Speeches by Roca.

“The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health raised a flag with us about the significant shortages of environmental health and trading standards professionals. I wondered what plans the Department had to help local authorities with that, because there seem to be some quite significant shortages.”

“Before reflecting on the anniversary itself, I wish to pay tribute to the Royal British Legion and its volunteers. I have a dickie bow that the Bollington branch of the legion, one of the oldest in the country, has kindly given me, and I will be wearing it with pride on Thursday, along with other RBL volunteers across …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I wanted to speak today because, as has already been said, this is a really important debate—one that must be had in a respectful and open manner. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) for opening the debate in precisely that …”

“indicated dissent.”

“My hon. Friend is talking about fairness, which is really important. The Institute for Public Policy Research said that, if the north was a country, it would be second bottom in the OECD league table in terms of public investment, just above Greece. Is that not a sign of how unfair public investment is in the UK?”

“I have heard that the impact of an outbreak could run into tens of billions. My instant reaction is, are we doing absolutely everything we can to make sure we are prepared?”

“I guess there would be a worry that the farmers that you are suggesting need to make the greatest productivity improvements are also the farmers with some of the lowest incomes in the country, which is very concerning. You mentioned the farming resilience fund, which has been broadly welcomed by farmers as a positive p…”

“That leads me on to naturally ask, were there sectors or areas in particular where there was a bigger challenge around productivity improvement?”

“Just to build on these points, we had a good conversation in January with you, Emily, but one quote stuck in a lot of the Committee’s minds at that time. We had a discussion about viability, and of course there are huge amounts of tension around food security, productivity and the environment. Emily, you said, “I do no…”

“To pick up on Sarah’s point, the intention of the Government in the spending review, or certainly your hope in DEFRA, is to continue with SFI in the future.”

“Before we move on, in January we had conversations about the capital grants scheme, which had similar circumstances in November to what happened to SFI, and we were told that lessons would be learned. The Committee wants to understand from you that we can be confident that lessons will be learned now from two instances…”

“That is really helpful in getting a sense of the impact of the closure of the scheme. The Chair has mentioned issues around farmer confidence and the NFU surveys, cash flow and other matters. Has the Government given any consideration to an interim scheme? I know there have been organisations pushing for some sort of i…”

“Sorry, I have a certain nervousness about a foot and mouth outbreak.”

“My contribution will be brief. I start by thanking the Minister and Lord Hanson in the other place for their hard work with others on bringing the Bill to fruition. I also thank them for the kindness and courtesy they have shown my constituents Figen Murray and her husband Stuart. I echo what the Minister said earlier …”

“Is that something the remuneration committee might consider for the future, bearing in mind the way families are struggling with the cost of living at the moment?”

“Then in January, customers are facing, I think, a 28% increase in bills over the next period but there was a similar announcement of an increase in dividend again. Does that seem fair to you?”

“Because the initial announcement was immediately after the cryptosporidium incident, which we talked about earlier, and the public were a little bit angry that you were announcing an increase in dividend immediately after that crisis.”

“Susan, your company approved £45 million in dividend payments for ’24-’25, which was a 265% increase from the £12 million in ’22-’23. Can you just talk us through how you can justify such a dramatic increase with the financial strain that households are facing at the moment?”

“When did you decide not to pay the dividend? It was announced and then you decided that it was not appropriate to pay it.”

“When did those two events happen?”