Speeches by Gardiner.

“You have helpfully encapsulated all the things that need to be done. I want to encourage you to now tease them out because the question I would ask you to dwell on is this: how many of your members have been issued with a penalty by the Environment Agency for a failure to carry out their statutory obligations as ripari…”

“That is a very important observation. What recommendations should this Committee make to ensure that riparian landowners are aware of their statutory obligations, but also of the other things that they could be doing that are financially beneficial for them within SFI to run their business more profitably?”

“What I am concerned about is: are enough riparian landowners familiar with what their obligations are?”

“Let’s distinguish, because there are statutory obligations that you have and then there are business decisions that you can take, like moving into flood management.”

“They are statutory obligations, so let’s be absolutely clear.”

“No, they are not.”

“What are your responsibilities as the farmer—in place of the landowner, as it were—on that land?”

“Is there water flowing through your farm?”

“Of course, sorry. Yes, you are. That is right.”

“That is right. Yes, exactly, the water table. If you could give us the figures for that, that would be very helpful.”

“It is about how we defend that land, isn’t it? That cannot just be from fluvial and pluvial. It can also be from—what is the other one, coming up from underneath the—”

“Can I steer you on that? If we are looking at that highly productive land in the east of England, we know that it is all below sea level—that is why it is highly productive land—”

“The trouble is that you look at the figures and you are not quite sure what it means. We have figures that the NFU has given us that say that climate change has significantly impacted global food security, reducing major crop yields by 4% to 10% over the past 30 years. Research indicates that since 1961 global agricult…”

“I have some figures.”

“Yes, super. What are the impacts on farmers when those flood events happen? Explain to us, because sometimes we just think, “It doesn’t matter, just turn it into a flood plain”.”

“Ofwat has said that it believes that the right level of debt should be 60%, yet it has taken no action against those companies whose level of debt has risen to as much as 80%. Can the Minister assure us that under the Bill, Ofwat will not only have the power to act when companies’ debt levels are too high, but will use…”

“Under WTO rules, any country can impose tariffs when it believes there is unfair subsidy of the exports presented by the other country, but so far I have not heard America put forward any argument that there is unfair subsidy of our steel industry. What discussions is the Minister having with the WTO about this?”

“Drax has exploited UK taxpayers for far too long. It has lied about meeting sustainability rules, burned 1 million tonnes of wood from primary forests, gagged whistleblowers with non-disclosure agreements, and pretended that it could sequester carbon from replanted forests in time to meet our 2050 targets. Today, the G…”

“I welcome what my hon. Friend has said about the importance of the just transition and the need to move gradually to renewables. He quoted from our party’s manifesto that “We will not issue new licences to explore new fields,” but I remind him that there was another part to that paragraph. It says: “because” —there was…”

“When it comes to the data, open source data with clarity of standards so that it is absolutely apparent to everybody what we are dealing with and what we are achieving as a result?”