Speeches by Gardiner.

“But would you like to see a system where we were back to building control being an exclusive function of the local planning authority and properly financed?”

“All of you on the panel have said how important it is that the Department of Health should regard this with greater focus. Would you be keen for this Committee to make a recommendation along the lines of, “The Department of Health should report on the number of, and cost of treatment for, those with conditions associat…”

“In reality, we know that, given the subcontracting nature of the construction industry, margins are often made by shortcuts. If you are an independent building control officer, you can also compete on the speed of the construction being enabled. That means not doing all the checks on things like firestopping between th…”

“Councillor Porter, you also spoke about building control, which is very important. I would like you to elaborate on the point you made about the privatisation of building control. What is it precisely that building control can compete on?”

“General Nugee, what you just said tees me up very nicely for what I wanted to ask Mr Laybourn. The report tells us that we have six critical ecosystems that could pass beyond a tipping point—a critical threshold that will present risks ranging from food insecurity to military conflict. What are the risk multipliers for…”

“You mean the 0.3% of GNI that we still devote to it.”

“I am not sure that you have given me the full answer to the first part of my question, which was about what the risk multipliers are and how we mitigate them. General Nugee, you will know that there is a statue, as one walks up Whitehall, of Field Marshal Alanbrooke. That statue always annoys me, because you will notic…”

“Again, on air quality the recommendation says, “The Government have rejected our recommendation to consider a review of statutory air quality standards to improve public health outcomes”. We know that 38,000 people a year are dying from polluted air in this country and, therefore, I don’t think anybody can be satisfied…”

“It was 85; what is it now?”

“Your top three?”

“On how the OEP then moves on from that, it makes these recommendations. It gets, compared to this, which is the Government’s response, the flimsiest of responses. How do you move on to challenge when they have made such lackadaisical responses to the recommendations that you, as an organisation, have made?”

“It is nice to see you again.”

“And I got it.”

“The report actually said, “We still do not consider the evolution of the Government’s monitoring programme for the water environment is transparent”. It said that the recommendations that had been made in 2022-23 had not been fulfilled. I am not clear that anybody thinks that the state of our water companies—given the …”

“What surprised me in our discussions is that you have not said at any stage how excited you are to be working with such professional people. I think many of us would feel that Natalie Prosser has been an excellent director and chief executive of the OEP. It is picking up on what the Chair was asking you there: how do y…”

“It has been about 20 years, hasn’t it?”

“You will have seen, read, marked and inwardly digested the report that the OEP produced, that was published in January of this year. What do you think its most significant recommendation was?”

“The Government’s response on that, though, was fairly weak, wasn’t it? It said that Natural England should keep them actively under review.”

“Why were the recommendations in those august reports not taken up? You mentioned the House of Lords report on nitrogen, and “Next Steps for Nitrogen Policy”, so in effect you are telling us that these recommendations are there and the solutions are known. We might repeat them, but why have they not been taken up and ho…”

“If I can just try to compress or hone the recommendation that you would like to see, it would be that we should be suggesting to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that it works with the Department for Transport to assess the impact of such future transport fuels?”