Speeches by Gibson.

“To see a direct benefit from the data centre, rather than something just disappearing into your cash-strapped local authority.”

“They are doing something; are they doing their best?”

“You will not convince them by just engaging with them further unless you actually show some tangible benefits and straightforward things such as waste heat management use and various other community benefits. It takes me back to thinking about when other countries built nuclear power stations and they had district heat…”

“Very quickly, and picking up from what you just said, I want to ask Mr Stewart a question. A data centre has just been given planning permission in my constituency. It will clearly be used by the Crown hosting it next to a large MOD site, but during that process we were shocked by how little engagement they felt was ne…”

“Do you think the mayoral authorities model will help with that?”

“I presume they were not actually offering to build the polytunnels for the cucumbers. It was not actually a serious scheme, I take it.”

“Moving neatly on to food security, Professor Ford, have you done any research on the serious threat from heat in terms of future food security for the UK? Do you feel that we know enough about that?”

“Were there any particular professions or occupations that you would highlight, or do you think that more work needs to be done before we know the answers?”

“I would like to move us towards economic impacts. The first part of my question is to Professor Howard Boyd. In your view, what are the economic impacts of extreme heat, and which occupations are most at risk from it?”

“There is quite a lot of evidence that a lot of the fruit and veg we import comes from west Africa, and that once they have lower productivity, they will prioritise their own consumption over exporting to us. Is that something that you are taking into consideration?”

“I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the recent changes to the funding formulas for public transport. Does he agree that the recent review is very much weighted towards population and is therefore further detrimental to rural communities like mine? In Chippenham, it is not a case of when the bus comes; it is a case …”

“You mentioned adapting and then went straight on to talk about air conditioning. Spain has a serious problem in that more electricity is used to cool buildings than everything else put together, including industry. Going down the route of air-source heat pumps, which—let’s face it—were air conditioning units 30 years a…”

“Thank you all very much.”

“Professor Howard Boyd, do you want to come in? Or was that the point that you were going to make?”

“That is interesting. I was going to ask what sort of improvements in measurement would most benefit research, so that we can have policy development. From what you are saying, if we are only monitoring the places and not the people, we will not know. We have already heard from previous witnesses that there are people w…”

“I think there is a lot to be said for that, so thank you very much.”

“I was not suggesting that building control should disappear from local authorities in any way whatsoever; I was merely thinking of the huge volume of new builds—a registered profession might sort that.”

“Given the challenges around bringing building control back into local authority-exclusive control, which we have just highlighted, is there an argument for making sure that building control officers are part of a registered profession and therefore accountable to an organisation that they can be struck off from? In tha…”

“Dr Fuller, sticking with what Dr Holman has been talking about—the concern about focusing on limit values and different measuring tools—how should the UK’s monitoring networks evolve to fully capture the totality of England’s air pollution and include emerging pollutants such as ultrafine particles? You talked about th…”

“What improvements in measurement would most benefit the research?”