Speeches by Buckley.

“Do you have any particular concerns, where you think it has not made a difference or not yet cut through?”

“The last round of questions from me is around public investment. Your recent report assessment suggests that Government should generate funds for public investment through application of the polluter pays principle. I find that interesting. This morning, I was guesting on the EFRA Committee. We were interviewing the pr…”

“That was just an example.”

“To incentivise behaviour change.”

“It is a key moment. As a Committee, we are often interviewing organisations like yours, whose job is around regulation. We are usually sharing joint frustrations around enforcement not being as quick or as forceful as we would like. Perhaps fines and incentivisation can move this up people’s agenda and add teeth. I thi…”

“Did you fund it from the Trimpley account?”

“Is that from your £1.6 billion Trimpley pot?”

“I am sorry to push back, but I cannot square off the two different things that you are saying. Over here, you have £1.6 billion in a bank account that is labelled “rainy day” for exactly this purpose. Over here, you are saying that you are borrowing, at risk, £600 million plus £450 million that you will pay back over 2…”

“You have gone away with a long to-do list.”

“Severn Trent is one of the highest performing companies in terms of environmental performance. How have you achieved this?”

“You are telling us that that is what it was for.”

“You say “compliant”, but four out of five were the worst-performing, and six required improvement. I know that you personally are a high performer. Are you satisfied with those results?”

“It is interesting, and I hear you say that you are proud of that record, but, at the same time, in 2023, which is the year that we are all looking at the data for, the River Severn was the most affected river in the country for untreated sewage spills. You were responsible for four out of five of the worst-performing s…”

“Would you say that the requirement to separate out the rainwater from the sewage means that we will end up with two different strategies about how rainwater could be put through meadows and how sewage can be better managed within grey? You can separate your grey and your green as soon as you have met the water company,…”

“If you had a single agency, that would be much simpler, wouldn’t it? A final question to you, Ms Burgess: any thoughts about any missing pieces there around resourcing or data that you think are needed to glue together what are currently fragmented responsibilities?”

“An excellent example that flows through Shrewsbury, yes.”

“That is an excellent conclusion: that Shrewsbury should be the best case example in the country. On that, I hand back to the Chair. Thank you—you can come back anytime.”

“I will just wrap up with one last question on your final section there. When you were talking about confidence is key and the schemes and the uncertainty, would you say that going back to having multiannual plans for the ELMs and the SFI might be a useful recommendation?”

“Quite recently they have been either one year or part-year. My question is whether the multiannual approach could be more helpful.”

“We will put that to one side. Moving back on to cross-sector collaboration, I know you have touched on this before, so don’t feel the need to repeat yourself, because we are against the clock. If I could start with Celia Davis: you mentioned some things, but how can local authorities, developers and landowners work mor…”