Speeches by Reed.

“That is right, yes.”

“There will be some level of material weight, but there is a consultation under way, and I should not anticipate with my own views what the outcome of that will be. We want to hear from the people who we have invited to participate, and we will get that within weeks. However, the intention is that by making this additio…”

“Absolutely. It will identify land that will be most appropriate for solar where it does not, for instance, damage food production in our most productive agricultural land. With that better information available, better decisions can be taken. Yes, I envisage it doing that.”

“There are a lot of ways that we are giving advice to farmers. We are maintaining that, but we have the environmental land management schemes as well. We are working with the sector. I made some announcements earlier this year about a farming road map to support the entire sector to transition to models of food producti…”

“Again, when we publish the refreshed EIP, this is going to be a significant part of it. I share the criticisms of the fact that not enough was done under the previous Government on air quality, which is what the OEP was referring to. In the work that we are doing to refresh it, you will have a much clearer sense of wha…”

“How is air quality being achieved now with enforcement?”

“We have a piece of work looking at regulation as well. I cannot make the announcement on that because we are still assessing that, but in a matter of weeks we will have more to say on that. As I say, we are reviewing the EIP targets. That will give you a lot more data. To clarify, it is the EIP targets, not the EA targ…”

“Again, I should not anticipate what will be in the EIP review because it is not yet drafted, but you will get much greater clarity around that. Obviously, we are not bound by what the EU is doing but, of course, we will look at what decisions it is taking to see whether there is anything there that we wish to learn fro…”

“Yes, we are working with those two Departments on the air quality strategy, but again until it is announced I cannot announce the resourcing—the funding in particular that will go with it—because I would be in deep trouble with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is only right, in any case, that until we have the spend…”

“The new Secretary of State for Transport and I were engaging directly with the Mayor of Greater Manchester over its clean air plan as well. There is real, genuinely close working going on across our Departments on that.”

“I have been to Hastings, and I have seen for myself some of the problems there. I have listened to the views of residents and businesses furious about the state that our water and sewerage system and water infrastructure have got into. The Government have taken a lot of action over that already. The Water (Special Meas…”

“I asked Sir Jon—and he has published the remit for his work—to look at regulation and the regulator and other factors affecting the success of the water sector and water infrastructure. He is looking at that. I will not speculate on what he might propose; that is for him genuinely working fully independently and suppor…”

“There is an open bidding process for that. I am pleased that we were able to secure that. I think that the bidding process has concluded now, hasn’t it?”

“On the circular economy plan, we have a taskforce set up to develop our strategy for the circular economy. I see this as an important part of our agenda in Government and certainly in DEFRA. By moving to a circular economy in the way that many of our global competitors are already doing in Europe and in North America, …”

“Previously, we had bits of paper that were not being developed into anything in the real world. What we are doing is we have put together a taskforce and we are engaging with sectors. We are going to develop the regulatory road map. A strategy sitting on shelves would not deliver anything. We have an agenda to move our…”

“You are right. I recognise and share some of those feelings about how waste is dealt with now. That is why we need the investment in far better facilities that can identify and extract materials and then repurpose them so that they can be used again. In sectors as wide ranging as construction, textiles, and potentially…”

“You are right, and not just in other countries—here as well. If you speak to rural communities and landowners in rural areas, they will tell you how much rubbish is being collected from domestic or construction sites and just dumped on their land. We need much tougher enforcement and stronger sanctions, and I will have…”

“DRS is due to come into force in October 2027.”

“The principles behind this are prevention and polluter pays. Those are principles that were established through the EPPS, to which the previous Government subscribed as well as the current one. There has been cost shunting, effectively, because it is left to local government—and, therefore, the taxpayer—to pay to clean…”

“I would very much like to get to a point where we have a single scheme across the whole UK. The Welsh Government have chosen to adopt a different approach, but we have a scheme that will now operate across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is the right decision to have taken for those countries. It is compli…”