Speeches by Creagh.

“With the greatest of respect, the hon. Lady’s party was in government for five years, and the Conservative party was in government for 14 years. It is always good after five months in office to be criticised for previous failures. I agree with the hon. Lady that the Conservatives cannot be trusted on animal welfare. Th…”

“We have indeed committed to a ban on trail hunting, which will provide significant protections to wild animals, including foxes and hares. Work to determine the best approach for doing so is ongoing, and further announcements will be made in due course.”

“As my hon. Friend knows, each week 8 million vapes—such as single-use, pod and big puff—are thrown away or recycled incorrectly, which is 13 vapes a second. That is why we have already banned single-use vapes and created 10,000 extra vape recycling points in store. We will ensure that online marketplaces and vape produ…”

“Incineration permit breaches are a matter for the regulator, the Environment Agency, but we are reviewing energy-from-waste capacity across the country and will be making a statement imminently.”

“Our policy is certainly intended to tackle fly-tipping and stop persistent organic pollutants entering the environment, but I will have to consult the Minister for water, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), before answering on that detailed point.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that question. My own city council in Coventry has introduced small electrical item take-back points in its libraries, which is an example of an excellent council innovating. I recently visited the Currys recycling plant in Newark, which shows the importance of recycling electricals to ensure…”

“May I wish you, Mr Speaker, all the staff of the House, and all those in our public services who will be working over the weekend a very merry Christmas and a safe and successful new year? The UK has a long history of championing the global conservation of endangered species. We are in the process of extending the Ivor…”

“I do not think they have been encouraged to do so.”

“My understanding is that one of the reasons why this process was put in place is that they were having to negotiate IP with individual member states, and they found it was taking three, four or five years. One of the things that has come out of DSI is that they get certainty with this process. I think there is a bit of…”

“COP16 did not happen in isolation. We had a triple COP year, and I feel for people who attended all three. We also had the UNFCCC taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the desertification COP meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which has just concluded. It was great to see that you, Mr Gardiner and Ms Heylings, attended C…”

“Not so much on that, but it would be remiss of me if we were to conclude without mentioning the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting in Busan, which was trying to conclude the global plastic pollution treaty. It finished on 1 December, and 170 countries were there. That is another convention that stems from …”

“I have no script here on this, so I am just doing it from memory—officials will all get nervous now—”

“We know that the ocean is under pressure from acidification, from warming and from the accumulation of persistent organic pollutants, which have been found in everything from plankton to polar bears. Industrial chemicals will be a huge part of that, but I think the research is emerging around microplastics and their ro…”

“I think we are going to keep that target, but may I talk to you about a few other numbers? We can look backward at the woodland carbon code and the peatland code. Project registrations under the peatland code have more than doubled between 2020 and 2024, and over 2,000 projects across the UK were registered under the w…”

“As I said, we have asked the Green Finance Initiative to set out our baseline data, so I think we will have that early in the new year. I think what we can say also is that we are going to see a scaling up of philanthropic finance. We have our Projects for Nature initiative. It is currently a pilot, but it is aiming to…”

“As I said, we are working to scale up private investment in nature recovery and sustainable farming, centred on integrity. The last Government published an update in March this year. We set out our integrity principles at Baku. We have also committed to the British Standards Institution’s nature investment standards pr…”

“We launched the Projects for Nature pilot, which is about connecting businesses and other donors with screened nature-recovery projects. We have also launched mandatory biodiversity net gain, which requires developers to ensure that habitats for wildlife are left in a measurably better state than before development. We…”

“That is right. Look, 72% of our land is managed by farmers, and we are supporting them and other landowners so that they can take advantage of nature markets as an additional income stream, especially given that we have had some of the wettest weather that farmers have ever seen. We are therefore providing more sustain…”

“If I can come straight to agricultural property relief, at the Budget the Chancellor clarified very helpfully that any land used for the delivery of environmental objectives will be included in agricultural property relief. There was an uncertainty or a lack of clarity around that before, which led to understandable re…”

“What they have done is expanded the tax relief across to nature projects that were not clear.”