Rachael Maskell

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. The national emergency, coupled with the national security assessment, makes it absolutely clear that the political landscape has to change locally, nationally and internationally. We need to change the geopolitical processes and fora through which these issues are discussed and acted on. Their insufficiency in the face of the emergency of our time dictates that we do that. Every conversation, policy and action must be oriented towards saving our planet. The scale and pace of collapse mean that we have no choice, but we do have an opportunity if we can pull our country and our communities together and focus on our consumption—we consume the equivalent of 1.6 planets. We must also pull the nations together. We all live on this fragile planet, which is disintegrating before our eyes. This is an opportunity to reset the clock and get global and environmental stability. All nations much work together to save planet Earth. We are already seeing how intolerable it is, not least in the global south. It is coming our way too, so we cannot prevaricate, as we have over decades in the political space. We must now convene and act to stop the multifaceted risks we are seeing before our eyes, ensure that we stick to the Paris climate commitments and move faster. The disintegration and collapse of this planet is getting out of control. Will the Minister convene her colleagues for a new opportunity for geopolitical stability and, hopefully, save our planet?