Said Therese Coffey last Thursday in a session of Topical Questions when she was responding to a question from Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. The total question and the total answer is below and the text can be obtained from here. There is clearly a very disturbing aspect of a Minister for the Government stating this text and yet remaining as a Minister. I was not sure what COP15 was prior to reading this text. However as this link indicates it is the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (Part Two) that is due to take place on 7 – 19 December 2022 – Montreal, Canada.

Caroline Lucas: Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the outstanding statutory deadlines we have spoken about on air, water and so forth will be published before COP15, so that we can lead by example? If she cannot guarantee that, does she agree that that bodes incredibly ill for the deadlines in the utterly misguided and reckless Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill? If we cannot meet these deadlines, how will we meet those?

Therese Coffey: I completely understand why Members of the House are concerned that the Government have not come forward with the secondary legislation as set out in primary legislation, and I have already expressed my disappointment. I assure the hon. Lady that we are working at pace to get those targets in place. I am conscious that we are still working on certain aspects of that, but I hope to try to get them done as quickly as possible.

So given the response from Therese Coffey, we now need her or the Government or the Parliament to respond.