Ms Karen Ciesielski:

The national planning framework, underpinned by a healthy environment and healthy ecosystem, is at the heart of everything. We will not have a functioning economy and will not be able to deliver public services or plan effectively for a growing and ageing population unless we ensure that we are protecting the environment but as the EPA's state of the environment report demonstrated last week, we are not doing a good job of that right now. Our environment, water, rivers and air are under huge pressure. When we look forward to the next 20 or 40 years, we need to ensure that we are protecting healthy rivers, addressing biodiversity loss and reducing air pollution before we do anything else or, at least, as we do other things. Sometimes it seems that the environment suffers when we try to do things too quickly.