Speeches by Gardiner.

“It might be if, as you say, the business has not suffered any interruption of its normal process business. You have been able, according to you, to meet the Ofwat requirements of PR24 and continue that investment programme in the normal way. So actually, given that you said everything is tickety-boo, you have had no un…”

“The KKR bid would have needed creditors to agree to it in a court vote on a restructuring plan. So creditors were effectively negotiating terms here; that is part 26A of the Companies Act 2006. There is clearly a conflict between creditors where they are bidding against other parties, especially where we have a public …”

“I thank my right hon. Friend for this statement; I have waited 14 years for it, and I look forward to such a statement being given to the House in each of the next 14 years. One of the key drivers of climate change is deforestation. One of the key drivers of deforestation is cattle ranching and soy production. One of t…”

“Like everyone else, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) for bringing this important Bill before the House. I had not intended to speak in this debate; I was simply going to intervene on my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), but she spoke so…”

“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this package of measures, which will reduce energy costs. The system left by the Conservatives needed to tackle three things: transmission charges, constraint payments and marginal cost pricing, by which the price of gas drives the cost of the whole system. I therefore welcome the…”

“Is the Minister as surprised as I was to find that the shadow Secretary of State only half quoted that sentence from the report in Navy Lookout, about making it clearer that “no extreme threat” to European security would go unanswered by both countries, but failed to look at the real purpose here—that it signals a stre…”

“The EA does not have the responsibility, does it? It is not responsible overall. The Pitt review called not for an overview but for a unified framework and we are lacking that.”

“Why do we still, 15 years on, not have a unified framework to clarify the responsibilities for managing all sources of flooding, as the Pitt review called for? We still heard from all the witnesses that came before this Committee that it is a fragmented system with no overall responsibility and that is a huge part of t…”

“Is that why the Public Accounts Committee said that you need to talk about the number of people and the number of houses that are actually affected here? Otherwise, you give us a gobbet statistic, “52,000 properties will be better protected as a result of what we are doing,” but 100,000 people might now be in greater d…”

“I want to drill down on this because the Public Accounts Committee was driving at this. Information should be clearly available from DEFRA about the number of properties in England as a whole that are at risk from flooding. It does not matter whether it is fluvial, pluvial or coastal, but just that are at risk. Then, a…”

“Great. It seems we have been talking about the Pitt review for a long time. How many of the 92 recommendations that the Pitt review made have now been implemented?”

“Indeed, where we are building homes on floodplains still.”

“In response to the Public Accounts Committee’s report at the end of last year, DEFRA said it would “develop a measure which shows the net change in the number of properties at risk from flooding in order to give the true picture of England’s resilience to future flood and coastal erosion risk and set a target for the n…”

“The Government always come out with these figures, “Because we are doing this, we will protect this many more properties,” but it is not a net figure. They do not say, “In the UK as a whole, 52,000 more properties will be protected,” because it does not take account of those properties that have now come into flood ris…”

“If we can just disaggregate for a minute, can you give us the percentage for the high consequence assets and for the assets as a whole?”

“Thank you. I want to look at the capital funding programme for flood defence that you touched on in your remarks to the Chair at the beginning. Severe weather from climate change is impacting on flood defences, and defences that were deemed adequate in the past are increasingly not as we go forward, because of storm su…”

“I understand it has been approved in principle, but the funding has not yet been formally allocated. I want to ask you about assets, and you touched on this already in your response to the Chair. The EA-managed high consequence assets were not at the required standard. The 94.5% that was agreed last year was down to 92…”

“But those are what we need, aren’t they?”

“Mr Duffy, when will we be getting formal clarification of the funding for the flood alleviation scheme for the Wembley Brook in my constituency?”

“But you will do shortly, I am sure, and you will write to me to tell me.”