Speeches by Creagh.

“Indeed.”

“I would indeed. The National Wealth Fund has a capitalisation of £28 billion, and an additional £5.8 billion that is going to be committed over this Parliament. It has a target mobilisation ratio of every £1 it puts in raising £3. If we invest £6 billion in this Parliament and raise another £18 billion, that is going t…”

“I will.”

“Let me tell you about how many credits they have bought, while we look for that deep in the weeds of what we have here. It became mandatory for major applications on 12 February and mandatory for small sites on 2 April, so this is a policy at a very early stage. Early estimates back in 2021 said that the market could b…”

“It turns out we prepared.”

“We will be reporting to Parliament, I believe, in February or March 2025 on those six credits and on our thoughts on where and how they could be spent. I don’t have a monopoly on wisdom, and I am very keen to hear the Committee’s ideas. For example, where do you think they could usefully be spent? As to Sarah Gibson’s …”

“Let me say a couple of things. First, how many units have been bought by developers in lieu of making onsite or offsite net gains of their own? That is where they were unable to do it on the site. That is 30 allocations, which is 44 units and 9.9 hectares—so 10 hectares. One of them was for a hedgerow in the Wakefield …”

“When I came into post, I was quite sceptical about biodiversity net gain, and I feel that I have had a very rich and rapid education in it. What I would say is that it is a tool to unlock investment in housing and to unlock some of the site-specific planning objections that can sometimes block housing. It is very early…”

“I am much less sceptical, yes. Progress has been made.”

“We have given £35 million to local authorities in the first two years to scale up their often denuded planning departments. That is one of the functions that has really suffered from the long squeeze on local authority finances—our colleague is up there now talking about the funding settlement for local authorities. In…”

“I don’t know. I might ask officials to come in while I have a think about that. I do not know that we have thought about devolution. Do you have anything to say on BNG?”

“As to your point, Chair, on the ecologists. We do have a national shortage of ecologists, and I think one of the issues has been that people don’t really understand green careers. We have a national shortage of people who can measure and understand sustainability. It is a massive and emerging growth area. We need to co…”

“I have been chasing that.”

“We are going to have Natural England publish a policy evaluation report next year, which will look at the process to understand the extent to which the policy is being implemented effectively. It will look at the impact, to understand whether it is achieving its stated outcomes on nature, planning and people, to your p…”

“Just on the register, there is a publicly accessible register for offsite units, so it is about ensuring that people are aware of how to access that.”

“The vast majority of BNG has happened onsite. There have been only two planning applications where it has happened offsite, and I have asked about them. One of them is in Wakefield, and it is the building of a warehouse. What we may be uncovering is that local people do not know where the BNG has happened in their loca…”

“I think so. We have a huge housing crisis, and we know that we have to crack on with building homes. We know that we take far too long to build homes in this country, and some of the proposals in there are about ensuring that rules around nutrient neutrality and biodiversity net gain are seen as enablers, rather than b…”

“I have been contacted by another former member of this Select Committee, Caroline Lucas, on that very issue, and it was on my to-do list. I am afraid that the recess has come upon us rather too quickly. I am aware of the issue. As an extra thing to think about, I will be writing to the Skills Minister about the followi…”

“Yes, we have lost plants, haven’t we? It is now human biology, not really plant biology. I totally take that on board.”

“Absolutely. Buying the statutory credits is the option of last resort for developers, and the Secretary of State may use that income for the purpose of habitat enhancement, for the purchase of land with a view to carrying out habitat enhancement, or for the administration of the credit sales services. That income is he…”