Speeches by Gardiner.

“Is that part of the problem then, that what we are dealing with is people looking at this from their own perspective—you as one regulator and DEFRA as another regulator? You can all be saying, “My patch is all right,” but nobody is joining this up to get something done to protect the public.”

“Yes, but you said you broadly agreed with the plan earlier in responding to the Chair. You said you had been involved in every part of the implementation of the plan and you agreed with it. What are the elements of the plan, then, that you disagree with?”

“I have been going through all the action points in the plan and the question that arises in my mind is: why are you prioritising measuring harm over preventing harm? Virtually every action point is about, if I go to the very start, having to “continue to monitor and report annually”, “Make the Environment Agency’s…mult…”

“So where did the £80 million come from?”

“Yes, but that was not my question. I understand that what you are telling me is that the expectation that we all have is that ultimately this will fall back on the taxpayer in one way or another. My question to you was: how do you justify the £80 million figure that you and the Minister quoted and what estimates have y…”

“But for tracking back what already exists, the Minister has already told us that once they are mixed together, and particularly once they become degraded, it is almost impossible to identify the source. Given that it was legal at the time for people to use these products, one assumes that you would not be chasing them …”

“I want to tease out this £80 million remediation cost figure that you spoke about. I am sure, Mr Casale, you will know that the European Commission has published a report in which it says that Europe is on track to pay at least €440 billion to deal with the pollution impacts from PFAS. It said that the cost could actua…”

“That is what you said it is. You said it was a signal. It is there in the report.”

“The costs have been published.”

“What element of that do you disagree with, Minister? The costs?”

“On page 9 of your plan it says, “We expect to see progress through a combination of improved public understanding, industry-led and industry-owned initiatives (such as the Chemical Industry Association’s PFAS Information Exchange Forum), and transparent self-regulation.” So on the one hand you are putting the responsib…”

“Minister, a comprehensive restriction does not mean an immediate ban. As the Chair has pointed out, the EU model explicitly allows a time-limited derogation. On what you said about what industry wants, industry are quite happy at the moment, are they not, because they are getting away with not having to pay for the cle…”

“I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on securing the debate. Legislation should be clear, and the people to whom it applies should know where they stand. Retrospectivity and arbitrary or subjective criteria make for bad law, precisely because they destroy clarity …”

“Does the hon. Gentleman recall that between 2022 and 2024, even though the number of spaces in the care sector was deemed to be between 6,000 and 40,000, his Government made available 616,000 visas for that?”

“One of the four pillars that the Minister has set out in the consultation document in relation to integration is volunteering. A number of hon. Members have already mentioned that there is an arbitrariness—a subjective nature—to that. Who will certify the volunteer work that is done? One can imagine a plethora of organ…”

“Will the Minister confirm whether the changes that are firm were also consulted on in the consultation document? If so, why were they consulted on?”

“Does the Minister share with me a sense of irony that the former Home Secretary and the former Immigration Minister who were responsible for giving out those 616,000 have now joined Reform?”

“Nothing shapes a landscape more than a river. Nothing brings a landscape to life more than a river. If we ask ChatGPT, “What is a river?”, it will tell us: “it is a natural stream of flowing water that moves downhill across land”— and that tells us precisely why Members of Parliament should never use ChatGPT. A river i…”

“When will the Government publish the full national security assessment of global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse? No. 10 is said to have pulled the full report last autumn because it was too alarming. Given that the truncated version, published last week, says that “every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to …”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend— I did not know his constituency was the manufacturer of Benylin. It has certainly worked on my cough on this occasion, so I thank him very much. Nature-based solutions are the cost-efficient, multi-benefit, long-term solution. They recognise that enabling nature to thrive is the best wa…”