Speeches by Gardiner.

“But it did not.”

“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!”.”

“With respect, that is not regulatory monitoring.”

“Surely it would make sense for the Environment Agency, or its successor body, to be doing some regulatory monitoring to ensure that you are then meeting the standards that you have set and had accounted for in your plan going forward.”

“What you have identified is a problem, and it therefore is incumbent on you to hold your hands up and say, “We have a problem. We are now coming to Government for help in solving that problem”. As you said, that may well involve finance.”

“Just picking up on exactly the same points, we heard from Ms Bradley about the absolute toxicity of one of the outflows that she monitored. We know that the Environment Agency says that it is not monitoring these outflows and does not perceive itself to have a regulatory role in monitoring them. It is not funded for it…”

“The results of that 12-year study you will be presenting to the Department for Transport and saying, “We have a problem here. This is what we are producing”—the sort of stuff that Ms Bradley told the Committee about earlier—“and we need to mitigate it, because otherwise we are polluting the environment”. Is that the pl…”

“I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for what has been a lifetime of work protecting women and girls. I welcome what she has said about updating the ethnicity data, which will enable the public debate to take place on the basis of data and fact rather than the prejudice and scaremongering of which she has spoken, but does s…”

“It has come to my attention that in government, the job of Home Secretary does not always attract the greatest thanks, so I want to thank my right hon. Friend for the response that she and her Department have given to the letter from 100 colleagues about the Gaza students, and for what she said this afternoon about con…”

“Indeed. What concerns me is that the Secretary of State, when she was talking about what she wanted to do, said she wanted to remove the chaos and subjectiveness from the planning system. I asked you for the criteria, and you have not given them. I want to know the criteria used in the overall improvement test when jud…”

“I do not think the Committee needs persuasion on that score, or on the bona fides of your intentions. What we are concerned about is the legal interpretation that others who are less focused on nature restoration might hunt to take it through the courts. In that respect, the legal analysis of the Government’s proposed …”

“I apologise as I have to leave the Committee.”

“Perhaps you can say more about Natural England’s capacity.”

“Is a subjective one. That is absolutely the issue here. It is a balance that the Secretary of State has to make, but we as a Committee do not have any pinpointing of what the criteria are that she will have to take into account in making that balance judgment. That means it is subjective.”

“Indeed, the Department put out a blog post just last month stating that “Current rules in the National Planning Policy Framework are clear that development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats, including ancient woodland and ancient or veteran trees, should be refused.” It is good to have yo…”

“I am not sure that has answered my question.”

“I will come on to EDPs in a moment, but given what we said about the impact assessment and the curtailed consultation process, how confident are you that the nature restoration fund will not have a negative impact on site-loyal species and irreplicable habitats?”

“May I say to both Ministers that I do not think that compromise is a dirty word? I welcome the fact that there has been dialogue between the Departments, and that you have been able to change and make explicit that which you believed was implicit. I do not think that that is a weakness at all; in fact Government might …”

“Minister, I want to turn to the sustainable aviation fuel mandate. By 2040, there will have to be 22% SAF in the mix for aircraft. That is the main obligation. It ramps up to the 2040 level. Can you explain to us what the power-to-liquid obligation is?”

“We still have a director for it.”