Calling the DUP '˜dinosaurs' is allowed: Commons speaker

Green MP Caroline Lucas, the party’s sole MP, rose to her feet to speak during the heated first session of the new Parliament on Wednesday.

As Sammy Wilson sat behind her, puffing his cheeks and rolling his eyes, she said none of the bills proposed in the Queen’s Speech were about the environment.

She asked whether this was “because she [the Prime Minister] doesn’t care about the environment and climate change, or because she has been influenced by the DUP dinosaurs who sit beside me”.

This was likely to be a reference to Mr Wilson’s views on global warming, which have been examined in articles in the national press in recent days as the prospect of a Conservative deal with the DUP looked likely.

The biography section of the former environment minister’s website states that “climate change is not man-made and the myth of climate change is based on dodgy science not proven”.

Jeffrey Donaldson then got to his feet and said: “Mr Speaker, my party was elected by the people of Northern Ireland to represent the constituents who elected us here.”

He asked if it was “parliamentary” for Ms Lucas to use the term “dinosaurs”, adding: “She does not understand the policy that my party has on the environment. She should go and read our manifesto.

“But we have the right to speak for the people of Northern Ireland. And in this parliament, we will!”

The speaker, John Bercow, told the House: “The use of the word in question is not unparliamentary. It’s a matter of taste as to its desirability or otherwise...

“I know how robust a character the right honourable gentleman is. I would simply say the word in question refers to a species which survived for many, many millions of years.”

Mr Wilson’s view runs against the long-standing scientific consensus on the subject, and in 2014 the DUP’s chief whip said he did not share his views.

A working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international body which seeks to examine all scientific research on the subject, declared in 2013 that greenhouse gases contributed to a “global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5°C to 1.3°C” from 1951 to 2010.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” its briefing summary added.

This echoed the fundamental thrust of the IPCC’s first-ever report, more than two decades earlier, when it stated in summary: “We are certain of the following...

“Emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases... These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.”