Speeches by Davies.

“We know that one hectare of peatland can sink 5,000 tonnes of carbon. Do you know how much peatland we have lost overall to wind turbines and whether the balance has been tipped in favour of reducing our dependence on carbon-generating fuel as a consequence of that?”

“Are there any of the national infrastructure projects coming forward at the moment that affect peatlands that you are worried about?”

“Are you able to say which they are, or is that information available?”

“Q10. The regeneration of Belper mills—a large site with buildings, including grade I listed ones dating from the start of the industrial revolution, at the heart of the east midlands’ only UNESCO world heritage site—took a significant step forward last week, when planning permission for its redevelopment and conservati…”

“This Committee allocated a debate on the spending of the Ministry of Justice on criminal justice at the last estimates day, in summer last year. Do you expect this debate to cover similar matters?”

“Local government reorganisation in Derbyshire might see Amber Valley borough council split in half, along with the cost and difficulty of working out how to disaggregate the authority and the services and private finance initiative contracts it still manages, but an outcome is needed that will work for the next 100 yea…”

“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, the publication of the local power plan and the £1 billion investment that will support community groups to provide green, sustainable energy and help their financial sustainability. We have considerable expertise in Derbyshire when it comes to using water to create pow…”

“We have some further questions about remediation if that is okay. As part of this inquiry, we visited a site that has been affected by PFAS. Frankly, I do not know how that business has survived given the money that it has had to put into mitigating the effect of a product that it legitimately made because it had a pub…”

“On incineration, we know there are not very many sites in the country that can undertake that work and the price has got more and more expensive. I think it is £16 to get rid of six litres of fire foam. Is there any market oversight function that Government could lean on to stop manufacturers trying to do the right thi…”

“Does that include funding cutting edge lab research? I know a lot of this monitoring is the sector just doing it by itself and reporting its information to Government or to the Government’s agencies.”

“On innovation, would you be able to say a bit about what the Government are doing to fund the expansion of UK lab and incineration capacity to support the monitoring of the whole PFAS situation but also its destruction?”

“Will national standards be introduced for PFAS destruction?”

“Does that include sharing best practice? When we went to that site, they had invested a huge amount of money in, I think, an Australian piece of equipment to remediate the ground—the surface water. This gave us the impression that it was really the manufacturers of that equipment that were leading the charge in that sp…”

“What about specifically in terms of remediation for highly contaminated sites, rather than looking ahead to avoiding it happening again?”

“You touched on the tension between who has responsibility for this space—DSIT or DHSC. Which would you like the answering Department to be?”

“Right, okay. Well, we are just going off the information that we have here, but we will note that. Thank you.”

“You need four Back Benchers from the Government party to have a 90-minute debate in Westminster Hall. You only have three.”

“With respect to the statement following the Prime Minister’s visit to China and Japan, I thank him for being in the room and challenging China on its appalling human rights record and for fighting for British jobs. With respect to his visit to Japan, did the issue of Toyota come up? Toyota is a significant employer in …”

“One more question, if I may, Chair. Those Government Departments that have a wide estate of facilities around the country or that oversee arm’s-length bodies or quangos—the NHS is a good example—are they expected to apply EPPS principles in the decisions that they make?”

“That is very helpful. Could I ask you about specific Government Departments, because obviously they all have an obligation to implement the EPPS? Are there any specific Departments about which you have concerns and is that due to a lack of awareness within the Department of the importance of this suite of principles, o…”