Speeches by Gardiner.

“Thank you; that would be really helpful. Let me come back to DSI and Dr Lockhart. What has been preventing pharmaceutical and food production companies from helping indigenous peoples in the Amazon or in the Congo?”

“Minister, I understand your position. You have given me a statement of what is happening and the current state of play. I think we all recognise that we need to properly protect marine protected areas, and that we are not protecting them by dragging a trawl net across the bottom of these areas. It is like going into a …”

“In 2022, there was an announcement about a GCSE in natural history.”

“It is also about effective enforcement.”

“It is a nightmare.”

“But not over all the MPAs. Only part of the MPAs is currently covered.”

“Sounds like a bid for a department for sustainable development, Minister; how wonderful that would be! I wanted to pick up on what you said to the Chair at the beginning when you were talking about the task force on climate-related financial disclosures—the TCFD. You said you wanted to see the taskforce on nature-relat…”

“Can I follow up on the 30 by 30 strategy that Mr Hinchliff referred to? I recently tabled some written questions about the MMO looking at our MPAs, and asked when stages 3 and 4 would be completed, looking at bottom trawling and dredging in those areas. The response I got back said that you could not give me a timefram…”

“Minister Hardy.”

“Which Government, then, is going to say, “We now have something from Cali that says that we should contribute 1% of our profits, or 0.1% of our revenues, to the Cali Fund. We are going to push our pharmaceutical and food production companies to do that, which means they will be at a competitive disadvantage to another …”

“May I say that I hugely recognise the amazing work that went in to get us as far as we have got? I am not trying to undermine that in any way; I am just pointing out that we have a heck of a lot of problems still in here, and this is far from yet being a success.”

“Can I push back on that? The burden of proof is not on the companies to show that they did not use DSI material; under the Cali declaration and in the Cali Fund, it is on anybody who wants to say, “Oi, you used DSI to get this new drug or new process.” It is very difficult for somebody to point the finger at a company …”

“Because people will be listening, IPLC means indigenous peoples and local communities.”

“I have a short final question. A company might choose to say, “We will use the 0.1% of profit rather than the 1% of turnover.” We know from bitter experience that companies are able to use vertical integration to manipulate the profit that they show. Are there any measures to combat that?”

“And where they declare it.”

“If a company wants to say, “We are the first donor to the Cali Fund”, who is saying, “Okay, let’s see what your profit or your turnover actually is, and let’s calculate whether you have made the correct donation into the fund”?”

“It was ready to go, and it got caught in the ring-around in Government then, but surely that is one of the things that an incoming Government can seize—take it up and run with it. It feeds directly into what you were just saying about the need to enhance skills and get people job-ready. Can you have a word with Bridget…”

“The support that it had at the time was very widespread across education institutes, universities, trade unions, local authorities—and, crucially, among young people. They want this. This is something that they really do want to see as a career path, and if we can get that in place, it would be brilliant.”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his statement and, in particular, on the importance he places on the presumption in favour of sustainability and getting the design of developments right. My hon. Friend is a champion for the natural world, and I am aware that he is sympathetic to the need to include biodiv…”

“Can I ask you to focus now on the effects of these changes on the Southern ocean, and specifically on what is happening to the biodiversity in the Southern ocean as a result of that accelerated rate of change?”