Owen Paterson

“The relationship between renewable energy sources and the communities we expect to host them must be appropriate and sustainable and, above all, acceptable to local people.”

“One thing I have been banging on about, we have a dessert deficit in the U.K. We still import a very large proportion of our desserts. I would ask everyone to go out and buy a British dessert.”

“No one is more keen than me to see the Hunting Act repealed, because I believe in the management of wildlife.”

“Government can wreck a business by confiscating its money by taxation.”

“I was perhaps about 10 years old when a local farmer rang us up to say he had found a young badger and would we take it in. So we did; it was a female called Bessy and she lived in the boiler room. She was extremely intelligent, had a very low opinion of cats but loved the dogs. She was pretty well trained; she went in the car.”

“We have to use every tool at our disposal and that's why we're trialing a badger cull. We need healthy wildlife living alongside healthy cattle. Only if we work to eradicate the reservoir of TB in our badgers, will we have the strong and prosperous dairy industry the public wishes to see.”

“Climate change is obviously happening and there is obviously a man-made contribution.”