Speeches by Creagh.

“Let me tell the hon. and learned Gentleman a little about what Northern Ireland thinks. I am going to make my point, and then I hope we can get into a much longer debate. Translink in Northern Ireland bans e-batteries, e-bikes and e-scooters from its networks because of the risk of fire. Antrim and Newtownabbey borough…”

“Let me begin by apologising to the hon. and learned Gentleman. I understand that he is a member of Traditional Unionist Voice. I did know that, but I forgot it in the heat. We are in the process of doing exactly what he is exhorting us to do, which is to make sure that we have a complete internal market across the Unit…”

“It was not commissioned by me, so it—”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Batteries (Placing on the Market) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I have immediately availed myself of your generous offer to take some clothes off; it is always a good way to start the aftern…”

“Thank you.”

“I see it as a cross-Government assessment. It is a cross-Government publication. Obviously, it has some heavy scientific analysis in it, but the power of it is that it does not belong to a single Department.”

“I will make a little progress, if I may. The changes will apply directly in Northern Ireland and will phase in over time. They apply in Northern Ireland under the Windsor framework. As an EU regulation, the obligations within it apply directly, without the need for transposition. The draft instrument, in a reserved pol…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Batteries (Placing on the Market) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I have immediately availed myself of your generous offer to take some clothes off; it is always a good way to start the aftern…”

“It is a convention that we don’t comment on internal machinery of national security assessments or the specific methodologies to formulate them. It is a cross-Government document.”

“If we look at the actual report, on coral reef collapse it says there is a “realistic possibility” of collapse starting from 2030. We have done a lot of work and overseas programming with our overseas territories on—I can’t remember exactly what it is called, but it is something like spiny coral reef disease. We have b…”

“I have said it before. We are going to class-land as bronze, silver and gold in terms of our trajectory towards 30 by 30. Not everything is going to be gold, but it cannot just be sitting at 7% and we say, “Oh, it is terrible, we have had a failure.” We have to look at what land is consecrated for nature, if you like, …”

“My colleague Minister Hardy attended the Ocean conference in Kenya. We are leading players in the global plastic pollution treaty, and we have been working on that. We are obviously very disappointed that it has not been effectively concluded. We are coming into a triple COP year and we are extremely keen to play a ful…”

“What a peach of a debate! On the one hand, the Conservative party gave us gentle encouragement and asked questions about how the policy has been enforced in the interim. Once again, I was questioned about the previous Government’s inaction and inability to take any steps to bring in this law before they left office. On…”

“No. We published our environmental improvement plan in December. We published a land use framework plan in March. As I say, today we are announcing our largest ever three-year species recovery fund. I would strongly counter the idea that we have been sitting waiting for this document to come out before we started shift…”

“Let me tell the hon. and learned Gentleman a little about what Northern Ireland thinks. I am going to make my point, and then I hope we can get into a much longer debate. Translink in Northern Ireland bans e-batteries, e-bikes and e-scooters from its networks because of the risk of fire. Antrim and Newtownabbey borough…”

“I will make a little progress, if I may. The changes will apply directly in Northern Ireland and will phase in over time. They apply in Northern Ireland under the Windsor framework. As an EU regulation, the obligations within it apply directly, without the need for transposition. The draft instrument, in a reserved pol…”

“Committee rose.”

“No, I will not give way; I am replying to the debate. They reopened the debates on Brexit, which detained this House from 2016 until I left in 2019 and much beyond. When the former leader of the Conservatives said that we should “Get Brexit done” in 2019, little did he know that Brexit would never be done. This issue i…”

“I have set up a little taskforce—my own taskforce—that is mainly DEFRA. It is a group of all the civil servants working on this issue across Government and looks at environmental resilience and efficiency in Government. That is very important as well, because we need to look at our own environmental resilience and effi…”

“First of all, thanks, Chair, for agreeing to the slightly later start time. We have been having a bit of a pre-EAC workout in Committee Room 10 next door, which I can tell you is considerably hotter than this Committee Room. I am grateful to the Committee for the slightly later start. This document is a cross-Governmen…”