Speeches by Hoare.

“Robert or Mark, what are local authorities doing to inform people living near potentially contaminated sites? I am thinking particularly about potential adverse risks to health or to the broader local environment, and of course about wider economic development issues, property prices and desirability.”

“I am not entirely sure how quickfire I was, but I am grateful to our witnesses for their answers.”

“I am in charge of the quickfire round, so I will try to be quick with my questions, and it would be helpful if you can be quick with the answers as well. Everybody has referenced that there is no lack of willingness to address the issues, but that such willingness is constrained by a lack of resource, whether that is f…”

“Were you successful?”

“Again, going back to the intent, you referenced a strategy for driving skills coming through from the Welsh Government in this area. One always tries to travel hopefully, but being pessimistic for a moment, let us say that it does not work, either at all or to the scale that is required for the tasks in hand, and the p…”

“So it will be the authority that holds the reins on that and kicks things forward?”

“Rachael, this may be one for you. Witnesses have said that, where land is owned by the local authority, it is quite easy, but the issue is where facilities are privately owned. Could you say a word or two on the enforcement teeth that are open? Given that these things are privately owned, what checks and assessments do…”

“You may not have this figure to hand, or it may not exist at all—if you do not have it to hand and it does exist, it would be helpful if you could share it with the Committee in writing—what percentage of private owners are an extant body, are contactable and are aware of their liability, and how does that compare with…”

“I will try to pick up on some themes that have been raised. Rachael, picking up what you said in answer to Mr Lake, is it not a bit strange that there are these large gaps in planning guidance? Your colleagues on the panel have talked about the skills and resourcing gap. These are long-standing, well-known, high-profil…”

“Surely it does not take funding to create a planning guidance note.”

“Thank you. That would be helpful. Robert, counter-intuitively, and that might be the polite word, the Welsh Government withdrew the contaminated land capital funding programme. How, if at all, has that affected your ability to investigate and remediate?”

“So there are some initiatives, but it could be scaled up?”

“Rachael, is public concern high enough or where it should be with regard to concerns of leakage of toxic chemicals such as PCBs from former quarries and landfill sites, or does there need to be more public information?”

“They do not?”

“Mark, can I ask you one final question? You can probably answer on behalf of all five of you. This is not meant to sound as acerbically critical as it may come across, but if we take the backdrop that you have all been setting out—financial resources, skills resources, scale of the task and so on—is it unfair to say th…”

“Yes, I agree.”

“I wholeheartedly welcome the Minister’s statement and the sanctions, but I fear that those who have just been sanctioned will either shrug their shoulders and say, “So what?”, or, worse, wear them as a badge of honour among their cohort. Casting forward to next week’s conference, is the Minister alert to and seized of …”

“Given the environmental importance and scarcity of chalk streams, may I urge the Deputy Prime Minister and her team to support amendments to this afternoon’s legislation that would protect those streams? They are vital, and they need as much protection as we can give them.”

“I assume that because the Minister cannot find the word “sorry” in his vocabulary this afternoon, he expects pensioners in North Dorset and elsewhere to be saying thank you to him for this screeching U-turn. However, just a few weeks ago, what he has announced today was predicted to cause financial Armageddon. When sho…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if you could fill a gap in my ignorance —I am sure you can. Earlier today, Mr Speaker announced that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), whom I will call my hon. Friend because he is my county neighbour, would not move new clause 82, to which I am a sign…”