Speeches by Reynolds.

“I would have to be satisfied that one of those conditions were met to take that step.”

“We cannot answer that question, I’m afraid. We cannot say now that there would not be circumstances in the future. Of course we cannot say that. The reason we have the Water Industry Act 1991 that sets out these two different scenarios is for a case where this might come to pass, but we cannot say now what will happen …”

“Okay.”

“Let me say very clearly—I know that Ms Dollimore asked about the coastal communities—that this is definitely our responsibility. DEFRA has overall policy responsibility for coastal erosion and risk management around coastal erosion. You have talked about the shoreline management plans, and I will say a bit more about t…”

“Let us take that away. That is something we would have to give some thought to. But let us come back to you on the specifics and on the broader point.”

“We will take that away. The list of things that you mentioned are obviously our responsibility and we acknowledge that many of the challenges that coastal communities face—coastal erosion being one of them but not the only one; there are also flooding, water pollution—do sit in our purview. Let us come back to you in m…”

“We can come back to you.”

“Minister Eagle is leading this work, and she has met with a number of the organisations. I do not think that we have a specific problem.”

“That is a very good question. David, do you want to come in on that?”

“It will be broad, and we are looking across the piece at how we can best leverage this money to help those communities.”

“Sure. We have just finished a consultation on extending restrictions within 42 English MPAs, marine protected areas. We are doing that in a careful way that follows the science. David, do you want to say something?”

“We want to look at new technology and equipment to modernise fleets. We want to look at training and skills. We also want to look at promoting and supporting the seafood sector, which obviously will benefit from any agreement we get on SPS because at the moment it is either very difficult or, frankly, in some cases, im…”

“Angela Eagle is leading the work on this, but I have also met with Mike Cohen from the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. The fishing coastal growth fund is at the top of the Committee’s discussions and we are still working on the details of how that works. We are looking at the Pride in Place MHCLG fund…”

“Let us take this away and come back to you and tell you when that is going to happen.”

“I have not, no.”

“Let me have a discussion with Baroness Hayman about that and come back to the Committee.”

“You mentioned how sophisticated Germany is. If we have a successful SPS agreement, as part of it we would then have access to the EU system that we lost. I would suggest that would bring benefits rather than the opposite.”

“Thank you for the report that you laid on this, and for shining a light on this. I know you did a visit to Dover. Emily has more detail on this.”

“It would be a cross-Governmental effort, and a lot of the work will have to be done in my Department. We are having conversations about how we do that across Government.”

“Agri-tech is an interesting area, and if we do want to boost profitability, we want to be at the forefront, but I have not thought about the issue you have raised in any detail.”