Speeches by Gardiner.

“I would be very grateful to my hon. Friend if he intervened.”

“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 …”

“My colleague is going to come on to that.”

“That is really helpful. Thank you very much.”

“I am so glad that you have raised that because it would suggest then that any Government action on improving air quality and tackling pollution would be very progressive and delaying it is regressive because of the double impacts that you are talking about, the way in which it does affect the poorest in our society.”

“I do not want to halt your flow, which is great, but are there specific things that this Committee could point out need addressing in what you have just said?”

“There was a slowing down last year in achieving even their own pathetic standards. Is that as a result of the loss of the air quality grant scheme? What other factors do you believe were brought to bear in that?”

“That is one of the things that I wanted to explore with you. My view on this is that, as you say, it is a very tall order to achieve and certainly to achieve it instantaneously. However, we have a very good example of how to approach things that are tall orders and it is called the Climate Change Committee. In the Clim…”

“If that were knife crime, this place would not stop talking about it.”

“My apologies for arriving late. I wanted to look at air quality or, rather, air pollution. You are the watchdog looking at the homework the Government have set themselves and then marking that homework, but when the homework that they set themselves is not anywhere near what we believe the global standard should be, in…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend on resisting the calls from those who have exploited leaseholders for far too long and on capping ground rent. I welcome the assurance that we are moving from the outdated feudal system of leasehold to a proper commonhold future to give the full rights of ownership to leaseholders, but my …”

“I respect your ruling, Mr Speaker. I will leave it at that.”

“Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker. Delays in the court system mean that one of my constituents has been in prison on remand awaiting trial for over a year. She is in New Hall Prison, 200 miles away from her mother, who is disabled and cannot make that journey. She has requested a transfer to Bronzefield Prison, so her …”

“Picking up on what my colleague Jonathan Davies has just said, you do publish this, of course, and it is available for MPs, but would it make sense for you to send, as he suggested, an executive summary to each MP? Very often, you go into the Table Office or the Vote Office and, finding all the documents that you might…”

“It is £1,500.”

“So it is good that I made the point now, is it?”

“Thank you for that. Just finally, you said that you would be commenting on current policy in the summer, and I wanted to pick up what you said, Mr Topping, about the public engagement that you had had. The carbon price support mechanism applies a top-up charge to fossil fuels burned for electricity generation of £18 pe…”

“I do not think that you are assuming it. What I said was that your advice is to use fewer imports of biomass. If we were to take that to the extreme by importing all the biomass, it would be 3%. Those are the figures that I have on that. I want to move on to what you said about biogas. We have heard in evidence that th…”

“Unless we look at it in that holistic way from the point of view of biodiversity, farming and food security, we are not arriving at a sustainable solution.”

“If I could just add, if the Government follow your recommendation to stop importing as much biomass, reproducing the same biomass in the UK would take 3% of its land area, which is more than is being used for farming at the moment. I am really keen to understand the holistic way in which you have looked at these techno…”