Speeches by Reynolds.

“I have not, no.”

“Let me have a discussion with Baroness Hayman about that and come back to the Committee.”

“You mentioned how sophisticated Germany is. If we have a successful SPS agreement, as part of it we would then have access to the EU system that we lost. I would suggest that would bring benefits rather than the opposite.”

“Thank you for the report that you laid on this, and for shining a light on this. I know you did a visit to Dover. Emily has more detail on this.”

“It would be a cross-Governmental effort, and a lot of the work will have to be done in my Department. We are having conversations about how we do that across Government.”

“Agri-tech is an interesting area, and if we do want to boost profitability, we want to be at the forefront, but I have not thought about the issue you have raised in any detail.”

“That is quite a detailed question.”

“Ideally, we would not have too much, because it would just add to the load. Obviously, we are developing our guidance—it is not just regulation and legislation—and the EU is doing the same. We have had this discussion since Brexit. It is moving on both sides.”

“That is the stat that I was looking for, thank you.”

“Thank you very much for the question. Let me make some broader points, and then I will turn to Emily. Obviously, the EU reset as a whole is a cross-Governmental effort. I am a member of the Cabinet Sub-Committee, the Europe Committee. As I said in my opening for the Department, it is a big priority because SPS is obvio…”

“Thank you.”

“I can come back to you on the particular statistic, but the statistic I have here is from the recycling industry itself. There will be other broader benefits as well.”

“As I said the conversations that I have had with this industry and that Minister Mary Creagh is having are that the regulatory certainty is going to allow them to invest more. I do not know the particular circumstances of the sites that you are talking about but having introduced legislation that we are now bringing in…”

“I want to compliment my Minister, Mary Creagh, for grasping this so energetically. As you know, within six months of being in Government we passed legislation to introduce packaging Extended Producer Responsibility, the deposit return scheme and simpler recycling. We have already done a lot. We are now implementing tho…”

“With respect, that is not something that is entirely within the Government’s control.”

“Well, it is for food production and meeting environmental targets and as Emily Miles said those things go hand in hand. Unless you have good soil health, good pollination, good biodiversity, you are not going to get the food production. Those things go hand in hand. Equally, there is also a market out there. We are not…”

“Yes, I understand that. The point that I was making was that the previous Government when we came out of the European Union decided that we would move away from basic payments. That is something that we agree with, however at the moment 50% of our farmland is supported by some form of the farming budget coming out of D…”

“As I said—”

“We cannot control the whole market.”

“No.”