Topical Questions

Question

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities. Recent investigations have shown that a lack of investment in drainage infrastructure has contributed to significant flooding in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. How will water companies including Thames Water be held to account where their lack of investment blights communities through repeated flooding?

Question

I wish a merry Christmas to everyone in the House, and also to everyone in our farming, food, hospitality and water sectors. But not everyone will be able to celebrate Christmas. In recent weeks, a farmer took himself off to a remote part of his farm and killed himself. The message he left his family is that he did this because he feared becoming a financial burden to his family because of changes to inheritance tax. This is the human cost of the figures that the Secretary of State provides so casually. What does the Secretary of State say to that grieving family?

Question

How heartless and how extraordinary that the Secretary of State is more discomfited by being presented with the facts of the consequences of his policy than the reality of what this policy ensures. I was a Minister for seven and a half years, and I have never seen a policy have the consequences that this one has. Will he collect data on a monthly basis of suicides from farmers, farming families, landowners and family businesses, so that we, the House and the outside community can understand the human costs of this tax policy before it comes into force?

Question

I recently met farmers in the northern parishes of my constituency, and they told me about the urgent need for improved water management to protect farmland. They want to establish an internal drainage board for flood management, but they cannot take action to set it up until the necessary statutory instrument is in place. Given the importance of establishing an IDB in my area, will the Minister commit to working with me and stakeholders to reduce flood risks, and will she outline when the statutory instrument for an IDB in my area might be put before the House?

Question

A farmer in my constituency tells me that even in a good year he is lucky to see much beyond £20,000 in profit. With margins as wafer thin as that, regular farming barely qualifies as investable at all. The risk of losing a huge slice of that farm to inheritance tax at random intervals would not only go to putting this generation out of business, but go a long way towards ensuring that they can never be replaced. Does the Minister agree that this measure—

Question

Merry Christmas to you, Mr Speaker, and to your team and to colleagues across the House. My constituents have long felt the impacts of flooding, and many residents have been isolated in rural areas after a storm. I have recently produced a flooding report. Will the Minister meet me to discuss it, so that I can support the work of the Department?

Question

Does the Secretary of State agree that the best gift he could give my constituents this Christmas would be a total ban on water bill rises until South West Water bosses finally end this scandal?

Question

In that context, what more can the Secretary of State do to push for his Department to get that money out the door in a way that the previous Government did not?

Question

Will the Government tell us what they are doing to give the EA teeth?

Question

What action are this Government taking to promote the purchasing of British-grown and seasonal produce through their public procurement framework?

Question

It would be helpful if the Secretary of State encouraged Sir Jon to engage with parliamentarians across the House. The necessary changes that he has outlined will take time, however. The truth of the matter is that if those who currently have responsibility were to change their culture and focus on outcomes for customers, rather than their own internal processes, we might see earlier improvements.

Question

I recently met the Alde and Ore Estuary Trust, which has long been campaigning and fundraising to refurbish and secure flood defences on the Alde and Ore estuary. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the trust's projects and the barriers to progress?

Question

Last year I visited the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust's Allerton project in Loddington. May I commend the contribution that it can make to defining sustainable intensification of agricultural food production? Perhaps it would be a suitable place for a DEFRA ministerial away day early in the new year, to help with the use strategy.