SIR ALOK SHARMA’s big moment came when he addressed the COP26 conference, held in Glasgow from 31 October – 13 November 2021 – it had been delayed for a year because of the pandemic – as its president.
He had been appointed to the post on 8 January 2021 by Boris Johnson.
Sharma had travelled the world urging heads of government, firstly, to come to Glasgow and, secondly, to agree to do whatever was necessary to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5degC.
“I am very aware of the responsibility placed upon me in this role,” he said in his welcoming address.
He noted that “for almost two years now the pandemic has caused devastation and disruption, to lives and livelihoods across the world. And I know this has particularly affected the least developed countries and the small island developing states.”
He described what he had found on his travels. “On a visit to Jomsom in Nepal, in the Hindu-Kush region, I spoke to communities literally displaced from their homes from a combination of droughts and floods. In Barbuda (in the eastern Caribbean) I met communities still suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Irma. I have spoken with communities in East Africa fighting plagues of locusts spawned by climate change. And I spoke to a group of women in Madagascar, determinedly coping with what some describe, as the first climate induced famine in the world. In each of our countries we are seeing the devastating impact of a changing climate. Floods, cyclones, wildfires, record temperatures. We know that our shared planet is changing for the worse.”
When Liz Truss stepped down as prime minister, Sharma wanted Boris Johnson to return to 10, Downing Street.
“He won a mandate from the electorate in 2019,” said Sharma.
But Johnson pulled out of the race and when Rishi Sunak became prime minister, Sharma was told he would lead the UK delegation to COP27 to be held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh from 6-20 November 2022 but he would be demoted from the cabinet.
Sunak also indicated he was too busy to go to COP27. But Sharma still retained enough clout to be able to persuade the prime minister to change his mind.
In an uncharacteristically outspoken interview, Sharma bravely ticked off Sunak: “I’m pretty disappointed that the prime minister is not going. I understand that he’s got a huge in tray of domestic issues that he has to deal with. But I would say that going to Cop27 would allow for engagement with other world leaders. And I think it does send a signal — if the prime minister was to go — about our renewed commitment on this issue. If you look at what happened in the Australian elections in the past few months, one of the reasons that the conservatives didn’t win through is because people didn’t feel they took this issue seriously enough.”
When Sunak relented and declared it was important for him to attend COP27 after all, Sharma said he was “delighted”.
As he handed over the COP27 presidency to Egypt, Sharma told his audience: “I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 degrees was weak. Unfortunately, it remains on life support. I will not be in this chair at COP28, when our ambition, and our implementation, is tested in the Global stocktake year. But I assure you, indeed I promise you, that if we do not step up soon, and rise above these minute-to-midnight battles to hold the line, we will all be found wanting. Each of us will have to explain that, to our citizens, to the world’s most vulnerable countries and communities, and ultimately to the children and grandchildren to whom many of us now go home.”
Among the senior jobs that Sharma has done, he has served as international development secretary and as business secretary. As housing minister he had to deal with the Grenfell Tower fire, in which more than 70 residents perished. Sharma was reduced to tears when dealing with the tragedy in the Commons. The consensus is that as COP26 president he grew into the job and is widely admired for what he achieved as the UK’s climate change tsar.
In a Commons debate in July last year, Barry Sheerman, the Labour MP for Huddersfield, sought to embarrass him by giving him a compliment: “Am I allowed to say to the COP26 president that many of us on the Labour benches think that he has done a darned good job?”
In the 2023 New Years honours list, Sharma was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) by King Charles. But that was more a doing of Johnson, who has also apparently nominated Sharma for a peerage.
Sharma’s Reading West constituency, which he won in 2010 with a majority of 6,004, will not be easy to defend at the next general election. He retained the seat with a majority of 6,650 in 2015, but this came down to 2,876 in 2017 before going up to 4,117 in 2019 when Johnson got an 80-seat majority.
When first elected an MP, Sharma took his oath on the Bhagavid Gita, one of the Hindu scriptures.
Sharma, who was born in Agra on September 7, 1967, arrived in Britain in 1972 with his parents. His father, Prem Sharma, was a loyal Tory but in those days Indians were not picked for winnable seats by the Conservative Party. But later Prem was made a life president of the Reading East Conservative Association.
The night Alok was elected in 2010 marked a proud moment for Prem who said: “He was selected as the candidate for Reading West in 2006 – and he has got in at the first attempt. He is very sincere, very honest, very hardworking – and in his acceptance speech, he was very polite to the opposition. I am very, very, very proud of my son.”
Prior to entering parliament, Sharma qualified as a chartered accountant with Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte, and then worked for 16 years in banking, first with the Japanese firm Nikko Securities and then Enskilda Securities (the investment banking arm of SE Banken), where he held senior roles based in London, Stockholm and Frankfurt, including serving as a member of the bank’s corporate finance global management committee.
He has served as a member of the Commons treasury as well as the science and technology select committees, a parliamentary private secretary at the treasury and from 2012 to 2015 as a Conservative Party vice chairman for ethnic minority matters. In 2016 he was appointed as David Cameron’s “infrastructure envoy to India”.
Sharma is married and lives in Reading with his Swedish wife, Ingela, and their two daughters.
In many ways, Sharma does deserve a peerage, not least because he has become passionate on the subject of climate change.
Many remember that in his Glasgow speech, he rose to the occasion when he said: “Astronauts speak of the intense emotion they feel when looking back at Earth from space. Seeing it gleaming through the darkness of the cosmos. Incredible, improbable and infinitely precious. And if we act now, and we act together, we can protect our precious planet.”
