Lord Deben:

Of course Brexit is a terrible mistake. It is quite wrong. I have done everything I can to stop it and I will go on doing that. I want to make it quite clear where I stand on this matter. It is barmy and it is run by barmy people. It is not easy to operate when we are trying to deal with that.

It happens to be true that our legislation is in fact British or United Kingdom legislation. That climate change legislation is in place and we will continue along those lines. What Brexit makes difficult is that so many of the protections for the environment as a whole are thrown into doubt. All manner of promises have been given by the UK Government about what it will do and so on, but they are not in place now. I believe that the insight of the Pope in Laudato si'is singularly important. He talks about climate change as a symptom of what we have done to the world. I always look at it in those terms. The rest of the environment is important for fighting the battle about climate change. We should not think of it as a box on its own. We are concerned about the other areas of environmental protection that are guaranteed under European law. The UK Government has said all these will be taken into account and will be brought in and so on, but we do not actually have that legislation and such legislation as we have does not have money in it. I am basically a practical man in that I like to know where the money is coming from, and I do not see much of that at the moment.