Speeches by Tufnell.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing the debate. I am unique in this debate in the sense that I am a Welsh MP, and Wales faces unique challenges in respect of cross-border healthcare. Like many other hon. Members’ constit…”

“How is the Minister working with the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff on the upcoming sanitary and phytosanitary negotiations, to ensure that Pembrokeshire farmers in my constituency gain maximum benefit from our realignment with the European Union?”

“You have spent £300 million to upgrade your IT systems between 2022 and 2025, but a report in 2023 said that you were one of the largest legacy IT burdens in central Government. Can you give an update on where you are with that?”

“I am jumping around a bit, but I come back to the Government’s manifesto commitment that 50% of public sector food procurement is to be locally sourced. We have not really seen that much development on that policy, in terms of announcements. Is that due to an inability to collect data on the current sourcing patterns f…”

“Going back to data, and thinking about the sequencing discussions that we have been having with ELMS and the focus on public goods and developing those environmental outcomes, if you look at the metrics by which we are trying to decide how those will be delivered, there is a big void. There is no metric for soil health…”

“I am conscious of time, so I will have to move on, but that was helpful. David, the water White Paper says that you have to optimise the current monitoring framework for the water environment. What would that look like?”

“Are you confident in having the parliamentary time to be able to deliver all these major reforms?”

“But in terms of those discussions being ongoing within the Department, are you flagging these concerns?”

“I am conscious that you have touched on a lot of things already, but you have a big agenda for change. We have talked about water in terms of the biggest overhaul of the water sector since the ’90s and the EU in respect of the SPS agreement. We had evidence from the FSA that 300 pieces of legislation might be included …”

“On your savings, you have a technical efficiency of 1% and then you have a real-terms budget reduction of 6.5%.”

“In the context of the resourcing point that we discussed earlier about the EA and Natural Resources Wales, there are significant monitoring gaps in the context of tighter resources. It is all very well having a piece of legislation, but if that legislation cannot be enforced on the ground, what steps are you taking to …”

“Given the resource constraints, and the decisions you are having to make on a day-to-day basis to try to push funding resources into these priorities that are set by Government, does having that many arm’s length bodies concern you? Is it something you would review? Do you think you get value for money from those 34 ar…”

“In terms of your departmental spending, you had to make technical savings of at least 1% of annual day-to-day spending, and then your spending is set to fall in real terms by 6.5%.”

“We talked about the reputation of DEFRA. Is the Department being overwhelmed because it is being asked to do more for less? Minister Eagle told us on the SPS that there is a massive “capacity issue in the Department”. Is that part of the problem which reflects the Chair’s comments at the beginning of the session?”

“Thank you. We touched on resourcing priorities; you talked to Terry as well. DEFRA has more arm’s length bodies than any other Department. I think you said 35 arm’s length bodies.”

“David, I do not know whether you want to comment on the water side of things in terms of the Department’s position on gaining parliamentary time or on resourcing.”

“Can I just check? You talked about priority need. My understanding is that the recent Bill in the Senedd ended it, and that it is moving to a more universal approach.”

“Steffan, you have talked about the plans in respect of consulting on the vacant land tax. What are your thoughts on what that might do for the plans to build new houses in Wales?”

“Dr Evans, I appreciate that you are the one person who has not commented on this little section. I was wondering whether you want to add anything before I hand back to the Chair.”

“You said it right at the beginning of the evidence session. Debbie has expanded a bit on some of the aspects and some of the levers within the legislation that will help, but I was wondering whether there was anything you wanted to add on top of that.”