Speeches by Gardiner.

“It is about how we defend that land, isn’t it? That cannot just be from fluvial and pluvial. It can also be from—what is the other one, coming up from underneath the—”

“Can I steer you on that? If we are looking at that highly productive land in the east of England, we know that it is all below sea level—that is why it is highly productive land—”

“And concern about how to implement it.”

“The trouble is that you look at the figures and you are not quite sure what it means. We have figures that the NFU has given us that say that climate change has significantly impacted global food security, reducing major crop yields by 4% to 10% over the past 30 years. Research indicates that since 1961 global agricult…”

“I think you and I are pretty much agreed on this.”

“Yes, super. What are the impacts on farmers when those flood events happen? Explain to us, because sometimes we just think, “It doesn’t matter, just turn it into a flood plain”.”

“Absolutely, in the hills. You have diversified, gone from dairy to sheep and beef.”

“In Mississippi it was the MRGO channel, in fact, wasn’t it? It was desalination in the MRGO channel that caused the loss of the tupelo swamp, which then overtopped the city because of the swell. It was the loss of the tupelo swamp and the trees there that allowed the ingress. Sorry, I am side-tracking, but I love it—it…”

“The words at the beginning of the session were music to my ears. You said it is all about catchment planning, yes.”

“Let’s think of recommendations that this Committee could make here, then. Would it be sensible for this Committee to make a recommendation that, when work is being done on an asset, it should be brought up to the standard, say, expected in 2050 or 2100 or whatever the level is, but not simply that it is being restored …”

“Can I pick up on what you were saying? What is the percentage of the stock of assets that the Environment Agency has that are below the original specification? Is the £2.65 billion going to bring them back up to the original specification or is it going to bring them up and raise the assets to the specification we are …”

“It was a great question—I just thought she should get an answer.”

“Was Julia not going to get an answer to that?”

“Are they insurable?”

“Ignorance of the law is no justification.”

“It is probably zero.”

“You have helpfully encapsulated all the things that need to be done. I want to encourage you to now tease them out because the question I would ask you to dwell on is this: how many of your members have been issued with a penalty by the Environment Agency for a failure to carry out their statutory obligations as ripari…”

“That is a very important observation. What recommendations should this Committee make to ensure that riparian landowners are aware of their statutory obligations, but also of the other things that they could be doing that are financially beneficial for them within SFI to run their business more profitably?”

“What I am concerned about is: are enough riparian landowners familiar with what their obligations are?”

“Let’s distinguish, because there are statutory obligations that you have and then there are business decisions that you can take, like moving into flood management.”