s pet cats.

    Glue traps are an important issue that we need to address. I welcome the action that the Bill proposes to control their use, but we have to recognise that rodents equate to a significant public health risk. In large numbers, they can breed incredibly quickly.

    Members may have been amazed by television footage from Australia from about a month ago that showed an absolute explosion in numbers of, I think, mice. I am pleased to say that we do not suffer from such plagues in this country, but it highlights the need for ongoing control of rodent numbers. We need to retain an effective range of measures to control our rodent populations.

    I welcome the licensing regime element of the Bill—I vary in that view from Opposition Members—because there are certain circumstances, perhaps in an operating theatre, where the public health imperative is so overwhelming that we need to accept such measures. They should be licensed, however, and operated by pest control professionals.

    Although I am concerned that we retain effective and quick measures when other systems are not available, it is crucial to maintain regular monitoring and follow up by humane dispatch or killing of the rodents that are caught in glue traps, as is already addressed in the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Originally, when I read this Bill, I was concerned that there was an omission, but on reflection I think that the 2006 Act encompasses that.

    I have one concern with clause 1(5), which I wonder if the Minister will consider in her response. It proposes creating an offence if a passer-by sees a glue trap and does not take effective action to remove it and make it harmless. I am deeply concerned that we are at risk of criminalising passers-by who may, or in fact are very likely, not to have any idea of the legislative status of a glue trap, particularly as it could be legal in some circumstances under the terms of the Bill.

    What steps does a passer-by have to take to satisfy him or herself that the glue trap that they have seen is one that potentially exposes them to criminal liability if they do not take steps to make it harmless? That is a recipe for chaos if a pest control professional has spent time, effort and money properly laying a glue trap in legal circumstances, only for the good samaritan to throw themselves on the glue trap to prevent their own criminal responsibility. We need to perfect that area at a later stage of consideration.

    With that exception, I support the Bill. It shows that we are listening to the changing attitudes of our society and are being responsive as legislators.

    Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)

    It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew). His last point was very important, and I hope it will be taken on board by the promoter of the Bill. I wish my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) well and I hope that she is soon back in her place in this House.

    In my many years of assiduously attending Fridays, I have seen some extraordinary Bill titles, but this is the first time that we have had what is essentially a rat protection Bill. It is difficult to explain to our constituents that we need to protect rats through legislation. Rats carry disease, particularly Weil’s disease which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) will know, is a bacterial infection also known as leptospirosis. It is carried most commonly in rats and can be caught by humans by being in contact with rat urine or faeces. There are a significant number of cases of Weil’s disease in our country every year.

    We know that rats breed incredibly rapidly, and reference was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland to that. The figures are that brown rats can have 2,000 babies in a single year. It is commonplace to have 22 in a single litter. For that reason, we should take very seriously what seems to me to be growing evidence of a plague of rats across large parts of our country. In my constituency, there has been what I regard as inappropriate housing development on former forest and heath. What has happened in many respects is that the rats that were living there naturally beforehand have taken over the new area that has been built and are creating mayhem for residents.

    Why are we bringing forward legislation that is effectively designed to try to make people think of rats as friends rather than enemies? They are enemies to our public health. If we are going to wait for two years before we introduce these constraints and the regulations set out in the Bill, what will be the test as to whether things have improved in that period?

    Cherilyn Mackrory

    I appreciate the points that my hon. Friend is making, but I want to clarify a point before he carries on down that road. The Bill is absolutely not to protect rats; I certainly would not support a Bill that protects a rat population. If there are rat populations in his area, as he suggests, perhaps the banning of glue traps will not make any difference to that, because they are not making any difference to that at the moment. There are other methods in circulation that are more effective and more cost-effective. If there is a problem such as the one that he describes, a licensed pest controller can be brought in to deal with it forthwith.

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    The statement made by Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, on 16 November 2021.

    Presiding Officer, on Saturday, COP26 concluded with 197 countries endorsing the Glasgow Climate Pact.

    Today, I will report on the Scottish Government’s activities during COP and offer our preliminary view on the agreement.

    Firstly though, I want to record my gratitude to all those who ensured that the hosting of the summit was a success.

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    And, in partnership with UN Women, we launched the Glasgow Women’s Leadership Statement on gender equality and climate change.

    I was joined for the launch by the leaders of Bangladesh, Tanzania and Estonia, and the statement has now been signed by more than 20 countries.

    We also endorsed the UNICEF declaration on children, youth and climate action.

    Second, we worked hard to ensure that cities, states, regions and devolved governments played our part in securing progress.

    Scotland is currently co-chair of the Under2 Coalition, which held its General Assembly during COP.

    More than 200 state, regional and devolved governments are now members of the Coalition.

    Collectively, we represent almost 2 billion people and account for half of global GDP.

    In the run up to COP, the Coalition launched a new memorandum of understanding, committing members to reach net zero by 2050 at the latest. 28 governments have already signed up and we are encouraging others to do so.

    Finally, more than 200 cities and states have now signed up to the Edinburgh declaration on biodiversity. That represents welcome progress as we look ahead to the biodiversity COP next year.

    Our third objective was to use COP to challenge ourselves to go further and faster in our own journey to net zero.

    That is why I chose – as my first engagement at COP – to meet with climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg.

    It is also why we moved away from our previous commitment to maximum economic recovery of oil and gas and embarked on discussions with the new Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.

    We also published additional detail on our policy ambitions for onshore and offshore wind, and launched a new Hydrogen strategy, and a £55 million Nature Restoration Fund.

    We published a new planning framework with climate action at its heart.

    And we promoted our Green Investment portfolio to a range of businesses and investors.

    We also launched the Blue Carbon International Policy Challenge; supported international agreements on low carbon transportation and reducing agricultural emissions; and signed new Memorandums of Understanding on heat with Denmark, and on peatlands with Chile. A full list of these initiatives will be placed in SPICE later this week.

    Of course, our most important objective was to use our engagement, influence and interaction to push for an international agreement that would live up to the urgency of the climate emergency.

    We wanted to see action to limit global warning to 1.5°C – and, as a minimum, a tangible mechanism to keep 1.5 alive.

    We wanted the $100 billion of finance, promised by the global north to developing nations 12 years ago, to be delivered.

    And we wanted to see the developed world recognise its obligation to help developing countries pay for loss and damage they are already suffering as a result of the climate change they have done so little to cause.

    The Glasgow Climate Pact represents progress on many of these issues – but it must be built on quickly if climate catastrophe is to be avoided.

    It is important that the necessity of capping temperature increases at 1.5 degrees is no longer questioned.

    However, the world is still on a path to temperature increases of well over 2 degrees – a death sentence for many parts of the world. To keep 1.5 degrees in reach, global emissions must be almost halved by the end of this decade.

    So the requirement for countries to come back next year with substantially increased nationally determined contributions is vital.

    Finance is crucial to faster progress.

    I welcome the aim of doubling finance for adaptation by 2025, and the commitment to a longer term finance goal.

    But it is shameful that the developed world could not deliver the $100bn of funding promised in 2009, by the 2020 deadline – or even by 2021.

    This COP also delivered significant commitments on methane and deforestation. And for the first time – albeit in language watered down in the final moments – a COP cover text has agreed the need to move away from fossil fuels.

    In the run up to COP – and as a result of what we heard during the Glasgow Climate Dialogues – the Scottish Government decided to champion the issue of loss and damage.

    Two weeks ago we became the first developed country in the world to make a commitment to support countries experiencing loss and damage. I’m delighted that our commitment has since been supplemented by Wallonia, and by a contribution from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

    The final position agreed at Glasgow represents progress in recognising the loss and damage that the climate crisis created by developed nations, is already causing in developing nations – but it does not go nearly far enough.

    I particularly regret the decision by some developed nations to block the establishment of a Glasgow Financial Facility on Loss and Damage.

    Over the weekend I met with Dr Saleemul Huq, one of the leading campaigners on this issue. I have pledged that the Scottish Government will continue to work with him and others to build the case on loss and damage ahead of COP27 in Egypt.

    Loss and damage was an example of Scotland’s leadership during this COP.

    But ultimately Scotland can only lead and speak with credibility, if we deliver our own net zero targets.

    As I reflect on the past two weeks, I feel pride in the leadership that Scotland has shown and been recognised for.

    However, I also feel a renewed sense of responsibility to go further and faster, to face up to tough challenges as well as the relatively easy options, and to help raise the bar of world leadership more generally.

    And so our focus in the months and years ahead will be firmly on delivery.

    This decade will be the most important in human history.

    The actions we take between now and 2030 will determine whether or not we bequeath a sustainable and habitable planet to those who come after us.

    The stakes could not be higher – and so I understand why many are angry and frustrated that more progress was not made in Glasgow.

    However the Glasgow Climate Pact does provide a basis for further action. The key test will be whether it is implemented fully and with urgency.

    That is what all of us must focus our efforts on between now and COP27.

    Scotland will continue to play our full part.

    While we can be proud of the part we played at COP26, our responsibility now is to ensure that future generations will look back and be proud of the actions we take in the months and years ahead.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2021 Comments on TFL Funding

    Sadiq Khan – 2021 Comments on TFL Funding

    The comments made by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, on 19 November 2021.

    Transport for London is dealing with an unprecedented financial crisis caused by the pandemic. We are now less than a month away from TfL’s emergency funding deal expiring on 11 December. Unless the Government provides the long-term funding needed to maintain our public transport network, there will be no choice but to make significant cuts to services just as demand is growing again.

    This would mean fewer, less frequent and more run-down bus and tube services for Londoners, making it more difficult to travel around the city. It would also mean more road and tunnel closures due to a lack of funding to maintain key transport infrastructure. The widespread disruption and gridlock all these changes would cause would not only unfairly punish millions of Londoners for the impact of the pandemic on TfL’s finances, but would put the national economic recovery at risk.

    I support greater transport investment in regions across the country, but levelling up Britain must not come at the expense of levelling down London. There can be no London recovery without a properly funded public transport network in the capital, and there can be no national recovery without a London recovery. Our city contributes £36.1bn net to the Treasury each year. TfL contracts contribute around £7bn to the UK economy, and its supply chain supports 43,000 jobs around the country, which could be at risk.

    If the Government fails to work with us to protect London’s transport network, the capital and the whole country will pay the price for decades to come.

  • Anneliese Dodds – 2021 Comments on Hate Crimes

    Anneliese Dodds – 2021 Comments on Hate Crimes

    The comments made by Anneliese Dodds, the Chair of the Labour Party, on 19 November 2021.

    It is totally unacceptable that police recorded hate crimes against LGBT+ people have doubled in the last five years. That’s why, on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, Labour is committing to do something to stop it.

    All victims of hate crime have a right to expect equal treatment under the law, but that’s not the case today. So Labour will fix this injustice by bringing in tougher, fairer hate crime laws so that every category of hate crime is treated as an aggravated offence – and those who commit hate crimes against LGBT+ and disabled people can no longer get away with softer sentences.

    The Conservatives could have done this years ago, but they’ve sat on their hands as usual. There is little wonder that former members of their now defunct LGBT advisory panel have accused ministers of creating a hostile environment for LGBT people.

    Labour recognises that trans rights are human rights. So we would update the Gender Recognition Act to enable a process of self-identification while continuing to support the implementation of the Equality Act, including the single sex exemption. We would ban conversion therapies outright immediately. And we would introduce these vital changes to hate crime laws that we’re announcing today.

    Equalising hate crime laws is just one way in which Labour would seek to end the Conservatives’ epidemic of violence on our streets. We have set out a wide range of proposals in our Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Green Paper, including sweeping reforms to sentencing and protections for women and girls and treating misogyny as a hate crime.

    The Conservative Government is failing our communities on every front. Only Labour has a plan to make them safer.