Speeches by Hinchliff.

“If climate breakdown accelerates, many of the international supply chains that we have relied upon for essential goods and resources for far too long will cease to exist. We are sleepwalking towards a situation in which this country can no longer guarantee the basic needs of its people. At that point, no amount of AI s…”

“4. What steps he is taking to develop an industrial strategy.”

“The freeze in fuel duty will be a relief to drivers in North East Hertfordshire, but part of the reason there is such a problem is that the Conservative party’s last stint in government left public transport virtually non-existent in rural communities such as mine. We discussed earlier this week the enormous cost of HS…”

“We will come back to cumulative impacts, but I have a couple of further questions, so can we keep it brief?”

“Following on from that discussion, my questions relate to the planning system and whether it is fit for purpose in terms of improving air quality. Dr Holman, when we had Professor Sir Stephen Holgate in front of us in a previous session, I asked whether the majority of development in this country is being planned susta…”

“I thank the Minister for clarifying that sanctions on Russia are tougher today than they were yesterday, but fundamentally the furore around licences to phase in the new regulations arises because we have an economy reliant on jet fuel, and as long as that remains the case these issues will continue to arise. What conv…”

“That is a good starting point.”

“That is a possible recommendation for England for this Committee to consider. Dr Holman, you mentioned the national planning policy framework and the paragraph that refers to compliance with limit values. We have already discussed that. How would you recommend amending it? What is the detailed change that needs to be m…”

“Briefly, on the cumulative impact.”

“Mr Laxen, I come back to you on a point related to what you said before about balance. Over the last 20 years or more, we have had more deregulation of our planning system with an aim to permit more development. What we know about air quality is that there are severe health impacts, and it relates very closely to deep …”

“The General referred earlier to national security as meaning that we are free to lead the life that we choose. Given what you have said throughout this session about the threats to our ability to feed ourselves and everything that would come from the decline and degradation of the ecosystems that we are talking about, …”

“It may be useful if I make a brief point to set the scene before I dive into my questions, starting with Mr Laybourn. I think that the issue of thresholds—non-linear collapse—and what that means in terms of the risks of non-state actors, global resource competition and the collapse of food security is particularly conc…”

“On the topic of this being very concerning and possibly coming much sooner than we feared, you referred earlier to the super El Niño that is potentially forming, Ms Chandler. Is there a risk of something like that pushing us over the edge of one of these thresholds?”

“I will turn to you, General Nugee, for my final question. Mr Laybourn spoke a moment ago about the cataclysmic potential impacts of going beyond these tipping points. If we were sat today on a Defence Committee to talk about a foreign power that had the ability imminently to cut off food supply to this country and seri…”

“Q3. The war in Iran has exposed how dangerously reliant we are on imports for our food, fuel and medicine, but the reality is that climate breakdown will make the current instability look trivial. Will the Prime Minister use the upcoming King’s Speech to address this fact and redirect our economy towards food security,…”

“Following up on those points, it is great to hear about the opportunities relating to new towns. I think we all know that even with the new towns going ahead, that is not how the majority of development in this country will happen. This Committee did a very important inquiry on housing development and environmental sus…”

“Thank you, Professor Holgate. For others on the panel, would you say that in the housing developments that you see we are effectively planning to minimise risks to air quality?”

“On the point about statistics and what GDP measures, I ask the Minister to take away the issue of imputed rent. A fairly strange part of GDP, it measures hypothetical rent on the value of existing houses, inflates the value of our GDP as a country, and could be part of what we are measuring when we say that we are tryi…”

“Would the hon. Lady add to her list a request that the Minister consider a formal target to cut inequality in this country? We will never grow our way to a good life for all our citizens while we have a fundamentally unjust society; we will only break the environmental boundaries we are already rapidly burning past.”

“Will the Minister give way?”