Speeches by Tufnell.

“Just taking this a bit further, in August you appointed FTI Consulting as the administrator in case of special administration. What progress have you made on your contingency planning?”

“From the Government’s perspective, what circumstances does a water company have to get to in order to meet the threshold for special administration?”

“Do you have a good case for Thames Water?”

“Just taking a step back for a second, under what conditions would the Government put a water company into special administration?”

“Russell, just quickly? I am conscious of time.”

“Does anyone else want to come in on that?”

“Is there an element of different areas in Wales, different regions, having a speciality and a comparative advantage in pushing that?”

“I want to build on the point about where bureaucrats want the locations to be and where markets or businesses want to be located, particularly in the context of collaborative working across regions in Wales. I will start with Andrew and how you see collaboration across regions working. You might comment on regions perh…”

“May I ask Howard about what you just heard from Andrew, in terms of having like-minded or similar firms building off each other? How does that relate to the comments that you made just now about using the Taiwan example of the semiconductor industry and the success that that has had?”

“Is the Taiwan example using clusters as an economic driver as well?”

“We have talked about biosecurity. I wanted to touch on bluetongue. In terms of the specific actions that the UK Government are taking to prevent the incursion of bluetongue into Wales, I understand there were two cases of bluetongue in Herefordshire about five days ago.”

“I wanted to touch on the Indian and US trade deals. What actions were taken to promote Welsh agriculture in the implementation and negotiation of those deals?”

“I refer the Committee to my entry in the register of interests that I declared on 4 June, the first session.”

“We have heard from the FUW that there has been a particular wealth of barriers, complications, logistical challenges and high costs in terms of disruption to the border as a result of the measures that the Welsh Government have taken. What conversations have you had specifically with the Welsh Government on that?”

“You talked about trade deals in the past and a different way of doing things. Has there been a sea change in Government as a result of lessons learned from the Australian and New Zealand trade deals? You touched on it with my colleagues, but I was wondering in terms of those negotiations.”

“I appreciate that. I would just like to push a little further in terms of relying on officials. I appreciate the sea change and the change in Government. Perhaps this moves on in terms of the question, but I was just wondering what changes there have been in respect of Government Departments and officials in terms of l…”

“And the way that you have set up this bidding process means that they effectively get preferential treatment?”

“So you cannot give a figure as to how much debt there will be on day one?”

“The class A creditors are going to raise £2 billion more of debt. Do you think that more debt is the solution?”

“Why are you not being transparent about that process? That is the key thing here, is it not? Ultimately, we are sitting here responsible for taxpayers’ money, and we are responsible for customers in respect of Thames Water. We sit here to represent our constituents. The onus is effectively that your buck stops with the…”