Speeches by Billington.

“And Miatta.”

“That comes to my second question. Stephanie, in relation to your experience about citizens’ juries—which I have contributed to by giving testament and so forth in the assembly that Luke oversaw before I came to this place. I know and understand the purpose and so forth of citizens’ assemblies, but it does strike me tha…”

“I cannot remember all the things that I wanted to ask in relation to this. Lorraine, it strikes me that what you are sort of saying, I think, is that this is not a comms problem, this is a policy design problem.”

“I cannot remember all the things that I wanted to ask in relation to this. Lorraine, it strikes me that what you are sort of saying, I think, is that this is not a comms problem, this is a policy design problem.”

“Forgive me, market research does that too. People get quite a lot out of market research, including language, policy, design and so forth. It is not just about your brand, is it?”

“That comes to my second question. Stephanie, in relation to your experience about citizens’ juries—which I have contributed to by giving testament and so forth in the assembly that Luke oversaw before I came to this place. I know and understand the purpose and so forth of citizens’ assemblies, but it does strike me tha…”

“I totally understand about sortition, and I understand about representation and all of that kind of thing. I also know that in some of those circumstances it is particularly challenging to make sure that the most disadvantaged and the most excluded get the same level of confidence; they do not have the same level of ca…”

“Where do you see the Government in terms of their attitude towards adopting those kind of tactics? As we have agreed that this is fundamentally a policy problem rather than a comms problem, are the Government open to using those strategies to design policies that might help the most vulnerable and most excluded?”

“This is all very interesting, but it goes back to Melanie’s point about lack of leadership and slowing things down. We have accountable democratic institutions at local level: they are called councils. What role do you see for councils and what problems are they currently experiencing in being able to make sure that th…”

“Simply to do the processes that they are already legally able to do like, for example, process planning applications?”

“Can I just ask a couple of other questions? One is very specifically on therefore putting scientists and academics aside for one moment for some of the reasons that we have discussed, who would be effective, trusted messengers to be able to give people confidence that climate action is something that they can be part o…”

“One last question, which is going to sound weird in the context of local stuff, is the politics of despair, which is driven by, “Yes, but what about China?” which is undermining almost all of our policy arguments. However many thousand people died of heat stress this summer, people’s feelings of powerlessness are one o…”

“Will my hon. Friend use this opportunity to remind the House how many women and girls are vulnerable to people they know, as distinct from people they do not know? Will she also use this opportunity to condemn elected politicians who peddle misinformation about who is most at risk and where the targets really are?”

“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, which is detailed, practical and focused on outcomes. That is in stark contrast to the ludicrous, back-of-a-fag-packet policy of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who claimed yesterday that he would simultaneously nationalise half the water industry, without knowing…”

“So you would include decommissioning costs as part of the evidence that you will provide when talking about making decisions on different technologies, particularly when it comes to heat, which is a big problem?”

“I have one final question. Bearing in mind that the political consensus on achieving net zero as part of our climate change trajectory has broken down, how do you envisage you will be able to navigate that landscape now that we no longer have the political consensus that we used to have on achieving this in a timely fa…”

“It is interesting, talking about locking in technologies. How far does your evidence extend when, for example, talking about hydrogen? If we do not have hydrogen, what if we have a gas network that is becoming increasingly a stranded asset and the costs of dealing with that are a consequence of climate change action an…”

“It is nice to see you. You have talked about this being about presenting the facts and being apolitical. Facts might be indisputable but judgments, which are what policies end up being made on, are nuanced and they are based on balancing competing interests. How will you navigate that if decisions are made that actions…”

“I am going to be a bit mean now, but it is probably worthwhile.”

“We also know there is a cost of doing nothing. Should the CCC be talking about that a bit more?”