Speeches by Hoare.

“They go hand in hand, do they not?”

“Just on that point—and this is not a criticism—given the correct tightness of the regulatory environment in which companies now operate within the sector across the United Kingdom, although there may be motivations to be unscrupulous, the actual opportunity to operate in an unscrupulous way is surely now, at scale, nar…”

“That does not make them unscrupulous, does it? They are seeking your permission. That does not make them unscrupulous.”

“Yes, I am sure the Committee was aware of that. Let me just ask you about local authorities, which are great receptacles of expertise and local knowledge. How do you assess their expertise and capacity to undertake coal tip remediation? Could we possibly have just one answer to that, given time? Can anybody give a defi…”

“You would want us to warn against the slopey shoulders of the centre, either Westminster or Cardiff, passporting these duties off to local councils?”

“I just wanted to ask where the balance falls. Mr Therkelsen, you mentioned the creation and establishment of what I would describe as accidental habitats a moment ago. When parcels of land are used and then left undisturbed, mother nature fills the vacuum. When we are talking about remediation, which can often be very …”

“I have two quick-fire questions, if I may, for the four of you. There are targets in England and not in Wales, as we heard earlier. Why? We might start with Ms Lewis, who is boasting the finest collection of Ordnance Survey Landranger maps that I have ever seen. That must be the national collection.”

“We heard from the first panel this afternoon—this rang an alarm bell in my head—about the attitude towards the safety surveys that are undertaken. If the community is interested in them, they jolly well have to go and make an FOI request, dig around and find out. I just wondered what your observations were on that. Whe…”

“You would have a presumption of public accessibility.”

“Mr Cox, do you have anything to add?”

“Ms De Longhi, do you have a view on sunlight and transparency?”

“Should it be out there for all interested parties to be able to see rather than requiring people to go rootling around to find it?”

“I appreciate that. I was thinking of recommendations that this Committee might want to make in its report, casting forward. Thank you for your answers on that. This next question may be to Mr Banton to start with. What have you identified as the barriers for preventing opencast mines, such as the one at Merthyr, from b…”

“Could I ask you, Mr Banton, and indeed you, Ms De Longhi, for a word or two on your assessment of how dangerous opencast mines that have not been restored fully are?”

“Over what time span was this professional negligence—one can only describe it as such—taking place?”

“Let me direct my final question to Ms Lewis, if I may. It is my whip hand question. I do not know if you heard the first panel. If you did not, let me just regurgitate it slightly. Very often, where industrial processes have taken place, accidental habitats have been created as magnets and harbours for biodiversity and…”

“Whose collar gets felt for not monitoring an agreed programme of contemporaneous remediation as one moves from phase 1 to phase 2?”

“Let me just pause there on the bond point, which I take. It is almost held in an escrow account, if one will. My understanding was that it might be that the sum held is fortuitously equal to or less than the cost of remediation, in which case everybody is very happy. Was it ever necessarily seen, de facto, that the amo…”

“Maybe we will go to Mr Cox on that.”

“This is probably directed to Ms Elgar and Mr Therkelsen in the first instance, but we have had recent UK and Welsh Government funding commitments on coal tip safety. There is a new Bill going through the Senedd as well. How confident can affected communities living near to dangerous coal tips be that they will be safe …”