Speeches by Creagh.

“The way the Government are structured, there are these silos. You might argue that they are artificial because actually everything is connected and everything relates to each other. I am not the Water Minister but water is an important part of what we are trying to do in the land use framework in terms of cleaner river…”

“Change is hard. One of the things I say is that no one has ever been sacked for doing nothing, so it is easy to just do status quo and have more claims on insurance and more crop failures.”

“Yes.”

“I would disagree with that characterisation. We have a vision that is about using our land better; it is about continuing to enable farmers to grow the brilliant food that they grow, but stating clearly that climate change is real. There is a loss of the political consensus around that, which I bitterly regret. One of …”

“It is version one, so let us see how it develops. Let us see how people use it. It has only been out a week. Over time it will help people make decisions about passing on, selling and so on; they will make decisions about continuation and what things where. There is a range of advice and grants available. In the summer…”

“About 8% will change: 6% to meet climate and nature targets, 1% for energy and 1% for housing; 4% will stay in production. People have always bought and sold their land and used it for different things. One use changes and another use is found for it; that is just the normal way of running a land-based business.”

“We have to look at more horticultural production and more fruit production in order not to be reliant, or to reduce our reliance, on imports and exports from other countries because, of course, that adds extra costs. We have talked about productivity gains rather than intensification: it is about getting more out of th…”

“I definitely think you should always continue to lobby until you get what you want: that is my very strong advice, not an official DEFRA position. But you are right: there is this artificial construction about this division between land and sea, and this leads to areas of neglect. One of the areas of neglect is saltmar…”

“These are animals, they are not toys; so once you have introduced them, you have to be prepared for them to move. You cannot fence them. Lynx is a dangerous wild animal that you would need to have in a fenced enclosure. I do not think there is any landowner that wants to do a big enough fenced enclosure. There is a who…”

“It is an incredibly important body and I have an extremely good and productive working relationship with it. It has brilliant scientists. It is absolutely vital, not least with our overseas territory biodiversity strategy; it was really pivotal to that. The quinquennial review looking at what needs to change is a very …”

“Let me come on to species. I do not have the file or any of my briefings open, so I am speaking off the cuff. We have no plans to introduce lynx. I want to do things that will work and that have community buy-in. The beavers need to be the right animal in the right place. They are not going to be released next to railw…”

“With great science and great data. At the moment we hoard all that knowledge and information. As I mentioned with the flood risk map, I know where it is, but the farmer’s son didn’t know. Why should everybody not have access? It is about radical access, and particularly combined authority. We do planning permission at …”

“We have plans to introduce more species. Everyone is obsessed with charismatic megafauna like lynx and sea eagles, but actually we are interested in butterflies, fungi, insects and stag beetles and all these small creatures that have been under huge pressure.”

“One of the sectors that we are looking at is horticulture because we import an awful lot of our broccoli, tomatoes and fruits, so there is the opportunity there to innovate; I do not know if innovation and more greenhouses count as intensification. There will be some land use changes. If you look at the rain maps and t…”

“I thought you would welcome the stag beetles.”

“It is about allowing access to people who are making planning decisions and people who want to build. The days of councils not having a housing plan and just not saying where they are going to build houses are over. What that led to, particularly in counties, was developers buying farmland, putting in for planning perm…”

“I want farmers to make a profit; that is how they sustain their businesses. The evidence from solar is that you can achieve biodiversity net gain of up to 300%, so it can be incredibly biodiversity-rich. On some farms, if the solar panels are at a particular angle, they also graze animals alongside and the livestock en…”

“Yes, that is capital grants just through one programme: the Farming Innovation Programme. Of course, agroforestry is an innovation because if you are planting trees and shading your crops, the answer is that you actually shelter the early wheat from the winds and the hottest sun, which in some cases can be in May. So t…”

“As you say, we have pledged to legislate. Our understanding is this requires primary legislation, so we would need to wait for a primary Bill slot to open up. We recognise the need for the horticulture sector to be able to have certainty on this issue to plan and to inform investment decisions and, of course, we have t…”

“I understand it is mostly the Netherlands where the imported peat comes from; it also has tonnes of lowland peat. It obviously has a huge horticultural industry. On the carbon budgets, we do not know the answer to that.”