Member

This is in total contradiction to the Minister’s arguments for the measure in the Commons. For reasons the Minister in this House knows, our ETS is incompatible with the European ETS and will need renegotiating and redrafting, along with reconsideration of the future of CBAM. Accordingly, the step we are taking today is a costly, unnecessary, short-term blight on the people of Northern Ireland in particular, who are being asked to pay the additional carbon taxes from 1 July and then will be asked again, when the negotiations—which we now know are under way—take place. I understand that the Secretary of State reached for his phone, as the noble Baroness said, and spoke to some key politicians involved two weekends ago, saying that not to support the measure would jeopardise the much wider negotiations with the European Union, without giving any details and absolutely out of scope with what happened in the House of Commons.