Speeches by Gardiner.

“They are statutory obligations, so let’s be absolutely clear.”

“No, they are not.”

“What are your responsibilities as the farmer—in place of the landowner, as it were—on that land?”

“Is there water flowing through your farm?”

“Of course, sorry. Yes, you are. That is right.”

“Ofwat has said that it believes that the right level of debt should be 60%, yet it has taken no action against those companies whose level of debt has risen to as much as 80%. Can the Minister assure us that under the Bill, Ofwat will not only have the power to act when companies’ debt levels are too high, but will use…”

“Under WTO rules, any country can impose tariffs when it believes there is unfair subsidy of the exports presented by the other country, but so far I have not heard America put forward any argument that there is unfair subsidy of our steel industry. What discussions is the Minister having with the WTO about this?”

“Drax has exploited UK taxpayers for far too long. It has lied about meeting sustainability rules, burned 1 million tonnes of wood from primary forests, gagged whistleblowers with non-disclosure agreements, and pretended that it could sequester carbon from replanted forests in time to meet our 2050 targets. Today, the G…”

“I welcome what my hon. Friend has said about the importance of the just transition and the need to move gradually to renewables. He quoted from our party’s manifesto that “We will not issue new licences to explore new fields,” but I remind him that there was another part to that paragraph. It says: “because” —there was…”

“Thank you. We have received evidence that says it is between 5% and 9% of that total carbon budget. When we are thinking about all the other aspects of delivering on the fifth and sixth carbon budgets this will be a critical element. It is helpful to have the comments you have made, Ms Neal, from the point of view of R…”

“Very briefly, Dr Boulton, you mentioned Buglife. I think this Committee, in a previous life, has heard evidence from Buglife in relation to brownfield sites, where specifically it was chemical sites and contaminated chemical sites that had some extremely rare and valued biodiversity on it from an invertebrate point of …”

“When it comes to the data, open source data with clarity of standards so that it is absolutely apparent to everybody what we are dealing with and what we are achieving as a result?”

“I have some in my own constituency, don’t you worry. So far, when we have been thinking about this issue of whole life carbon, what you said to us is, “We want clarity of standards, we want uniformity of application of those standards, and that will require Government mandating and regulation”. These are the things tha…”

“Let us look forward at the targets that we have for 2050 because the one thing we do know is that between 75% and 85% of the houses that we will have in 2050 have already been built. What is the importance of retrofitting here? How should we be looking at that in comparison with new build, and what are your views on th…”

“Basically when we look at things like solar panels there has been debate between the previous Government and this Government as to what the role of solar panels on new builds should be, but would you like to see it mandated that as a default—not in every case because it is not suitable in every case—but that the defaul…”

“If we look at our total carbon budget between 2025 and 2030 we have been talking about embodied carbon. Can you give us an idea of what percentage of that total carbon budget would be taken up by embodied carbon of 1.5 million homes?”

“Many are not.”

“Many are not.”

“How many do you assess are not competent?”

“How many do you assess are not competent?”