Barry Gardiner

“Nafta has been responsible for a race to the bottom in standards across North America, with working conditions declining along with wages.”

“Poor decision making in government; the tragedy of short-term economic thinking; our national housing crisis: these are real 21st Century problems for our country. They are problems that can only be solved by genuinely fearless thinking about our natural environment.”

“Normally I am clear beforehand about which single proposal in a binary choice I am going to vote for.”

“We are patriotic enough to believe there is no good reason why foreign investors from Europe cannot be expected to resolve any disputes fairly through British justice, operating through British courts. And we are European enough to think that our companies can do the same by relying on European courts.”

“Labour's Climate Change Act and our other reforms, including the Green Investment Bank, have been the foundation for the huge growth of Britain's green industries.”

“In order to properly measure the impacts of climate change on our Financial system they must first be identified and disclosed.”

“Pluralism has been the driving fact behind political theory now since the Copernican revolution and the wars of religion that were spawned from it.”

“We have never believed that any potential future benefits from fracking make it acceptable for the government to bulldoze over the concerns of local communities or the very real environmental dangers that can occur as a result of weak safeguards controlling the technical process.”

“The degradation of natural resources such as forests and freshwater has removed much of the resilience that societies formerly enjoyed.”

“The most important thing to understand about Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change agreement is, whilst it undeniably damages the rest of the world, it does most damage to America itself.”

“We must commit to a positive programme of ocean recovery to combat the effects of climate breakdown, and boost our oceans' capacity to tackle climate change.”

“Labour believes that every trade deal should come before parliament for a full debate on the floor of the House of Commons, with a vote at the end of that debate.”

“A Land Valuation Tax is a levy on the value of the land unimproved by buildings or other enhancement. The method is already used by insurance companies each year when they calculate your home insurance premium - they separate the cost of a total rebuild of the property from the value of the land itself.”

“After years of globalisation, disaffected populations have lost confidence that the system is fair.”

“Most trade agreements arise from a desire to liberalise trade - making it easier to sell goods and services into one another's markets. Brexit will not.”

“The Tories must stop focusing on their ideological obsession with a hard Brexit and their internal party divisions and start focusing on what is best for our country and our economy. Their absurd proposal that the U.K. should become the E.U.'s tariff collector is neither practical nor palatable across the Channel.”

“Classical economics values things by seeing how much someone will pay for them. But this is where classical economics is wrong. What it fails to account for are all the 'externalities' - the services people regard as free goods: pollination services, flood protection, climate regulation, soil stabilization, carbon sequestration.”

“If government is so keen to let local people have a veto in stopping wind farms, why does it not allow local people to say no to fracking?”

“Addressing climate change globally promotes health, education and gender equality. Addressing it domestically secures U.K. jobs and sustainable clean economic growth; it protects communities from flooding and the scandal of fuel poverty. It begins to see clean air flow in our cities and schools.”

“A Brexit that works for Britain needs to work for small businesses and must ensure that our future trade deals don't just work for big business.”