Speeches by Wilson.

“No matter how the Minister tries to confuse the issue by talking about the situation up until now and the new arrangements, which are meant to tighten up sanctions today, the fact remains that we are now granting permits for Russian oil to come into the United Kingdom. He may justify that, as he has done on a number of…”

“We have heard from both yourselves and the previous witnesses that the collection of data is important when it comes to judging what is happening to air quality. How are air quality monitors managed and maintained by local authorities?”

“How flexible are local authorities? We heard that there can be spikes of air pollution, on construction sites, for example. I look at some of the large construction sites here in London, and this is not for a year or a couple of years; it can be a decade. How flexible are local authorities? You may have reached and tic…”

“If you move away from limit values to a wider definition—you have mentioned health, for example—would you not finish up with different requirements for different areas? For example, a lot of elderly people or a lot of children might live in an area, or maybe there is a school that later disappears because it moves some…”

“All of you have pointed out that, first of all, the equipment is expensive, and then the use of the data from the equipment is expensive and sometimes needs outside expertise. In earlier evidence today, we heard that one of the problems with using limit values is that, once you have reached those limit values, the view…”

“That brings me to my last question, which another member of the panel may wish to answer. Some—in fact, most—of the degradation is outside the control of the United Kingdom Government, whether it is the cutting down of the rainforests in the Amazon, or the degradation in central Africa, where huge areas are being cut d…”

“General, I think you probably answered this question in your first answer to the Chair, but do you think that this assessment represents a fundamental shift in the Government’s view of this issue? Or is it simply a reflection of what the Government have always thought about the importance of nature and what we need to …”

“The Chair asked an important question earlier about why this report had not received more public attention and concern. The author of “The Population Bomb” made a prediction very similar to this in the 1960s, in which he talked about ecological degradation, resource over-exploitation and over-population, and made equal…”

“Any of you.”

“The assessment does make it quite clear that the resilience of human systems to ecosystem degradation is moderately uncertain, and that the wider geopolitical context is highly uncertain. Even with the predictions that are made about things that will impact on our security and everything else, according to the analytic…”

“Let me say on behalf of my party that we condemn the bombing at the weekend and we thank the police for their actions, which ensured that there were not the casualties that we would otherwise be lamenting here today. It is significant that the bomb was set off at the same time as Sinn Féin was holding its party confere…”

“Would the hon. Member accept that when the process exonerates the soldiers and the veterans at the end, the whole point of the process and taking them to the court in the first place is to give the daily headlines in the paper to allow Sinn Féin and the IRA to rewrite the history of the troubles?”

“You say that probably it is not adequate, but do you think we are even going to meet the target that has been set?”

“First of all, decisions have to be made now, for example, with planning applications, and the capital restructuring that is required sometimes does require new sheds to be built or whatever. But if you are saying that we have to reduce ammonia emissions, that the targets we have set are not high enough and that they ar…”

“You have dealt with some of the points I wanted to make but I may probe them a bit more. First of all, Professor Sutton, the current target to reduce ammonia emissions by 2030 is 16%. Given what you have said about the impact of ammonia on habitats and so on, do you think that target is sufficient?”

“We talked in the earlier panel about the conflicts between the various pieces of advice that the Government gets. For example, we talked about diesel cars. On one hand, experts were saying, “Yes, you should drive diesel cars.” Later on we found out that air pollution from those cars has been much more impactful than, s…”

“I note the answer you gave, that the wood burning industry was very effective and so on, but all these messages started off with expert advice to Government Ministers, who encouraged people, for example, to move away from petrol cars to diesel cars and move towards burning wood because it is renewable. If you cut a tre…”

“These are all issues that should be taken up during the planning process, and I am not sure that happens. When I have objected to wind farm applications in Northern Ireland, the answer has been, “This is a way of producing clean energy.” I do not even accept that argument. It is not clean, in the way in which the lands…”

“It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), who secured this debate, is probably surprised to have more response from Northern Ireland MPs than from those representing the constituencies surrounding his own, and he may wonder why that is the case.…”

“Does the hon. Gentleman accept that with nuclear power stations, for example, decommissioning costs are built into the cost-benefit analysis of any such projects, and yet that is not the case when wind farms are built in environmentally sensitive areas?”