Speeches by Hinchliff.

“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. This is a hugely consequential instrument. Little democracy remains in our planning system, and this legislation will cut the amount down further. We are elected to this place to serve the public, not treat them as a problem to be silenced. The measures will…”

“Is that not potentially reintroducing the same level of discretion and difference across the country if local planning authorities choose to use those powers in different ways?”

“I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on council and social housing. The affordability of home ownership is one of the biggest issues in our country. I welcome many of the recommendations in this report around tackling empty homes, reforming stamp duty and ensuring that we are tying the de…”

“Earlier this month, the Government announced that they are putting yet more money into the lower Thames crossing, meaning that we will now spend more than £3 billion on a road that costs more per mile than High Speed 2, and we will privatise away Dartford toll revenues for the privilege. Meanwhile, despite welcome step…”

“For many years we have expected farmers to steward our environment and at the same time deliver food at rock-bottom prices to make up for the failure of politics to secure an affordable cost of living across the rest of society. That has made agricultural profitability increasingly difficult. Now, with the crisis posed…”

“Would there be any recommendations that you think this Committee could make to get us back on track to something closer with nature to what we have with climate?”

“Maybe weave it in. Picking up on the point that you made earlier about nature not appearing on balance sheets, I wondered, with GDP growth and that being a core objective, whether you feel that we are appropriately taking into account the dis-benefits of that in the measurements of our economic success. Infamously, you…”

“My final question is to either of you, if you are interested to answer. As economists, what assessment do you make of the fact that a lot of what, again politically, gets spoken about in terms of economic policy and economic success is unlocking investment and private capital in delivering big projects? We talk about t…”

“I want to pick up on a point that was made recently about the way that the Climate Change Act provided the certainty and the framework to know that the Treasury was going to respond to that, and that in turn led to private sector investment in renewables to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We have legislation an…”

“I am going to move on to a couple of other points briefly. I think that, if one of our other colleagues was here, he would probably have raised a point. You mentioned consumption of resources in this country. Quite often the argument is made politically that that is because we are offshoring a lot of our resource consu…”

“Mr Zenghelis, a moment ago you said that growth is at the core of the Treasury’s objectives. Is that compatible with the reality of environmental limits? We have heard a bit about political leadership already today. It seems to me that we are very rarely able to say, “No, that is enough” in the context of growth. There…”

“Professor Groom, I am aware of time, so I am going to move on to the next question.”

“Will the Secretary of State put an end to this unholy mess and rid us of this frankly parasitic company once and for all?”

“The Secretary of State has made the right decision in seeking to protect billpayers and opposing giving Thames Water a free pass to continue polluting our rivers. The thousands of hours of sewage spills into chalk streams and their tributaries across North East Hertfordshire that Thames Water has continued to oversee a…”

“My point was that, in the political and policy space, we often say that electrification is easier than what we traditionally refer to as behaviour change, but some people are starting to dispute that based on the evidence we have seen so far. It is good to hear your positivity, but just to push again, would you not acc…”

“I am sorry to turn to quite a sombre note at this point, but between 2012 and 2024, more than 2,000 land and environmental defenders were murdered or disappeared globally. I think many of us would feel that cutting our carbon emissions in the UK is frankly by the by if we do not also succeed in protecting forests in th…”

“You have mentioned a couple of times a working paper, which I believe was published by your Department last year, about community ownership, community benefit and standardising that. It was going to look at shared ownership as a standard offer to communities hosting renewable energy. As far as I am aware, there has bee…”

“Minister, you spoke about your approach to achieving carbon budget 7 being focused on avoiding risk by leaning toward technology where possible rather than behaviour change, in order to get where we need to. We have also spoken a lot about electrification, but of course, electrification itself will require behaviour ch…”

“To take a slightly different angle, and again thinking about transport in particular, the Government’s CB7 is predicated very much on reducing emissions in transport through moving people into electric cars, much more so than on modal shift into public transport. Again, that approach, which is reliant on electrificatio…”

“Okay. That brings me on to probably my last question. Obviously, I completely agree that we are only going to reach net zero if we bring the public with us. Do you feel that your approach is doing enough at this stage to make sure that the low-carbon options in all sorts of aspects of our lives are affordable for peopl…”