Speeches by Gibson.

“Thank you, Mr Evans. You have answered my next question, which was whether you thought the UK should join exactly that premium flyer levy. Moving on, what leadership role should UK and international civil society, businesses and investors take at COP?”

“My constituent’s sister was stillborn many years ago, in a situation in which my constituent’s mother was simply told, “Don’t worry, dear, you’ll have another one next year.” There was no bereavement counselling and, more importantly, no marked grave. My constituent found out some years later—quite recently—that his si…”

“I think it is, yes—“Sarah, we recognise you as a geek”, so yes, thank you.”

“The report recommends the use of resilience standards in some contexts, especially with infrastructure, as you just mentioned, but not for people’s homes in relation to flood risk. What is the Committee’s perspective on the value of using resilience standards as an approach for flood risk management?”

“You are absolutely right: I would very much enjoy it, thank you.”

“Yes.”

“On this new dataset, there are properties recorded as at risk of flooding that would not have been on the previous information, are there not?”

“Yes, sorry—specifically on surface water.”

“Yes, more clarity of the information, so that they know what their obligations are, or what their position is. What effect did the new national flood risk assessment have on your assessment of the flood-related outcomes? Did you amend your approach, given the new dataset and the considerable increase in the number of p…”

“In a way, would you say that your assessment already included that surface water flooding, even though you did not have the data for it before, because you sort of knew it was there?”

“I have a background in the construction industry, so forgive me. There is an interesting point that has come up quite often: a lot of the volume house builders have been talking about the fact that heat pumps take up quite a lot of space. You said semi-detached is perfect. Certainly in their most economy houses, for ex…”

“There is an advantage in that the air-to-air heat pump system install is considerably less expensive than the water system, especially in small spaces where that works quite successfully. I am really pleased that you think it is worth including. Does your analysis of the emissions of residential buildings take into acc…”

“That makes sense. It is nice to have the data to back up what you already thought.”

“Drilling down a little on the flooding side, which my colleagues have mentioned, the committee’s assessment on the progress on flooding is relatively positive, yet England continues to see serious and repeated floods. Is there a contradiction here? Could you explain that contradiction?”

“That is lacking?”

“That makes perfect sense. On a slightly different point: what evidence did you find to assess whether the emergency services have sufficient plans and resilience measures in place to manage cascading risk triggered by extreme heat?”

“Did the committee feel confident in assessing the Environment Agency’s national river and coastal strategy in a consistent way with all the lead local authorities’ surface water flooding strategies? Did you feel confident that you were assessing it, given all these anomalies and different lead authorities’ abilities to…”

“That makes a lot of sense. It is slightly worrying that we do not have the flooding for surface water under control, but thank you. Jumping from water to heat—our extreme heat resilience, what data is required in order to evaluate overheating prevalence in homes in England? What data and data collection measures are cu…”

“Highways?”

“Does the fact that you do not have up-to-date data mean that you are missing an opportunity to develop recommendations with elements that might adapt, whether they are, as you said, nature-based solutions for external spaces, external protection for west-facing windows, or any of the other obvious things?”