Speeches by Gardiner.

“If I can turn to Dr Hills, when an application comes forward to bulldoze and existing property should there be an obligation to look at retrofitting before that happens?”

“I think you and I could become good friends on that one.”

“I have some in my own constituency, don’t you worry. So far, when we have been thinking about this issue of whole life carbon, what you said to us is, “We want clarity of standards, we want uniformity of application of those standards, and that will require Government mandating and regulation”. These are the things tha…”

“Today, Lord Ericht has ruled that the consent for the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields was granted unlawfully by the previous Government because they had failed to properly account for the effect on the climate of burning the fossil fuels that would be extracted. Can we have a debate on the future of the Roseban…”

“Forty years ago this month, my wife almost died of an eclamptic seizure because a general practitioner had failed to recognise the symptoms of pre-eclampsia. According to the most recent report on pre-eclampsia, four times as many women are dying of pre-eclampsia today than were dying in 2012. That is an absolute disgr…”

“My recollection from previous bouts of avian influenza is that there were serious problems with delays and with compensation, because farmers who were trying to do a preventive cull of their birds had to wait for an inspection to take place, and if that inspection had not taken place, compensation would not be given. T…”

“The difficulty with that, though, Ms Godwin, is that in the meantime other potentially important sites for highly protected marine areas could be disintegrating while we wait and see how it is going with the highly protected ones. I would have thought the precautionary principle should cut in and we should say, “These …”

“We have heard that we have the best marine science in the world, so I am sure the evidence base is out there. Maybe we just need to gather it together a bit quicker. We have touched on regulation and enforcement, the implementation and the management regimes. I think you have said that currently they are perhaps less t…”

“One of my colleagues will be asking a question about that.”

“You are not talking about the dredging in the north-east that saw the die-off there—or that did not see the die-off there?”

“Thank you. I think the Dasgupta review sets out very clearly our dependence, and how we should be regarding natural capital as national infrastructure, in that sense. I want to press you on the fact that you seem to be saying that we have all the ingredients and we know what the recipe is, but somehow we are not gettin…”

“Who should be doing it, and what recommendation should this Committee make to Government?”

“I think there are some great recommendations for us there.”

“Yes, but there has been a marked improvement in a period as small as five years, has there not?”

“A simplified and holistic view?”

“The MMO, the Marine Management Organisation, was supposed to be completing stages 3 and 4 of the review on destructive activities, namely bottom trawling and dredging, as we were talking about. That was supposed to come in when? When should it have been done by?”

“You both are.”

“I think our species has done more damage to the rest of nature than any other species that has ever lived, and we are in danger. If you look at the world wildlife curve, 69% of species populations have been depleted in the last 50 years. I do not think that the preservation of us should be the top of our list. We prese…”

“I loved that last analogy that you used about farming and soil structure, and what you said about the whole sedimentary ecosystem. Has any work been done on trying to calculate the natural capital value of the sedimentary system that you were talking about? In your earlier remarks, you said it was about a metre where a…”

“You talked about the Crown Estate, and they are trying to balance these very complex choices. On the one side, there are clear economic metrics, and on the other side, you were telling us that there are very uncertain biological metrics, but they have huge monetary implications. It is very difficult to quantify them. I…”