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Christopher Chope

Credentials

Background

Sir Christopher Chope is a trained barrister and has served as the Conservative MP for Christchurch in Dorset since 1997. He was the MP for Southampton between 1983 and 1992.⁴ ⁵

Christopher Chope is a libertarian on the right of the Conservative Party and a hardline Brexiteer, sitting on the House of Commons Select Committee on Exiting the European Union.⁶ ⁷

Chope has repeatedly voted against measures to tackle climate change, including in 2008 when he was one of five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act.⁸

Chope has been involved in campaign groups which reject the scientific consensus on climate change and oppose the UK’s emission reduction targets, including the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), claiming such measures have an adverse impact on the economy and lead to high energy prices.⁹

In October 2010, Chope attended an event called “Climate Fools’ Day” in Parliament, which commiserated the passing of the UK’s Climate Change Act two years before. It brought together a number of prominent British climate science deniers, including Christopher Booker, James Delingpole, Piers Corbyn, Sammy Wilson, John Redwood, Graham Stringer and David Davies.¹⁰ ¹¹

One of 40 “true-blue bills” put forward by Chope and fellow Conservative MPs Peter Bone, Philip Hollobone and David Nuttall in 2014 was to abolish the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change. Peter Bone, who proposed – and later withdrew – the private member’s bill, wrote that it seemed to “serve no adequate purpose.”¹²

He also supported culling badgers, selling England’s forests and abolishing the minimum wage, and voted against legislation for human rights, equal pay, safeguarding wild animals in circuses and same-sex marriage.¹³

He served as shadow environment minister from 1997 to 1998, the shadow spokesperson for the environment, food and rural affairs between 2003 and 2005, and parliamentary under-secretary at the Department of Environment.¹⁴

Chope served as the chairman of the Thatcherite pressure group Conservative Way Forward and remains an honorary vice president of the group today.¹⁵ ¹⁶

Chope campaigned to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and is a member of the Eurosceptic pressure group, Leave Means Leave, along with fellow climate science deniers, Peter Lilley, John Redwood and Sammy Wilson. Chope voted against efforts to guarantee the right to remain of EU nationals already in the country before the Brexit vote.¹⁷ ¹⁸

Chope attracted condemnation from the public and his own party in June 2018, when he blocked a private member’s bill that would have made “upskirting” a criminal offence, claiming he was opposed to the parliamentary procedure rather than the bill itself.¹⁹

During the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, Chope was revealed to have claimed £136,992 in parliamentary expenses that year, including £881 to repair a sofa.²⁰

Stance on Climate Change

October 28, 2008

Chope argued that there is no point for the UK to decarbonise its economy because the country’s emissions amount to a small percentage of the world’s global emissions and that other countries will continue to emit greenhouse gases.²¹

“Even if we eliminated that 1.2 per cent. [of global emissions], would it make any difference to the world? I do not think that it would—indeed, the burdens on our economy would be even more enormous than they are already likely to be,” Chope declared in a House of Commons debate.²²

Key Quotes

During a debate on the Climate Change Act, Chope told the House of Commons:²³

“The issue that we are discussing needs to be put into context. A paper that PricewaterhouseCoopers produced, entitled ‘The world in 2050,’ projects that the United Kingdom will produce only 1.2 per cent. of global emissions in 2050—without the increased targets in the Bill and without including emissions from shipping and aviation. We must take that into consideration. Even if we eliminated that 1.2 per cent., would it make any difference to the world? I do not think that it would—indeed, the burdens on our economy would be even more enormous than they are already likely to be, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) explained so well.²⁴

“When the history books are written in 2050, people will ask why only five people voted against Second Reading of a ludicrous measure.”²⁵

“The TaxPayers Alliance produced an important research note, which shows that, if we achieved an 80 per cent. reduction in emissions, UK gross domestic product in 2050 would have to be 3.8 per cent. lower than it was in 1990. We know of the public dismay and, indeed, even the Prime Minister’s concern, about the fact that we have now entered the first quarter of negative growth since 2007. What would 3.8 per cent. negative growth in 2050 compared with 1990 mean for the people of this country? It would be a disaster on a massive scale and unacceptable to the people. Not enough has been done to spell out the implications of the Bill.²⁶

“How do the Government propose to reduce emissions from aviation and shipping without damaging global trade? […] I am worried that an agenda for imposing volume reductions in aviation and shipping underlies the Bill and the amendments. Imposing such volume reductions would be damaging to global trade. We are a global trading nation and it would therefore be highly damaging to the United Kingdom plc.²⁷

Key Deeds

February 17, 2020

Chope put forward 41 private members bills in the House of Commons, many of them related to environmental issues. The Bournemouth Echo listed all 41 bills which included:²⁸

“Net Zero Carbon Emissions (Audit): Bill to make provision for an independent audit of the costs and benefits of meeting the requirement under the Climate Change Act 2008 for net United Kingdom carbon emissions to be zero by 2050; and for connected purposes.
“Green Belt Protection: Bill to establish a national register of green belt land in England; to restrict the ability of local authorities to de-designate green belt land; to make provision about future development of de-designated green belt land; and for connected purposes.”
“Anxiety (Environmental Concerns): Bill to place a duty on the Secretary of State to reduce anxiety about environmental concerns among the general population; and for connected purposes.”

Chope said of the growing “eco-anxiety” phenomenon: “some of the propaganda that is coming out from government and agencies is promoting this irrational fear because we as individuals cannot take action to address the overall consequences of climate change.”²⁹

November 2018

Chope attended an event organised by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) in the House of Commons to mark the 10 year anniversary of the UK’s Climate Change Act. Both the GWPF and Chope have repeatedly opposed the Act, claiming it “burdened consumers with extraordinary costs.”³⁰

For the occasion, the GWPF launched a report which blames the Climate Change Act “and other anti-fossil-fuel policies” for worsening fuel poverty in the UK.³¹

The report was entitled “The Climate Change Act at Ten: History’s Most Expensive Virtue Signal,” which argues Britain’s emissions reduction policies are responsible for the continuing existence of fuel poverty in the country.³²

It claims that “rather than solving climate change, the only detectable effect of the Climate Change Act has been to sustain levels of energy poverty that politicians from all parties had promised to abolish.” The report was written by climate science denier Ruper Darwall.

June 2018

Chope objected to a private member’s bill which would have made upskirting a criminal offence in England and Wales. He later said he supported the bill but had objected to the parliamentary procedure rather than the law itself. He added he was not “a dinosaur” and had been “scapegoated.”³³,³⁴

May 2016

Chope was one of 15 MPs to sign a letter asking then secretary for energy and climate change Amber Rudd not to accept the Committee on Climate Change’s recommendations regarding the UK’s fifth carbon budget.³⁵

October 2014

In a statement, Chope along with the four other MPs who voted against the Climate Change Act in 2008, Philip Davies, Peter Lilley, Andrew Tyrie and Ann Widdecombe, called for the Act to be revoked.³⁶

They wrote: “The UK accounts for less than two percent of global emissions. It is time to bring to an end the pointless damage being inflicted on British households, British industry and the British economy by the unilateral commitment to unnecessarily expensive energy, and to suspend the Climate Change Act’s unilateral targets until such time as a binding global agreement has been secured.”³⁷

April 2014

Chope took part in a debate organised by the Bruges Group, a Eurosceptic think tank, with the title “How the EU’s Climate Alarmism is Costing You Money.”³⁸

During the debate, he said we was part of a “small band in tune with public opinion on these [climate change policy] issues.”³⁹

“The government and climate scientists use words in a very careful way that is contrary to the truth,” he said.⁴⁰

October 2010

Chope attended an event in Parliament which launched a campaign to overturn the Climate Change Act, along with prominent UK climate deniers Sammy Wilson, Christopher Booker, Piers Corbyn and Graham Stringer.⁴¹,⁴²

The event named “Climate Fool’s Day” was organised by the Carbon Sense Coalition, a loose affiliation of climate denial groups chaired by Viv Forbes, an Australian climate science denier.⁴³

An invitation for the event on Piers Corbyn’s site Climate Realists called for “evidence-based science and policy – not the carbon con!,” adding: “The danger is not Climate Change but Climate Change Policy – for which there is no evidence in justification.”⁴⁴

The Russian government funded television channel, Russia Today, covered the event.⁴⁵

October 2008

Chope was one of five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act, calling efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission reductions “a ludicrous measure.”⁴⁶