Speeches by Gardiner.

“Thank you very much. Mr Phillips, could I say “wolves” to you?”

“I am trying to focus on the ancient woodlands that have softwood plantation on them that are likely to be felled in the next five years. Can you give us an idea of the scale? Roughly how many hectares are up for grabs in the next five years?”

“Dr Kirby, Mr Phillips talked about the importance of soil for sequestration. There is one thing we have not touched on that I want to ask about: do ancient woodlands have distinctive mycorrhizal networks? How important are they for the strength and survival of those woodlands?”

“But financial considerations are important.”

“And a bigger propensity for damage. What can or should be done to protect those smaller woodland areas? Is there a way of trying to insulate them against those wet soils and spring gales?”

“Just to get a commercial eye on that, in your view, Mr Knight, is that offer sufficient to incentivise most private woodland owners not to plant, or to restock with Sitka spruce and other softwoods?”

“Tell me how you go about incentivising them to do that before we get Dr Weatherall’s small grant schemes more focused on the development of ancient woodland. Perhaps, Mr Knight, you can then come in with what I would call the commercial timber perspective. We all recognise that commercial timber and softwood forestry i…”

“Dr Kirby, you spoke of wet soils and spring gales being probably a bad combination, and we understand that there are edge effects on woodland. What difference does the size of the woodland make to its ability to withstand those wet soils and spring gales?”

“Or you could veto the project unless it incorporated building back with broadleaf and so on.”

“They can, but you also have the power to stop them. That is my point.”

“You do, actually. You have that power under section 12 of annexe 1 of the Forestry Commission framework document, which gives you the power to specify relevant projects and veto what landowners are doing, but you very rarely do that.”

“Article 8 of the Forestry Commission framework document says that you have the power to set out that data for the production and supply and timber, so I assume that the Forestry Commission has the data, whether you yourself have it here or not.”

“Hunting comes back once again.”

“Right. It is about 15% of the total storm overflows.”

“Secretary of State, my apologies for arriving so late. I was chairing another meeting, but no disrespect was intended. I trust I will not be going over anything that colleagues have covered. I tried to make sure of that beforehand. The water White Paper says that, over the next five years, £11 billion is being spent on…”

“Is it something you will commit to looking at? People look at this, and they see a revolving door. They see the huge salaries that people get. They have been regulators, and suddenly they are on the other side of the fence and, Bob’s your uncle, they are earning much more than they ever would have as a public servant. …”

“Certainly within five years.”

“One of the past directors of Ofwat went off to be a director of Thames Water.”

“I thought you had been a Minister. Sorry.”

“No, no, no.”