Speeches by Dollimore.

“indicated assent.”

“The hon. Member is talking about the importance of high streets. In Hastings town centre, £150,000 of levelling-up money was provided to renovate the old Debenhams building and open a family fun factory. Sadly, that closed after a couple of weeks, the staff were not paid, and the building was boarded up. That taxpayer …”

“The Minister is talking about the Conservative party’s record of damaging our high streets. As I mentioned earlier, in Hastings, £150,000 of levelling-up money was given to a Conservative donor, who ran off with it and left a boarded-up shop in our town centre. I did not hear from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member f…”

“I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate on independent lifeboats and their support. In my own constituency of Hastings and Rye, we have the Pett Level independent rescue boat, which does amazing work saving lives at sea all year round. They are all volunteers and all the money they raise comes from p…”

“You are spending £15 million on cleaning it up now, which is equivalent to your entire annual clean-up budget for waste crime. How long were you in discussions with the council? I assume that was Ashford Borough Council?”

“It is highlighted by our colleagues in the House of Lords as a clear example of a failing, and obviously it is now going to cost the Environment Agency a lot more to clean it up. The woodland is pretty ruined as well.”

“I wanted to ask a specific question about illegal waste dumping enforcement. You said to the Chair earlier that you were quite happy with the EA’s conduct in this area, but I wanted to talk about the example of Hoad’s Wood in Kent, not far from my own constituency. For those who are not aware, this is a very special wo…”

“Residents report seeing queues of trucks lining up daily. It was a very industrial scale of illegal waste dumping going on that was clearly organised. It seems very strange that it took six months to get legal action to lock a gate.”

“Some campaigners would dispute how expensive it is to install some monitoring devices, actually. There is some debate over where figures come from and how much things cost. When we spoke to a number of water companies, they queried how many overflow incidents were dry spill incidents. How does the Environment Agency de…”

“What I am not clear on is whether Environment Agency staff actually went down and looked.”

“In these cases, are you putting number plate cameras on the site?”

“When did the Environment Agency first become aware that there was an issue?”

“Around mid-2023?”

“But you have a view on the industry that you regulate, as in the Environment Agency. You must have a view on that.”

“Five months of meetings with the council?”

“Did anyone from the Environment Agency go down to the woodland?”

“We would expect the chief executive of the Environment Agency in such a high-profile case—it has had huge media attention and has obviously been called out in the House of Lords report—to be across when inspectors were sent on site in this case to see what went wrong so we can stop it happening in other cases.”

“And excessive bonuses in the face of failure?”

“Please could you write to the Committee?”

“It was six months of meetings between you and Ashford?”