Speeches by Creagh.

“As I said at the beginning, the Budget and the clarification that land given over to nature recovery—”

“Our assessment is that it should give farmers greater confidence to work and engage with nature recovery schemes on their land.”

“The counter-argument would be that farmers were disincentivised because any of their land that they put over to nature recovery would not be included in that 100% tax relief. Now they have clarity. They are included, but at the new 80% rate.”

“Sorry, I should have said 20%.”

“We will.”

“I am very happy to write to you on that one, Chair.”

“I do not think nature recovery is an explicit target for the National Wealth Fund, but its remit and targets are a matter for the Treasury. That is an area where you might want to seek advice from the Treasury—or give some advice to them, if you think it should be in scope.”

“I know that this is being discussed at the official level, and I am actually having a meeting with Tulip Siddiq straight after this meeting. The UK Infrastructure Bank did include green infrastructure in its investment mandate, and had already made several “investment in nature” markets, so that already happened in its…”

“Indeed.”

“I would indeed. The National Wealth Fund has a capitalisation of £28 billion, and an additional £5.8 billion that is going to be committed over this Parliament. It has a target mobilisation ratio of every £1 it puts in raising £3. If we invest £6 billion in this Parliament and raise another £18 billion, that is going t…”

“I will.”

“Let me tell you about how many credits they have bought, while we look for that deep in the weeds of what we have here. It became mandatory for major applications on 12 February and mandatory for small sites on 2 April, so this is a policy at a very early stage. Early estimates back in 2021 said that the market could b…”

“It turns out we prepared.”

“We will be reporting to Parliament, I believe, in February or March 2025 on those six credits and on our thoughts on where and how they could be spent. I don’t have a monopoly on wisdom, and I am very keen to hear the Committee’s ideas. For example, where do you think they could usefully be spent? As to Sarah Gibson’s …”

“Let me say a couple of things. First, how many units have been bought by developers in lieu of making onsite or offsite net gains of their own? That is where they were unable to do it on the site. That is 30 allocations, which is 44 units and 9.9 hectares—so 10 hectares. One of them was for a hedgerow in the Wakefield …”

“When I came into post, I was quite sceptical about biodiversity net gain, and I feel that I have had a very rich and rapid education in it. What I would say is that it is a tool to unlock investment in housing and to unlock some of the site-specific planning objections that can sometimes block housing. It is very early…”

“I am much less sceptical, yes. Progress has been made.”

“We have given £35 million to local authorities in the first two years to scale up their often denuded planning departments. That is one of the functions that has really suffered from the long squeeze on local authority finances—our colleague is up there now talking about the funding settlement for local authorities. In…”

“I don’t know. I might ask officials to come in while I have a think about that. I do not know that we have thought about devolution. Do you have anything to say on BNG?”

“As to your point, Chair, on the ecologists. We do have a national shortage of ecologists, and I think one of the issues has been that people don’t really understand green careers. We have a national shortage of people who can measure and understand sustainability. It is a massive and emerging growth area. We need to co…”