Speeches by Chowns.

“In my constituency, a planning moratorium has been in place for more than five years due to water pollution, with an estimated effect on the local construction industry of half a billion pounds, despite the fact that new house building is a minute proportion of the problem. Will the Secretary of State meet me and repre…”

“In business questions last week I raised with the Leader of the House my concern at the last-minute cancellation of the cross-party talks on social care. Despite her very sympathetic response, I still have not received any communication from the Secretary of State. Does the Leader of the House think that she might be a…”

“I could not agree more. This has diminished trust. It is vital to rebuild that trust because we need that sustainable, fair and in-partnership future for farming. It needs to be sustainable in environmental terms— we need to recognise the reality of the climate crisis and the nature crisis. We need to support our farme…”

“Yesterday, the Government shamefully pulled the rug out from underneath thousands of farmers by cancelling the SFI with zero notice, despite saying that they would give six weeks’ notice, and without putting in place anything to support farmers in future. This morning, my inbox was full of emails from despairing farmer…”

“I am just conscious of time, and we have moved on.”

“I too pay tribute to everyone involved in the emergency response. Does the Minister share my deep concern that more than 24 hours after this collision, we still do not know what the cargo was on the MV Solong? Surely the insurance industry ought to know that, at the very least. On the pollution, I understand that this …”

“Briefly, one final question. Recognising the impact of climate change on the environment in which you work, and certainly I see it face-up in my constituency of North Herefordshire all the time in terms of flood resilience, can you talk a bit about how you are taking into account the increasing frequency and severity o…”

“Is there a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem? If you are not investing in the renewal of the infrastructure, you are going to have to spend more on ongoing maintenance, so why have you allowed yourselves to get into that situation?”

“That is significant, yet I understand you are underspending your allowances for enhancement expenditure currently.”

“What is your replacement rate currently? What are you expecting it to be in five years’ time?”

“Moving on to drinking water discolouration, Welsh Water has twice the level of the industry average in terms of complaints about discolouration. How are you tackling the problems that cause these complaints?”

“I want to come back to the capital investment point in a minute, but just returning to the issue of the response to the incident, I understand there were some households without access to drinking water for several days. You have offered some compensation of £30 per household affected per 12 hours and £75 for businesse…”

“But if you can get such catastrophic incidents as this, that perhaps widens the scope of what you need to be preparing for. On the question of responding to unexpected catastrophic incidents like that, what lessons have you learned in terms of response?”

“I wanted to ask about the Conwy incident because obviously it was disastrous for the households and businesses affected. You were saying this was not one that you were expecting to burst, which in a way is even more worrying because you are presumably putting contingencies in places for things where you know the infras…”

“Thank you very much, Alistair. It is good to be here. I should declare an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water Pollution. We are segueing quite nicely into my questions, which are around asset health resilience, impacts on customers, investment and so forth. Welsh Water is meeting some t…”

“I am just conscious of time, and we have moved on.”

“Briefly, one final question. Recognising the impact of climate change on the environment in which you work, and certainly I see it face-up in my constituency of North Herefordshire all the time in terms of flood resilience, can you talk a bit about how you are taking into account the increasing frequency and severity o…”

“Is there a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem? If you are not investing in the renewal of the infrastructure, you are going to have to spend more on ongoing maintenance, so why have you allowed yourselves to get into that situation?”

“That is significant, yet I understand you are underspending your allowances for enhancement expenditure currently.”

“What is your replacement rate currently? What are you expecting it to be in five years’ time?”