Speeches by Gardiner.

“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?”

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

“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, 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?”

“More research is required there, too, is it?”

“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.”

“Thank you.”

“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.”

“You will know, as a Minister who left Government, that when you leave Government as a Minister there is usually a five-year rule about not taking up a post that has anything to do with your previous employment as a Minister. That does not operate for the Environment Agency or for Ofwat. I think Sir James Bevan is now a…”

“There have been in the past.”

“Secretary of State, you will be aware that there has long been a revolving door, with senior directors at Ofwat and the Environment Agency taking up positions on the boards of water companies, and that sometimes this has been while they were still holding a regulatory position, creating obvious conflicts of interest. T…”