Speeches by Gardiner.

“Thank you. You know that many of us will be looking and scrutinising it.”

“Can I also apologise that I do have to leave now, but I just wanted to put that in early.”

“Ms Pinchbeck, you started off talking to the Chair about the importance of independent evidence and the first-class analysis that the committee on climate change does. I have always had huge respect for that; it has been absolutely fundamental to the way in which you have maintained a bipartisan approach in Parliament …”

“Should the Government not have waited to announce airport expansion until it had that evidence from its independent adviser?”

“Again, just trying to translate that into recommendations for this Committee’s inquiry report, you would wish us to very strongly make your stable door point before focusing on the importance of scaling up the technologies that can deal with, remediate and recycle?”

“We have 10,000 sites to get rid of.”

“Clearly, you have set out the case for recycling, but as part of that recycling of materials, what is the danger that you are reintroducing PFAS into the environment? We have heard the examples about textiles and so on, where you can be compounding the problem. What is the challenge you face there and how do you overco…”

“Dr Joel, I was struck by the difference between your response and what Mr Ede said about the importance of consulting, being open and engaging with the public. Is there a reason why your company feels that is not important, or is it just that you have never considered that level of engagement? Or is it that you do not …”

“The valley of death. We always hear that this is a problem. One of the recommendations that you would perhaps wish this Committee to include in its report would be about ensuring that support is coming, not necessarily to your company but to the industry to make sure that we can get those technologies that have proved …”

“Do you think after the hordes of people who are watching this Select Committee inquiry start banging your door down and demanding—”

“In order to refine these technologies, and given the complexity of the way in which this works, is there a role for AI in identifying how to do that, how to speed it up and how to make it more efficient?”

“I wanted to first of all ask you, Professor, about the bioremediation work that you have been doing with Daphne. Part of the problem with that is that it is a slow process, is it not?”

“I had understood it was the application.”

“Just one final question, I think. What you are talking about is identifying and extracting, remediating, and recycling some of it, but as more and more is coming through the production line, you are taking out a percentage of an increasing stock. Therefore, it surely has to be combined with the prevention of it coming …”

“Dr Schwarz, I wanted to ask you about recycling of the chemicals once the PFAS has been captured, because we have heard that a number of these processes gather it all together, but it still has to be dealt with. How does that fit into the sustainable management strategy for PFAS?”

“Professor, anything to add?”

“High energy cost, high real cost?”

“What are the technical and regulatory hurdles that you face in scaling that?”

“In that case, it will be very easy and very cheap for the Environment Agency to inspect them in a regulatory capacity and say, “What a fine job you are doing!”.”

“No, I am talking about the recommendations that this Committee should make. You want to get it right. That is what you are assuring us of. You want to get it right and you are taking steps now to do that. If you are confident in what you are doing, it should be perfectly natural that you say, “Let’s be transparent. Let…”