Kerry McCarthy
MP for Bristol East · Labour · United Kingdom
“We see that in four main ways: physical risks, including floods, wildfires, droughts and storms; transition risks as economies move away from high-carbon industries; nature-related risks affecting food production and natural resources; and systemic risks, where shocks spread rapidly across sectors and markets.”
“The glaciers of the third pole function as Asia’s water tower, feeding major river systems that support nearly 2 billion people. When rising temperatures accelerate glacial melt, the consequences extend far beyond the mountains.”
“Following the heatwaves and wildfires across Europe this summer and the destruction caused by the glacier collapse and catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet, the message is becoming impossible to ignore: the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation are real, not some distant future threat.”
“Personally, I cannot see that Rosebank is compatible with meeting our climate objectives, but I recognise that the process should be followed. Green Alliance has reported that the gas being wasted in the North sea would be enough to heat 570,000 homes.”
“I too worked in the financial markets, although I think I have done a better job of hiding it in my 21 years in Parliament. I was more on the debt market side. In fact, I am so old that I was part of the salvage operation for Barings bank when it went under. That brings me to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about regulation.”
“My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I very much agree with the point that he just made. We have some excellent, innovative businesses in Bristol that came up through the Science Creates innovation hubs and attracted private capital.”
The complete record
Every one of 6,322 lines we hold for Kerry McCarthy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 30 of 127.
“It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mr Rosindell. I am very pleased that the Petitions Committee managed to secure a slot for this important debate, fittingly at the start of Road Safety Week. I hope that we have been able to do justice to the topic this afternoon, for the sake of the families and friends of victims of driving offences, particularly the families and friends of Matt, Paul and Ryan, some of whom are here today. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) on a thorough exposition of the reasons behind the petition and why a change in the law is needed, and on going further and meeting the families and friends. It is really important—I say this as a former member of the Petitions Committee—that we do justice to the petitioners, which is not always the case in these debates.”
“Does the Minister have any details on how often that has been invoked? It is one thing to say that they could be charged with perverting the course of justice. Does it ever happen?”
“I do not want to rehearse all the arguments that we had on the Environment Bill measures, other than to say it is very disappointing that the Government have repeatedly failed to back efforts by the Lords to protect our waters. I suspect that we will hear more from the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson on that.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on her introductory remarks. As has been said, England has the worst river quality in Europe: 0% of rivers meet good chemical standards, and only 14% meet good ecological standards. We heard how raw sewage was dumped into rivers more than 400,000 times last year. I pay tribute to campaigners such as Surfers Against Sewage for the role that they play with the ocean conservation all-party parliamentary group. They have been pressing on this issue for a very long time. I also pay tribute to the indefatigable Feargal Sharkey.”
“I would rather not, because I have only a few minutes, and the right hon. Lady has already spoken. I will talk about the local situation, but first, I want to express concern about reports that raw sewage spills in Honiton are threatening the first wild beaver colony to live on an English river for 400 years, which is part of a trial approved by the Minister’s Department. I hope she will agree that it is wonderful that beavers are being reintroduced into our natural environment, and I am very concerned about the threat to them. In Bristol, particular issues have arisen recently. Conham River Park is a popular wild swimming spot for local residents, and the—”
“As I was saying before I was very rudely interrupted: I wanted to talk about particular local concerns. I pay tribute to The Bristol Cable for doing an excellent report on the problem, from which I will quote fairly extensively. There are two areas in Bristol where it seems to be of particular concern. One is the Conham River Park; this is a popular wild swimming spot, and one of my staff went—”
“This situation cannot just be allowed to slide. I am not quite sure what the process is, but the campaigners at Warleigh Weir and Conham River Park are campaigning for designated bathing water status. Does the Minister have any advice on how they can achieve that? How will she ensure that rivers in our area are suitable for swimming in?”
“It has suggested that it was agricultural run-off, wildlife or whatever, but I would argue that sewage bears a fair part of the responsibility. The Conham Bathing Water Group has carried out tests and found that, at their worst, E. coli levels were over 20 times what the World Health Organisation deems to be a sufficient level for people to go swimming. We know that the cost of changing the sewerage infrastructure would be massive and would be added to bills, but the problem has got too bad for us not to seize the initiative and act. The Environment Agency has recently given the green light for water companies to dump even more sewage into the rivers due to Brexit-related chemical shortages. As has been said, we need a properly resourced Environment Agency and long-term, legally enforceable targets on water quality.”
“I will give up on trying to talk about Conham River Park for a moment and talk instead about Warleigh Weir near Bath, which is another popular swimming spot. Multiple cases of sickness have been reported in swimmers there. In one of the most recent incidents, which took place a week ago, a storm overflow 4 km upstream had started releasing raw sewage into the Avon. Data since then—as I said, The Bristol Cable is reporting on this issue—show that sewage was dumped from the overflow 67 times last year. In total, Wessex Water, which I think covers the Minister’s area as well, released sewage into the natural environment more than 14,000 times in the first eight months of this year. It has to be said that Wessex Water has denied that this would cause swimmers to fall ill.”
“I had a friend who signed up at the age of 16 and served for eight years in the Balkans, Northern Ireland and the first Gulf war. About 10 days ago we lost him, after he had battled with mental ill health for perhaps 20 years. The Government talk a great deal about the programmes to help veterans with their mental health, but there does not seem to be anyone who is really reaching out to them. I wonder whether, through the poppy appeal and the Royal British Legion, more could be done to try to reach out to veterans so that they do not feel cast adrift once they leave the services.”
“With COP under way, the Government should be sending the strongest signals on transport decarbonisation. On the one hand we have the chief scientific adviser telling people to fly less, as did a report from the nudge unit that the Government quickly deleted and suppressed, but on the other hand the Chancellor is cutting air passenger duty on domestic flights and the Prime Minister flew back from COP on a private jet for a supposedly urgent appointment that turned out to be a dinner for Telegraph journalists. Does the Secretary of State agree with the chief scientific adviser, or does he agree with the Chancellor and the Prime Minister? He cannot do both.”
“I would like to know from the Leader of the House why things could not have been tied up and why, when the Delegated Legislation Committee was cancelled, we could not have been told that it was going to be in the Chamber.”
“As shadow roads Minister, I had spent this week preparing to speak in a Committee on Monday on motor vehicles regulations—that was slightly complicated by the fact that one of the statutory instruments did not seem to have been published. We were told yesterday that that Committee would not go ahead. As a result, I had a conversation with the chair of the all-party group on trailer and towing safety, our neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth). It would have saved an awful lot of time and an awful lot of conversation and speculation yesterday if we had been told that the reason why the Committee was pulled was that it would be listed for the main Chamber on Monday instead. To be frank, this has upset rather a lot of people who were hoping that the measures on trailers were not going to go ahead.”
“This is just another example of the botched Brexit deal failing to take into account the needs of a small but very important industry. The industry has now completely collapsed; 30,000 tonnes of seed have not been exported and £13.5 million of trade is no longer in place. What is the Minister doing to ensure that an equivalence deal is reached with the EU as soon as possible so that trade can resume?”
“As chair of the all-party group on small island developing states, I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister acknowledged the imminent threat to them in his statement. Two things would really help them: one is to have access to the finance that hopefully is now on the table—because, as countries with very limited resources, it is very difficult, they tell me, to get their hands on the money and to do the bids—and the other is to develop blue finance. We know that the City of London leads on green finance. Blue finance for the blue economy and marine conservation would really help them, and we could take a lead on that.”
“Rather than talk about competitive bids for funding, could we talk for a moment about mainstream council finances? We know that this Budget will significantly shift the burden to local authorities and require a significant rise in council tax, which people can ill afford. We also know that councils’ finances have not fully recovered and they have not been fully compensated. What is the Chancellor doing to talk to local councils about the pressures that they are facing?”
“When a child has a parent who goes to prison, too often the support services are all focused on the needs of the prisoner and are run by the Ministry of Justice. Is the Children’s Minister prepared to meet the charity Children Heard and Seen and me, so that they can hear the views and support needs of the children who are left behind, particularly where parental contact might not be appropriate?”
“Finally, I would be failing in my duty as a west country MP if I did not mention cider. However, the 40-litre threshold for draught duty relief overwhelmingly favours large breweries. So on behalf of the smaller breweries and cider producers in the area, which often supply 30-litre kegs and would therefore be excluded from this measure, I urge a rethink from the Chancellor on this. Lowering the threshold to include any container would be a simple fix with huge benefits for independent businesses, and I am sure that my constituents would raise their glasses to the Chancellor if he did that.”
“Also, the trumpeted rise in the budget for 16 to 19-year-olds is no rise at all when we look at the rising student numbers in that cohort. This comes at a time when the underfunding of colleges over recent years has already forced them to narrow their curriculum and put more pressure on an already stretched workforce. St Brendan’s College in my constituency has been trying really hard not to make those cuts, but the pressure is becoming very difficult for it to manage. I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of an £1.8 billion fund to develop brownfield land, which, it is claimed, will bring 1,500 hectares of brownfield land into use. I hope this means that Bristol will finally get the funding we need to unlock the development of Temple Quarter in the centre of the city. That could mean 10,000 new homes and 22,000 new jobs.”
“A survey by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers of 2,500 low-paid workers shows that over half of workers on less than £10 per hour are having to miss meals to pay everyday bills. Working people are being asked to pay more for less, and we are all paying the price for past Government failures. On education, we know that there are 1,000 fewer Sure Start centres now than when the Conservatives came into power. The 75 family hubs are welcome, but after a decade-long failure to invest in children’s futures, this is clearly too little, too late. It also appears that schools are expected to fund the Government’s commitment to increasing teacher starter salaries to £30,000 from existing budgets. Schools simply do not have the money to meet that commitment.”
“People were looking to the Chancellor to help them out, yet, according to the Resolution Foundation, this Budget has increased the UK’s tax burden by £3,000 a year per household. The Office for Budget Responsibility has also confirmed that the Chancellor’s underlying strategy is to put even more pressure on council tax payers, with £5.3 billion more expected by 2025. The Budget is masking the fact that the Government are seeking to take even more out of people’s pockets. There is a suggestion that the average council tax bill will be well over £2,000 in the next few years. The tax system has been rigged in favour of the wealthy, with bankers and Amazon getting a tax cut while ordinary people are being hit with national insurance. A huge opportunity to level the playing field has been missed.”
“There were two main challenges facing the Chancellor as he prepared for the Budget. One, on the eve of COP26, was to accelerate progress on tackling climate change, yet he had nothing to say on that. Instead, he cut air passenger duty on domestic flights, sending out entirely the wrong signal when he should have been investing in our rail services. It was clear that net zero could not have been further from his mind. The other challenge was to take the pressure off working people. The pandemic has hit household incomes and widened inequality. The Government have also created a perfect storm of financial pressure with the universal credit cut, the national insurance rise, energy prices soaring and food prices rising at the fastest rate for more than a decade.”
“The marine environment can play a huge role in climate mitigation, with blue carbon held in native oyster reefs, kelp forests, seagrass, salt marshes and so on. What are the Government doing to scale up the rewilding of our seas for biodiversity and blue carbon, an issue on which we could show global leadership at COP26 and at the convention next year?”
“It has taken me a while to dig out the quotation with which I wanted to intervene when my hon. Friend mentioned freeports. Bristol’s freeport bid was also rejected. According to the OBR’s document, published yesterday, the primary function of freeports is “to alter the location rather than the volume of economic activity. So the costs have been estimated on the basis of activity being displaced from elsewhere.” That feeds into our biggest concern about freeports—that they do not boost economic growth and performance overall. It is just a case of taking those from one area to another, and it means that areas like ours will miss out even more.”
“That point about freeports ties in with the Government’s approach, which seems to me to be that they want announcements that get them photo opportunities and good press releases, and the MP who managed to get the freeport can then put that on their leaflets. But freeports contribute nothing at all to the overall picture; they just take from one area and give to another, which is no way to run the economy and to try to stimulate economic growth. We need a strategy by which everyone is helped to level up.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech. I had a debate on this in December 2017, and the response I got from the Minister was very bitty, saying “You learn a little about this in citizenship, a little bit in science, a bit in geography, and when T-levels come on board, they might have a bit.” Is the hon. Member arguing that there ought to be a GCSE in environmental science, or environmental studies, or whatever he would wish to call it? Making this a strong part of the curriculum, rather than popping up here and there and not having that overview, is the way forward.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) on securing the debate. We have heard a lot of enthusiasm from the bikers in this room; it is clearly something that they feel strongly about. I confess that I have never had the opportunity to ride a motorbike.”
“I totally get that, but when a cyclist is in that little space in front of the cars at the traffic lights, sometimes people on motorbikes do not act as responsibly as they could and are not aware that bike users are more vulnerable than them. For the cyclist, they have a bigger vehicle pushing in front of them, and the smell is not great. The sooner we can move to cleaner vehicles the better.”
“On National Pothole Day in January this year, the Chancellor tweeted, “enjoy #NationalPotholeDay before they’re all gone...” He was boasting about how much money is going into addressing the problem, but we could be marking National Pothole Day for quite some time to come at the current rate. Perhaps we will get some good news about road repair funding tomorrow. I agree with the hon. Member for North Herefordshire that safety is incredibly important. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) spoke about electric motorbikes, which I will come to later. He also spoke about the smell of petrol and his colleague, the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), mentioned the noise. Those things are part of the thrill, as motorcycle organisations have said to me.”
“Pothole funding was due to be cut by an average 23%, and overall total spending on roads maintenance would drop by an average 22%. We can compare that with the massive Government road-building programme. It is important that we should be looking not just at building new roads, but at making sure the roads we have are kept in good condition. The insurance industry has raised that point with me. The vast majority of the claims it pays out are caused not by driver error but by the condition of the roads. As it stands, it will take 11 years and £11 billion to clear the backlog of potholes.”
“I have been invited to Motorcycle Live in December in Birmingham to have the opportunity to ride some of the new electric bikes, so I may decide to do that. Former Member Hazel Blears, who I think is 4 feet 10 inches—I am not tall, but she is considerably shorter than me—was a keen biker, which shows that it can be done. Perhaps I should take up the challenge. I will flag up a number of issues. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire talked about road repairs and presented a rather rosy picture of the amount of funding. It is important for motorcyclists that we keep roads in a good condition, but the money has been cut. The Government promised £1.5 billion to repair damage on roads across the country in the financial year 2020-21, but that was cut to £1.125 billion in the following financial year.”
“We certainly want motorcycles to continue on our roads, but they do need to move with the times. I hope the Minister will tell us more about how they can do that.”
“I welcome the Government’s recent announcement that they will introduce a zero-emissions vehicle mandate, but there was no mention of motorcycle manufacturers in the summary, despite the 2035 commitment to banning new petrol motorbikes and the suggestion that plug-in grant support may end sooner than that, in 2023. Will the Minister explain whether the Government want to offer the same support to motorcycle manufacturers as they are offering—to EV all-electric vehicle—car manufacturers, through the electric car mandate, which will encourage them to make the shift to producing cleaner vehicles sooner? If not, why are motorcycle manufacturers being left out? I will conclude on that point because I am keen to hear from the Minister. It has been good to hear people’s enthusiasm today.”
“Will it be published before the end of the year? The 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles was announced back in November 2020. We are still waiting for the publication of the promised consultation on a 2035 ban on petrol motorbikes. There are also no Government targets for regulating the CO 2 produced by motorbikes, unlike for cars and vans. That raises a few questions. Why are the Government allowing polluting petrol motorbikes to be sold until 2035, when there is a 2030 date for petrol cars? Will the Minister give an update on when those consultations and so on will be published? It is really important that the transition to zero-emission vehicles is smooth.”
“Finally, I want to talk about the need to decarbonise—an issue that the industry has contacted me about. Support for the industry so far, in terms of decarbonisation, has been pretty limited. The plug-in motorcycle grant, which helps support the sale of low-emission bikes, is £1,500 at the moment—less than for cars. The funding is guaranteed only up to March 2023. I was going to ask the Minister whether the Government plan to keep the grant beyond that date or, as is the case with the car plug-in grant, to reduce it year on year, but as we have the Budget tomorrow, I suspect I know what her answer would be. Will she answer this question instead? In the transport decarbonisation plan, the Government promised an action plan for zero-emission light-powered vehicles by the end of the year. We have not seen any sign of that yet.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. On the points made by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), there is a really interesting discussion to be had. The modal shift is important. Why have we not moved to moped use in the way that, say, France or Italy has? It is not as commonplace in this country—perhaps it is the weather. There is an interesting debate about road space and how we use it. We are starting to see e-scooters on our roads, there are more people cycling and a lot of town planning wants priority bus lanes. All that raises questions about who gets to use priority lanes, whether we have segregation, who is entitled to use the segregated lanes and what that means for cars—what road space is left for cars? I think we will be addressing those points more and more in the years to come.”
“As the hon. Gentleman is a vet, does he share my concern that the most popular dogs at the moment, flat-faced dogs such as pugs and various types of bulldog, have been bred to have deformities? He is talking about mutilation after a dog has been born, but does he share my concern that we should not encourage people to buy dogs that are very unhealthy because of how they have been bred?”
“Will Brazil come to the table, and what pressure will it be put under at COP? Finance is incredibly important—trying to secure that $100 billion a year—but as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on small island developing states, I would make the point that whenever I talk to those states, they say that this is not just about how much money is committed, but how they can access it. These are tiny countries with very small levels of resources.”
“It is a token effort; it is well-meaning, but unless we do something through pressure in trade negotiations and at COP to stop Bolsonaro and others in their tracks, we will be destroying a huge carbon sink. We are now in a position where the Amazon is a net emitter of carbon: we used to talk about the Amazon as being the lungs of the world, but that is no longer the case, and that is something that the UK Government could do something about. We now have the 1.5° target that we agreed at Paris, so COP should be about how we go about achieving that target, and we do need a lot of countries to set more ambitious nationally determined contributions. We are very concerned that China and now Russia will not be sending their leaders, so can the Minister advise us on what impact he thinks that will have on the negotiations?”
“On the one hand, we have a Government who like to boast about how many more trees they are going to plant—at the last election, every party was trying to outbid the others as to how many millions of trees they would be able to plant—but that means absolutely nothing in terms of the net number of trees across the planet if we are allowing Bolsonaro to burn the Amazon to the ground. One of the Minister’s colleagues in the Trade team once answered a question that I asked them about this issue by pointing to the UK Government’s giving money to Brazil for certain forest protection programmes, conserving parts of the rain forest or even planting new trees there, but if we look at how those numbers stack up against the proportion that is being destroyed, they are nowhere close.”
“On one of his overseas jaunts, the Prime Minister congratulated President Bolsonaro on being an environmental champion. This guy is almost single-handedly destroying the Amazon by allowing huge numbers of people to be displaced from their land, and allowing swathes of forest to be burned and used for cattle ranching or the growing of various commodities—soya for livestock feed, palm oil, and so on. It was sad how little attention was paid to that issue when we debated the Lords amendments to the Environment Bill yesterday.”
“He was advised by his civil servants that that needed to be subject to an environmental impact assessment to see whether it was compatible with the Government meeting their climate change ambitions, and he refused to do so. I know that the Minister answering today is not from the Department for Transport, but that is another example of the actions of the Government just not squaring up with this recommendation in the Committee on Climate Change’s report. The Australian trade agreement is another example. How can we claim to be serious about climate change and protecting the environment when we are more than willing to trade away environmental protections as part of a trade agreement? When the Minister was in his previous post, I asked him about potential trade agreements with Brazil and the relationship with that country in general.”
“Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change, has written to the Government to say that it is simply incompatible with our stated ambitions to allow those new fossil fuel projects to go ahead. Compare what is happening with airport expansion with the recommendations of the committee that there should be no net airport expansion. The word “net” is important. Although it does not work in the current context, where Heathrow and everywhere else is pressing for expansion, there is an argument that, if capacity declined at Heathrow, regional airports such as Bristol would be able to expand, creating regional jobs and economic growth as part of that net calculation. Take the Transport Secretary and the road-building programme, in which billions of pounds are going towards the construction of new roads.”
“They set an example to the rest of the world, but if we cannot go to COP and demonstrate the real things that are happening on the ground, it all becomes greenwash, to put it mildly. The Committee on Climate Change report is huge, but one recommendation goes to the heart of everything. There is a recommendation for No. 10 and the Cabinet Office that says: “Ensure all departmental policy decisions…are consistent with the Net Zero goal and reflect the latest understanding of climate risks.” That is where we need to be. Everything the Government do should be through the prism of trying to achieve net zero. We have the announcement of new fossil fuel projects—the Cambo oilfield and the Cumbrian coalmine.”
“Although the Transport Secretary responded to questions from one of my colleagues in the shadow Transport team to say that 900 were in production, we have pressed him on that since, asking where they are in production and when they are appearing, and he seems to have gone very quiet. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) on securing the debate, and I congratulate him on his optimism. We do need optimism when it comes to the fight against climate change. It can seem like a pessimistic environment. The zero-emission buses are an example of where the Government’s actions do not match their announcements. Unless we see an acceleration of action, not just warm words, we shall be nowhere near meeting the targets, which are good and ambitious.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I think we may have another Back-Bench speaker whose name somehow did not make it on to the list. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) stole my gag about climate debates being like buses—two turn up at once but they are not electric buses. I was one of the MPs who went outside yesterday to see the people who are pressing for more zero-emission buses. They had buses there from Ballymena, Falkirk, and Selby near Leeds to highlight the fact that, while the Government have pledged 4,000 zero-emission buses, only a small handful have appeared on the roads.”
“Particularly with meat eating, the market has responded, but some Ministers, from an ideological point of view, do not see a role for the Government in nudging it along. There is a real debate about whether it is acceptable to nudge things along rather than wielding the stick to make people do things. That is the crux of the issue of whether we act upon the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations. For example, they recommended a “20% shift away from all meat by 2030”. That is pretty unambitious, but there is an ideological debate about whether the Government’s role is to encourage people to make the shift or to make them make the shift—using all the levers, whether they be carrots or sticks.”
“Can the Minister explain why that report has not been published and is not being discussed? We can talk forever about technological change, what the Government need to do and what needs to be financed, but behavioural change is a significant part of how we will meet our climate objectives. In previous conversations, Ministers have suggested to me that they are quite reluctant to intervene in issues around the food agenda, plastic use and anything involving an element of personal choice. Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said to me that individuals could choose to bring their keep cup with them—like I have done today—so that they do not use single-use plastic, or that they could choose to eat less meat, but that this is very much a matter of personal choice: the market will respond if the public want it.”
“As I understand it, we need to measure the embedded carbon in the products that we are importing into the country and find a way of dealing with it, and border tariffs may be one way of doing that. The report recommends that that should be discussed at the G7 and at COP, which is why I wanted to flag it up today. We should have those discussions. I am aware that I have been speaking for quite some time, although I am also aware that, given that this is a three-hour debate, I could probably go on a lot longer. I am sure that people do not want to be detained, so I will just mention one more thing. It was reported this week that a nudge unit report on behaviour change, which recommended reductions in meat eating and measures to curb aviation demand, was buried.”
“Their presence and their voices at Paris shamed the world and highlighted the fact that in some cases those countries will literally disappear underwater if we do not keep 1.5 alive. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on another of the recommendations in the committee’s report. It came up briefly at International Trade questions today, but the Minister did not have much time to outline the Government’s position. The report lists as a priority recommendation that the Government should “Develop the option of applying either border carbon tariffs or minimum standards to imports of selected embedded-emission-intense industrial and agricultural products and fuels.” Hon. Members can see why I had to write that down; it is quite a long phrase.”