"If it were true that better infrastructure for the north would suck the lifeblood out of the region, would it not be right to close the M6? Perhaps that strategy would make the north really prosperous...." David Mowat - View Speech
"My hon. Friend has just said that phase 2 finishes in Manchester, which indeed it does as far as the business case and the benefits statement KPMG produced are concerned, yet under phase 2 we are building a 40 km spur north of Manchester. I wonder about the logic of …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"Just to reinforce the point made by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell), I think the United Nations has latterly described the use of wheat for petrol as a “crime against humanity”, which I think sums up where we are on that...." David Mowat - View Speech
"I think hydrogen technology works extremely well, but the issue is that hydrogen infrastructure does not exist anywhere. Some countries have tried to develop hydrogen infrastructure; Iceland is an example. The difficulty is that infrastructure exists for petrol cars but not for hydrogen. That is what will stop the use …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"I am not totally certain that I understood the thrust of what was said about rainforests. Was the point being made that it is good to convert rainforest into soya for use in transport?..." David Mowat - View Speech
"On the point about electric cars, does the hon. Gentleman accept the point that was made earlier? Given that 70% of our electricity is produced from fossil fuels—most of that from coal—electric cars are actually less carbon-friendly than petroleum cars at the moment, and will be for some considerable time...." David Mowat - View Speech
"That is true, but in terms of carbon production, it is arithmetically inevitable that if we produce electricity from coal and then use that electricity to make a car go, with the losses that take place in each of those stages, we will use more carbon. I am not saying …..." David Mowat - View Speech
"I will make one final point. Of course it depends on where the electricity comes from, and sometime soon we might have more carbon-free nuclear at a scale that will enable electric cars to be carbon-friendly. However, at the moment, 75% of our electricity—this is broadly true of the rest …..." David Mowat - View Speech