Speeches by Wilson.

“In terms of resilience and adaptation, would you see the board as complementing the contact that you have with individual Departments on what it is achieving? Are you aware of that?”

“Is the best way of getting that information to attend the board meetings or get reports from the board meetings?”

“Just one follow-up on Martin’s question: sometimes the definition of adaptation is very vague, but what do you see as the priorities that the Government should be setting for adaptations? Is far too much priority given to mitigation and not enough attention to adaptation?”

“When it comes to liaising with Departments that are most related to the work you are doing, how successful has that liaison been and how co-operative have Departments been?”

“I noted that you point out that overall this mix should result in lower electricity prices by 2050, compared to what we have at present. But, of course, we are concerned and the public are concerned about what happens to energy prices this year and next year. The fact is they have been going up, and while gas may have …”

“Can I just go back to the first answer you gave to the Chairman when you talked about the difference between the 2024 report and 2025 and the reduction in carbon emissions? In that analysis, have you taken into consideration the reduction in carbon emissions due to offshoring of many of our energy-intensive industries,…”

“What degree of those consumption reductions have been due to the fact that we are not consuming a lot of energy through steel, aluminium, and some of the other heavy consumers that have now disappeared?”

“It has asked you not to do analysis?”

“Ms Metzger made the point earlier that sometimes there may be regulations regarding certain contents of the chemicals that you are using, but there is no limit on the amount that you can dispose of. Regardless of that, are you saying that it does not that that is not the regulations, because you are looking at the cont…”

“Dr Joel and Mr Ede, how do you monitor around your own plants for the accumulation of any pollution that there may be from the products that you produce, and find out or try to measure the degree of contamination?”

“So a lot of the evidence that you have that these are not harmful would be studies done by the company itself? Or, on balance, is it independent studies that would give you that evidence?”

“One of the things that we have been told is that the Environment Agency itself has limited resources. Would it depend on independent assessments? What role would there be for the Environment Agency in identifying those complex contamination issues?”

“Mr Sanders, you have identified the issue that I wanted to ask about next. Once you have identified that there is contamination, if, for example, there has been a fire and the foam that was used has PFAS in it, and the factory that caught on fire was producing PFAS, how do you identify who is responsible? I imagine the…”

“You have anticipated my last question. What lessons can be learned from other countries in terms of monitoring, detecting and then finding ways of getting remediation where there has been contamination?”

“Dr Joel, in one of your earlier answers, you indicated that the products that you produce do not have an impact on the body and quickly disperse once they enter rivers or the sea. How do you independently demonstrate that that is the case? Is it studies done by the company or is it studies done by outside bodies that h…”

“There is some indication that the EU is now saying that even though there is this long chain and everything else, there is a cumulative effect and therefore they should be regulated. What is your view on that?”

“This is to Mr Ede and again to Ms Metzger. There has been a distinction made between products of low concern and products that there should be concerns about. What is the evidence for fluoropolymers, for example, that they should be regarded as products of low concern?”

“Is that really the distinction, then? If they are a long chemical chain, they are regarded as low concern?”

“From your experience, Professor Orsini and Mr Sanders, can you think of countries that do monitoring, detection or remediation differently or better than we do it here? What are the characteristics of what they do as opposed to what we do?”

“If there were to be additional safeguards or regulations, they should fall on the companies that buy the products from you and then use them, rather than it being your responsibility?”