Speeches by Hinchliff.

“It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. The state of England’s woodland paints a clear picture of national decline. The elms are gone, the ash is dying and even the English oak is at risk from the existential threat of climate change. We have far less woodland cover than many of our European neighbou…”

“Minister, before I go into my more detailed questions, I want to pick up on a trend in the discussion so far. You have made your personal commitment to this issue very clear. You spoke about not wanting our nation to be the dirty man of Europe. In a lot of the discussion we have been talking about catching up with Euro…”

“Okay. You have answered all my questions very clearly and simply. Back to you, Chair.”

“Okay. On that basis, then, you would not expect there to be substantial costs to be borne at any point in the pipeline around water treatment plans to upgrade them to be in line with those statutory limits.”

“The PFAS plan commits to consulting on making PFAS limits in drinking water statutory in 2026. For the sake of the record, can you confirm what estimates your Department has of the potential cost of ensuring those limits would be met?”

“Okay. Interestingly, and I promise this was not choreographed, the remainder of my questions are about drinking water.”

“I am afraid the Minister has slightly walked into this. Previously in this Chamber, I extended an invitation to her to come and visit RevIvel in my constituency. That is a campaign to restore the Ivel chalk stream. It has a pilot project looking at taking the Chalk Streams First approach, which would potentially restor…”

“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) on his well-made speech opening the debate. The state of our rivers is a near-perfect metaphor for how badly we have got our priorities wrong as a society. Through a combination of carele…”

“Thank you very much, Chair. I have pupils from my constituency, so I will give my apologies and go and get some questions myself.”

“To follow up on your very useful comments there, if the Government were—as has been indicated but I accept not agreed at this point—to accept all of the recommendations in the Fingleton review, apply it more widely to infrastructure rather than just nuclear, as has also been mooted, and also were to implement the NPPF …”

“Thank you, Chair. As I was saying, we have the Fingleton review on nuclear regulation with proposals in relation to the habitats regulations, which certainly seems to me to reopen some of the major debates in relation to paying to offset damage to nature that happened during the discussions around the Planning and Infr…”

“I want to draw the discussion to a couple of other areas causing concern in the environmental sector. We have the Fingleton review on nuclear regulation. As I am sure you will know, recommendation 11 calls for changes to habitat regulations, including removing the requirement for like-for-like compensation. Recommendat…”

“It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Barker. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on her excellent speech—although the “productive struggle” she referred to sounded rather like a slogan from my trade union days. I wholeheartedly support the petition, and I thank all the campaigne…”

“There are two particularly important conclusions in the Select Committee’s inquiry: first, that reducing energy costs for everyone should be the top priority; and secondly, that there is no shortage of money in the wider energy system. Does the Chair of the Select Committee agree with me that GB Energy is an important …”

“Liberal Democrat-run Hertfordshire county council has been looking at closing several village schools in my constituency, with a decision due soon on Albury primary school. I will not ask the Leader of the House to comment on a particular cases, but from speaking to parents and local communities, it is absolutely clear…”

“Brilliant. Thank you very much.”

“The hon. Member is making a powerful speech about an incredibly important subject. It affects my constituency, too, where we have 1,500 people living with dementia. On top of that, as she was referring to, around a third of the people currently living with dementia do not have a diagnosis and, staggeringly, the NHS doe…”

“Do you have anything further to add, Dr Mitchell?”

“Given that, as we have mentioned, we do not often talk about these jobs as much as we should do, do you feel that apprenticeships and other workplace policies are designed effectively for your industry? Is there a recommendation that you think the Committee should make to the Government about apprenticeships or other p…”

“Brilliant, thank you. Mr Lines and Dr Mitchell, from a land-based skills perspective, it is obvious that if we are to deliver on the hedgerow restoration targets, we will need a lot more hedge layers—a highly skilled, rewarding job. How can we, as Government, work with farmers and the farming community to open up more …”