"What a number of countries have done—the UK was in the vanguard of this—was to move away from maceration of day-old chicks towards the use of carbon dioxide and argon gas as a means of dispatching them. However, I think we could accelerate the process of identifying the eggs through …..." George Eustice - View Speech
"As a Cornish MP, I have long been aware of the challenges created for our aquatic environment by storm overflows. When I became Secretary of State in February 2020, I instructed officials to change the strategic policy statement for Ofwat to give the issue greater priority.
"The hon. Lady delivered her comments with characteristic passion, but she was wrong to say that the Government had not prioritised this issue. Had she listened to my response to the urgent question, she would have heard that when I became Secretary of State this was one of the first …..." George Eustice - View Speech
"My hon. Friend raises an important issue, and it was only when this Government required increased monitoring that we discovered the scale of the problem. The reality is that this has been a problem for some time, but successive Governments down the decades have not had the right monitoring in …..." George Eustice - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman’s contribution is characteristically political—[Interruption.] Let me say that this is the first Government to increase monitoring so that we knew there was a problem. This is the first Government to set out a £56 billion investment plan to tackle this. No previous Government, not …..." George Eustice - View Speech
"My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have prioritised investments through the new strategic policy statement for Ofwat, which means that this issue is being prioritised for the first time ever. He is also right that private capital has helped to raise the money to lead to infrastructure improvements. …..." George Eustice - View Speech
"Quite simply, because this is the first Government in history to require all of these 15,000 storm overflows to be properly monitored, and now that we have that data, this is the first Government ever to bring prosecutions against those companies, and they will respond to that. This is also …..." George Eustice - View Speech
"Our Environment Act addresses all the substantive points that the hon. Gentleman raised. As I said in my statement, Ofwat is currently consulting on an ability to regulate the dividends that companies pay and to link that to their environmental performance.
"I commend my hon. Friend for her role in progressing this agenda and for the work that she did on the Environment Act, which sets out all the new powers that we need to address this challenge. She is absolutely right: we introduced powers under the Act to give Ofwat …..." George Eustice - View Speech