Speeches by Gardiner.

“So if you are joined up with the district heat network, you go to the top of the queue.”

“Very regularly.”

“As a good Scotsman, I don’t give a fig about what is happening at 5 o’clock this afternoon, but—[Laughter.]”

“But if the figures that I gave you are correct, do you not think that that presents certain problems for the way in which the Government goes about managing the sector?”

“Mr Chanda, you wanted to come in.”

“Mr Chanda, if we were playing basketball, I would say, “Slam dunk.” Thank you very much.”

“You did not see the announcement?”

“Thinking of these things in territorial terms, that means actually complying with our NDCs and our targets. We do have our net zero target. Mr Eaton, you have painted a very rosy picture. Last week, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government gave permission for a data centre in Bedfordshire to…”

“Just carrying out orders, okay.”

“Now, I have a problem, haven’t I? We have just seen the weather forecast that the Met Office did for 2056. You may remember that last Monday the Met Office held a big event where it said the peak summer temperature in 2056 is going to be 45 degrees, and the lowest temperature anywhere in the UK is going to be 30 degree…”

“You are speaking my language, Mr John. That sounds very good.”

“But I think, if I don’t want to incur the wrath of the Chair, I had better leave it there.”

“Could the Minister just remind us to which party the Chief Secretary to the Treasury between 2010 and 2015 belonged?”

“Public space protection orders at that point?”

“Great. That depends, presumably, on making sure that people are aware. I know that electronic road signage has been used that can say you are now entering an area of heightened risk, and these controls are in place. Is that something that this Committee should be talking about recommending?”

“Should this Committee consider recommending that that becomes a legal obligation on land managers?”

“If the hon. Member wants to know the specifics of how to do that, they get a jar of liquid honey and squeeze it up the tree. You then have to follow it up with your tongue. I do not recommend that for anywhere near the Whips Office.”

“This is an essential point. My hon. Friend will remember the words of Pak Ja Martin, who was in charge of the project that we went to see. He said, “You can’t talk conservation to people who are hungry.” Therefore, local indigenous people, who for centuries have protected and conserved their environment, must be involv…”

“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does she agree that, as part of that consultation, many of us would like the Government to consider that this should not just be a matter of legality, but of actual deforestation? She will know of cases where other countries have passed similar legislation; in Brazil, its then P…”

“My hon. Friend is talking about peatlands; she will know that Indonesia had a huge, deep burn of its peatlands in 2019, with 31,000 sq km of land burned. In the UK, when we had a terrible peatland fire on Saddleworth moor in 2018, just the year before, an estimated 4.5 million people suffered from the particulate matte…”