Well, friends, thank you for the invitation to speak to you today, and I'm, my apologies for not being with you in person, but I'm delighted to have the opportunity to address you by video. A little bit about me first, I'm the Shadow Food and farming minister as part of the shadow environment team. I've been doing that job for the last 3.5 years.

I'm the Labour Member of Parliament for Cambridge, and I've been in Parliament since 2015. And It should come as no surprise to anybody about the urgency of the situation that we face. I'm sitting here speaking to you from Westminster.

It's sweltering here. We have the fans on and having watched on television the other week, the, the orange smoke from the Canadian wildfires completely covering the the east coast of the United States of America. I frankly don't need any persuading that there is a problem, and I think most people agree with that now.

And certainly the science has been clear for many years. And although, as you would imagine, as the opposition spokesperson, I'm not a huge fan of the current government, I think. It is widely understood across parliament that there is a challenge that we have to face, and of course the the Climate Change Act from many years ago was supported with almost unanimous support across the political parties.

But the problem is, I think, even though we recognise some of those problems, many of us would think. And say that currently we're not doing enough to tackle the problem urgently enough. Now, the Labour Party absolutely recognises that climate change is one of the most important and complex challenges facing governments all around the world.

Frankly, if we don't tackle it now, our children and grandchildren will pay the price, and Keir Starmer has placed winning the battle against the climate crisis front and centre of his policy agenda. Now, I don't want to be partisan today, but I do think it is interesting. That that Rishi Sunak in his 5 key priorities, climate didn't appear in one of those, and I think that's disappointing.

I think it's really important that we all prioritise this issue. So what can we, as a potentially incoming government, and I take nothing for granted, huge things can happen in politics just over a few days. But if, I was to be part of an incoming government, what would we be doing to tackle the problem?

And the question I was asked is, how can that involve you, vets. Now, vets play a really important role. I do a lot of work, particularly with the British Veterinary Association.

And the advice I've always had from you and colleagues in the BVA. I've always found to be very sensible based based on sound research and science and practical advice. And sometimes, but for various reasons, we don't always agree on everything, but I have to say, I take very, very seriously the advice that come to me from the veterinary groups and their professional representatives.

And of course what we're seeing post Brexit, and that's not a subject I'm gonna go into today, but what we have seen is the demand for veterinary services, particularly demand for export health certificates, seems to have risen probably by far more than the number of vets have fallen because of course, we've seen a workforce problem as so many European colleagues have returned back into the EU. So I would say that one of the first things we'll be trying to do is deal with some of these basic issues and negotiating a sensible. Fighter and phytosanitary agreement with our immediate neighbours, and our understanding is that people in the European Union are open to doing that.

There've been a range of difficulties the current government's had, which I would suspect an incoming government, a change of government would have more success with. And I think if we begin to do that and build that closer relationship with our neighbours, we'll begin to rebuild the trust to get success in the kind of global negotiations that are needed to help, particularly other countries, particularly in South America, as they make the steps they need to take. If we're to get all of us to the adaptation and mitigation measures that are going to be needed in the difficult years ahead, because we know that to tackle climate change, we're gonna need major change to our food systems.

Frankly, too much of the nature and biomass loss is being driven. By our current need to keep importing feeds to support our meat sector, for example, now that's, that's gonna go on happening, I fear, but we need to find ways of minimising the damage, and as I'll argue later in this address, by producing more food here at home. Now, beyond the food system, which is my specialism, I would say there are 5 main actions we should be prioritising.

Pressurising the big emitters, supporting the most vulnerable, mobilising major businesses and financial institutions by climate action, protecting nature, and investing and leading by example at home. So on the first, we must keep alive that hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.

As the IPCC, which is the big international organisation, has warned, it really is now or never. So we really need to demand every big emitter delivers on those compliant targets. There can be no free parties anymore.

And frankly, that may mean revisiting trade deals with countries like Australia, because I'm afraid some of those aspirations were diluted. Secondly, every country in the world needs to pull their weight and pull together if we are to achieve our ambitious targets. And that's going to be a particular responsibility for those of us in the developed world, support those who are still developing, not to pursue our carbon dependent model and to take a less damaging route to economic growth.

We need what my colleague Ed Miliband has called a high ambition coalition of vulnerable and developed countries to drive through those commitments. Now the last climate of parties, the last cop. Congress of parties rather, there was considerable discussion around what's termed loss and damage since it's developing countries who will be hit hardest by climate change.

And that means delivering and actually exceeding, I suspect, $100 billion of finance promised the previous COP with the 50/50 split between mitigation and adaptation. And at a time when we need to build trust and solidarity between developed and developing nations, I'm afraid it was disappointing that our own government was cutting our aid budget, because just when many vulnerable countries were trying to tackle both the onslaught of the COVID pandemic and the climate threat, what they saw was a country like ours stepping back, and that can't be the right way to lead. Thirdly, we need to mobilise every major business and financial centre behind the Paris compliance agreements.

We may only be 1% of global emissions, but according to Carbon Tracker, the investments of companies and financial institutions based in the City of London account for approximately 15% of global emissions. Now many of our leading financial institutions and businesses. Have been ahead of government and their efforts are extremely welcome.

But there should be a common standard. So the government should be asking all financial institutions, not just to report on climate risks, as is currently being done, but to bring forward credible transition plans that are consistent with that 1.5 degree pathway.

And that should be extended to all FTSE 100 companies. I think that would make a profound difference. And I think it would help make the UK the green finance capital of the world.

Fourthly, protecting and nurturing nature and biodiversity is essential to the mission of cutting emissions. So we should end deforestation and ensure that all climate mitigation and adaptation is nature positive. And Labour in government would have a net zero and nature test for every policy.

Fifthly, we should put our money where our mouth is. Strategies and plans must be underpinned by investment. Indeed, as the Office for Budget Responsibility has made clear, we can't afford not to invest as delivering our climate targets a decade late doubles the cost.

So we believe that timely climate action is not the right thing for the environment, but the economy. We get to clean power by 2030, we'll have cheaper energy bills and be less reliant on other regimes. So Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has set out a climate investment pledge, which will involve major investments alongside those from the private sector, each and every year over a decade, to create the greener, fairer, more secure secure country we need.

And that's about a national mission. To insulate every home so we can cut bills and carbon emissions, creating the good, well paid jobs in new industries, including offshore wind and helping existing industries like steel to make the climate transition and protect the vital jobs that so many communities rely on. Indeed indeed, Keir Starmer has promised that increased investment in clean energy technologies.

Will be at the heart of Labour's mission to deliver a new industrial strategy, and he is committed to delivering a fully clean power system by 2030. Turning more directly to nature, we do have a global agreement that's been reached to protect at least 30% of the world's land and oceans by 2030. That was agreed at COP 15, a little while ago, the UN's biodiversity summit, and although, frankly, in our view, a little late.

The government in the UK has now set legally binding targets for the environment. An agreement to conserve 30% of the Earth by the end of the decade was actually inspired by the Harvard biologist EO Wilson's vision of protecting half the planet for the long time long term survival of humanity. Frankly, we've got a long way to go in the UK.

In England, only 38% of protected SSI sites of special scientific interests are currently in a healthy condition. And sadly, too much of our ancient woodland, our hay meadows, our peat bogs, our grasslands, our moorlands, our marshes, our floodplains, our chalk streams, our estuaries and stretches of coast are too often plagued by pollutions we've seen in many of the national headlines over the last few months. And the rate of increase in areas of well-protected, well managed wild land in the country comes to a mere 0.22% in any one year.

And sadly indicates that Britain is likely to fall short of that 30% target in eight years' time. And Richard Benwell, who is chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a group of 67 UK organisations with conservation interests, says they are pessimistic and gloomy about the possibility of reaching those targets. Now vast areas of our existing protected land in England, including our national parks, including our areas of outstanding natural beauty as well as those SSIs, are also in a poor state.

And the Office of Environmental Protection has said the government's own proposed PM 2.5 air pollution targets are unambitious and lacks sufficient urgency to reflect the scale of the change that is needed. So that is a litany of the problems that we face.

In my closing comments, I'm going to point to a few of the things that I hope an incoming Labour government might be able to do. Certainly on that last point about, the air quality issues, we've been absolutely committed to introducing a Clean Air Act with stronger targets, including the right to breathe clean air, tougher monitoring, tougher new duties on ministers to make sure that the World Health organisation air targets are met. On the food and land use issues I talked about earlier, we are pledged to introduce a proper national land use framework to deal with some of the very difficult trade-offs that are involved.

No one should underestimate the complexity of this. Try and decide whether land is used for forestry, forestry, whether it's used for nature, whether it's used for the solar, for instance, whether it's used for wind or whether, quite rightly, high grade agricultural land is used to produce food, that has, in our view, to be properly planned and debated in the current planning system. Is not fit to do that task, so we will introduce a different system.

And in terms of that wider food system, we've pledged that we will ensure that at least half of the food bought by public authorities is sourced locally and that we will buy, make and sell more food in our country. Now that has significant consequences. It means more food production here.

And we're gonna be looking to the entire food production workforce, including of course vets to help us make that happen. So that's the problem. Those are some of the ways in which we'll be trying to address them.

I'm sorry I can't be part of your discussion, but I'm sure it will be reported back to me. We need this process to be successful because frankly, the climate and nature challenges are very, very real, very immediate, and I look forward to working with you and your colleagues as we tackle what can only be described as an existential threat.