Britain will not renegotiate the Paris climate change deal for Donald Trump, Theresa May says

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox

Get our free View from Westminster email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Theresa May has ruled out renegotiating the Paris climate accord ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump at the G20.

The US president has said he will pull the US out of the deal but first wants to see if he can change its terms to be more favourable to the United States.

Britain did not include climate change as one of its four main objectives ahead of the summit but after arriving in Hamburg for the meeting Ms May told reporters that the Paris Agreement was non-negotiable.

“I was clear to President Trump how disappointed the UK was that the United States had decided to pull out of the Paris Agreement and also clear that I hope they will be able to find a way to come back into the Paris Agreement,” she told the BBC.

She added: “We are not renegotiating the Paris Agreement. That stays.”

The statement from the Prime Minister means she joins Angela Merkel and other European leaders in saying she will not change the treaty.

Mr Trump is meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin for the first time today. Like Mr Trump, Mr Putin has publicly doubted that climate change is caused by human activity.

The US president himself has said in the past that he believes climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese propagated to hobble American manufacturing industry. Ms May will meet with Mr Trump tomorrow for bilateral talks.

Downing Street had previously said that the UK was committed to the treaty as it was signed but would only say that the British Government “don't see any need for renegotiation” rather than explicitly rule it out, as Ms May has now done.

The Prime Minister was yesterday criticised by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for not including climate change in her four objectives for the gathering of world leaders.

He called for Ms May to “put pressure on Donald Trump to change course on his catastrophic decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement”.

NGOs, including Oxfam, had also warned that climate change should be at the top of the agenda, warning that it was “real and it’s happening right now”.

At the start of June, the US President confirmed he would pull the US from the Paris Agreement.

Apparently misunderstanding the name of the treaty, he argued that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris”.

“We are getting out, but we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great,” he said.

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy immediately issued a joint statement saying the Paris accord was “irreversible” and could not be renegotiated, but the UK had shied away from taking this explicit position.