Speeches by Hoare.

“I just wanted to ask where the balance falls. Mr Therkelsen, you mentioned the creation and establishment of what I would describe as accidental habitats a moment ago. When parcels of land are used and then left undisturbed, mother nature fills the vacuum. When we are talking about remediation, which can often be very …”

“I have two quick-fire questions, if I may, for the four of you. There are targets in England and not in Wales, as we heard earlier. Why? We might start with Ms Lewis, who is boasting the finest collection of Ordnance Survey Landranger maps that I have ever seen. That must be the national collection.”

“We heard from the first panel this afternoon—this rang an alarm bell in my head—about the attitude towards the safety surveys that are undertaken. If the community is interested in them, they jolly well have to go and make an FOI request, dig around and find out. I just wondered what your observations were on that. Whe…”

“Maybe you could write to us on that issue, Mr Collins.”

“Maybe we will go to Mr Cox on that.”

“This is probably directed to Ms Elgar and Mr Therkelsen in the first instance, but we have had recent UK and Welsh Government funding commitments on coal tip safety. There is a new Bill going through the Senedd as well. How confident can affected communities living near to dangerous coal tips be that they will be safe …”

“Just on that, are you persuaded by the timeliness of real‑time monitoring? When one overlays the increased rainfall as a result of climate change on top, for example, will the triaging be reliable? My anxiety is that it is always going to be a little bit passive.”

“It needs to be preventative and precautionary, effectively.”

“There would be no point in doing it otherwise.”

“You would have a presumption of public accessibility.”

“Mr Cox, do you have anything to add?”

“Ms De Longhi, do you have a view on sunlight and transparency?”

“Should it be out there for all interested parties to be able to see rather than requiring people to go rootling around to find it?”

“I appreciate that. I was thinking of recommendations that this Committee might want to make in its report, casting forward. Thank you for your answers on that. This next question may be to Mr Banton to start with. What have you identified as the barriers for preventing opencast mines, such as the one at Merthyr, from b…”

“Let me just pause there on the bond point, which I take. It is almost held in an escrow account, if one will. My understanding was that it might be that the sum held is fortuitously equal to or less than the cost of remediation, in which case everybody is very happy. Was it ever necessarily seen, de facto, that the amo…”

“Whose collar gets felt for not monitoring an agreed programme of contemporaneous remediation as one moves from phase 1 to phase 2?”

“Let me direct my final question to Ms Lewis, if I may. It is my whip hand question. I do not know if you heard the first panel. If you did not, let me just regurgitate it slightly. Very often, where industrial processes have taken place, accidental habitats have been created as magnets and harbours for biodiversity and…”

“Over what time span was this professional negligence—one can only describe it as such—taking place?”

“I am always endorsed by the fact that Mr Robinson thinks I have talked nonsense. There must be a kernel of truth in what I have said.”

“Yes. Apologies if that was not clear.”