Conor Burns said he had been fighting back in his first two weeks at the Department for International Trade against plans ‘to push net-zero and the environment to the top of every single trade agreement as a sort of policy objective’.

A Tory minister has said that he’s been working hard behind the scenes to downgrade the environment as a feature in trade deals.

Politico has reported that Conor Burns, the MP for Bournemouth West, said he had been fighting back in his first two weeks at the Department for International Trade against plans ‘to push net-zero and the environment to the top of every single trade agreement as a sort of policy objective’.

Burns justified his argument on the basis that making climate change a priority in all trade deals would mean asking other countries to settle for a lower standard of living than that enjoyed in the West.

He went on to add that he profoundly agreed with Liz Truss’s view that countries have “an absolutely legitimate ambition to share an objective of getting to the quality of life, the standard of living that we enjoyed in the West.”

It comes after environmentalists condemned the prime minister for her speech at Tory party conference where she made only one mention of climate change, despite extreme weather events causing devastation in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as record breaking temperatures in the UK this summer.

Truss has also given the job of coordinating climate policy to Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man with a history of climate denial who continues to decry “climate alarmism”. Other members of the new government include the likes of Steve Baker, a critic of the government’s net-zero strategy and founder of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which has opposed many net zero policies.

Clearly tackling the climate emergency isn’t high on the priority of the current government.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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