Speeches by Gibson.

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

“Before we leave the House for several weeks, I feel it is absolutely necessary to raise an issue in my constituency, about which I have been trying to get an answer from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and from the Environment Agency. We have a landfill site in Calne that is producing a sulphurou…”

“On the subject of getting young people into farming, my local agricultural college tells me that when it tries to send students to help on farms, the farmers find it extremely difficult to find a use for them, because getting a licence to drive high-level agricultural equipment is so expensive that students from lower-…”

“Absolutely. I just wanted to ensure that my colleague agreed with me that we would like the Minister to consider farming.”

“Farmers across Wiltshire, especially in my constituency of Chippenham, say that Government support is not working. They are disappointed that Labour is compounding the damage left by the Conservatives, with an underspend of millions in the farming budget. Shockingly, the Government’s own statistics say that in 2023-24,…”

“Do you have past experience of delivering cuts while maintaining service levels? Have you had to do that before?”

“I appreciate that. That is kind of what we wanted to hear, I think. Do you believe that the OEP’s current headcount is sufficient? Would you make the case for more resources?”

“Thank you, Dame Helen. You touched on resourcing earlier and that was going to be one of our questions. The OEP is facing real-terms cuts in its budget, and the CEO told us that as a result there are programmes that won’t be taken forward. How do you decide which programmes you are going to cut?”

“Too often, rural communities such as mine in Wiltshire have been overlooked by successive Governments and treated as an afterthought rather than as places with distinct needs, challenges and enormous potential. Decisions are far too often made on urban assumptions, leaving rural areas struggling with weak transport and…”

“Thank you all for your answers so far. Thinking again about something that was mentioned by Professor Holgate, which was to do with the elderly and children, but particularly given that people from underprivileged areas tend to live in areas with higher levels of pollution, what steps could the Government take to reduc…”

“Thank you.”

“Which targets would you like to see them set?”

“Thank you very much. That is a very clear ask of the Committee.”

“I have a specific issue with landfill sites, where regular smells of sulphides are not dangerous necessarily, but very prevalent. Of course that often comes with methane, which is not detectable and fits into your category of nobody knows it is happening. Is there an argument for localised pollution monitoring in areas…”

“We do not measure the sulphides either, do we?”

“There is methane coming out with it as well, which is obviously not detectable by the residents. It is the sulphurous compounds that they know about because they smell.”

“Do you think that perhaps the Government are not pushing it, because it is different? I can give you a message that says, “Smoking is dangerous for you. You could stop smoking. That would improve your health,” but if I say to you, “Your air pollution is dangerous because you live on the wrong side of the city. Move to …”

“The grid connections reform process was intended to improve investor confidence by removing zombie projects and prioritising shovel-ready projects, but repeated delays from NESO mean that many developers are still waiting for their gate 2 connection offers, even for projects that are due to connect in 2026 and 2027. Th…”

“10. What recent progress he has made on improving connections to the electricity grid.”

“Thank you, Minister, for responding to our questions. I am just going back to the OEP’s progress report. It made recommendations regarding nature-friendly farming, picking up on some of the questions that my colleague has just asked, but it specifically asked for a fully evidenced and spatially explicit, resourced plan…”