Speeches by Glover.

“That is fair enough.”

“In that context, for a long time there have been these definitions of urgent and emergency for types of permits. Are those definitions still fit for purpose, or could they do with a review?”

“I am now going to ask some questions about permit schemes, which I know will fill us all with joy and enthusiasm. Local authorities have told us that immediate permits are being overused, which can make it difficult to plan and co-ordinate works, but the Department has said that it sees no evidence of misuse. Does it c…”

“They probably would not, would they?”

“In 2023, the Department for Transport introduced a new performance-based inspections regime, which means that companies with a high failure rate on standards are inspected more often. In your opinions, how successful has this been?”

“Can I just pick you up on that in terms of the newness of telecoms and broadband?”

“I understand what you are saying now and, to be fair, I have recently moved house and have a broadband provider that I had never even heard of a year or two before.”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I rise to speak to new clause 19. First, the Liberal Democrat members of this Committee support a lot of what the Government are proposing in this part of the Bill. Creating electricity grids of the future is a critical route to decarbonising and has the potenti…”

“Q I appreciate that there is a lot of uncertainty and you have been very honest about that. As a colleague of mine has already acknowledged, there is a huge amount of concern about the provisions in the Bill. What is it that gives you such assurance or confidence, given that we know so little about EDPs, that the Bill’…”

“Q You mentioned that you have already started some work on environmental delivery plans. Are you able to say a little more about how long you think individual plans will take to develop and come into force, and a little more on what you said about the criteria that you will use to decide where and what sort of areas wi…”

“Q Mr Stevens, you mentioned local plans briefly in one of your previous answers. Do you feel that the draft Bill sufficiently considers the interaction between the proposed spatial development strategies and existing local plan processes? Kate Henderson, it would also be good to hear your views on that. James Stevens: …”

“Accepted. Matthew Pennycook: In terms of the top-up, we have already allocated £800 million to the affordable homes programme since coming into office. We have also pulled forward £2 billion as a down payment. A significant proportion of the homes coming through those funding routes are social rented homes—almost half,…”

“Q Recent Government announcements on housing targets—around 1.5 million, but only 18,000 will be social homes—have led some to ask whether the Government are doing enough to promote affordable and social housing. Does the Bill go far enough, particularly in relation to spatial development strategies, to mandate more af…”

“Q I feel it would be a shame for Carol Hawkey and Mike Seddon to visit this wonderful building without making a contribution to our understanding. We have had a lot of discussion about what Natural England’s chief executive said earlier. In her testimony, she was very clear that she feels that the provisions in the Bil…”

“Please expand. Rachel Hallos: I am not convinced that there is clarity on the balance and calculations. If you take such land out of production, what imbalance does that create with production elsewhere? If you move environmental goods from one area of land on to another, what imbalance is being created there? If we ar…”

“Q One of the challenges in planning is finding the optimum balance between housing, environmental requirements, food production and local decision making and consultation. Do you feel that the Government’s proposed Bill strikes a fair balance between those four things? Rachel Hallos: No.”

“We have some more questions about that coming up a bit later. This is the last one from me on this section. We have talked about electrification and battery trains and tri-mode, and however many other modes, but what is your view on the role of hydrogen in decarbonising the rail sector? There are parts of the rail indu…”

“Sure. Hopefully, as was mentioned earlier with rail freight, there is an opportunity to do far more in rail freight. I was told recently at a conference that we only have 9% of our freight on railways, compared to 31% in Switzerland, for example. We are going to have to decarbonise the railways, maybe to help decarboni…”

“The Government have stated that, given a constrained carbon budget, “where emissions rise in one sector, the UK will have to achieve corresponding falls in another”. Given the commitment to aviation expansion and the fact that sustainable aviation fuels, at the moment, I believe, account for just 0.2% of global fuels, …”

“Thinking about other forms of transport, you have mentioned cars and vans and so forth. Turning to railways, the new German coalition Government agreement includes the following commitment, as published in Railway Gazette International last month: “The coalition now defines rail electrification as a measure to address …”