Speeches by White.

“I want to have a cleaner, greener, healthier, wealthier country, and I think this is the route to doing it. Any of those words, whether it is about a cleaner or healthier home or a cleaner or greener environment, are more the words that you and I would use around the dinner table. I certainly do not have a conversation…”

“I think there are multiple motivations. The vast majority of the public understand that it is happening, not just because people have been talking about it for 20 years, but because they see it themselves. Whether it is an influx of ladybirds or wasps over the summer, people can see that things feel different. They hav…”

“I think people have different motivations. I was trying to make the point that people understand it is an issue and want to act on it because they can see the trajectory and where it is heading. There is a lot of concern about energy security sovereignty and about children and grandchildren. People are motivated to lea…”

“No. On the list of the things that I want to do, it is nowhere near my list of priorities, because it would take a lot of time and money, and I would rather spend that on talking to people around a table in a normal way and trying to communicate in different ways. There are so many great things that the Department is d…”

“If I jump in, we are obviously monitoring in different ways and looking at where the different audiences are. The way I look at it is that there is a national debate at a country level, and then we have a community-constituency level and then a citizen-consumer level. Obviously, they all feed in and interrelate to each…”

“The clean energy mission is more in our gift than the carbon budget. To go through it, we have to be much clearer with DFT, DEFRA and other Government Departments that we are working with. Please chip in whenever you want, Ryan, but the clean energy mission is much more in the gift of the Department. We do work really …”

“I certainly feel I have strong support from my ministerial colleagues within other Departments. I work really closely with them, whether they are at DFT, DEFRA or MHCLG, and I have no reticence in saying that they feel as much commitment to this as I do. They feel it is cross-Government.”

“I feel very fortunate to have a Minister of State for Housing who I think previously sat in my job in Opposition, so has a strong personal commitment. As I say, I find ministerial colleagues incredibly helpful. We are looking forward to the future homes standards coming forward imminently.”

“Hopefully, that will be soon. I feel very supported by my colleagues, including in other Departments where you might not expect as much—with the Department for Education, we are ensuring that climate is on the curriculum more and we will have the natural history GCSE.”

“I want us to move as fast as we can towards delivering on our target. I also want to make sure that we do things in a thoughtful way, and that we maximise the co-benefits for Britain. I have absolute faith in the Minister of State in MHCLG to do that.”

“I apologise—I was trying to make sure I remembered all five of those pillars. It is a test! I will tell you later about which lyrics from songs—but we can play that game later. What we have done with the Energising Britain report is we have looked at more—the call from the Climate Change Committee was for us to do more…”

“Generally on our communications strategies, we are looking at overall support, which you have referred to a couple of times, and making sure of support for our policies. That is a big collaboration, but we are making sure that our overall support is there adding to it. We are then looking at the different audiences, wh…”

“If in a year’s time public attitudes are getting worse? I hope to goodness, I am not coming back with that. We are acting now. We are not waiting for that attitudes tracker to worsen. Things are changing constantly. The thing I have been really struck by is the amount of opportunities and positive stories that are out …”

“Ryan, you go with Secretary of State to the mayoral group, don’t you? We already have a local net zero delivery group that works with representatives not only of the LGA, but of councils across the country and of UK100 to look at actually what is happening. We are working through that as a delivery body, but we also ha…”

“That is an excellent question. My understanding is that, actually, in some areas—certainly in Hull—the experience has been slightly different. While some of the names might have been removed, some of the actions and support have continued. In the real world, is it taking climate change off the agenda? This is good for …”

“That is an excellent question—absolutely. As the Chairman said, we can hold two views that might almost appear to be conflicting. We know that when local infrastructure is proposed, support can drop for some of it. To go back to my answer about the community piece, that is an area that we have started work on, but we n…”

“The local power plan will come out imminently, so more will come on that. I am sure that when the Secretary of State appears, he can give you the detail on that, but it is imminent. On how that will work, in terms of local groups getting involved in energy, we have talked about having a direct community benefit. Ryan, …”

“We are a little hamstrung because the local power plan is coming out imminently. As I say, we recognise that we need to do more around community benefit. We have made it really clear that communities that host this infrastructure should directly benefit from it.”

“Just to add a couple of things on that, DEFRA is looking at the land use plan, which will look at making sure land is used most effectively. That will include a line with the energy spatial strategy at the same time to try to make sure we think more holistically around land use. That is exactly what we need to be doing…”

“We absolutely need to make sure that food security is a key part of this Government’s agenda. Clearly, that falls within DEFRA, but it is not an issue we are concerned about. In my communications, I did an interesting interview with Lord Deben, ex-chair of the Committee on Climate Change and also a farmer, who talked p…”