Speeches by Cane.

“When these various projects have happened and you have learned lessons, good and bad, how are those lessons going to be shared more widely around the civil service?”

“I hear that, but how are you making sure that the more junior staff are convinced by that?”

“But how are you going to embed that? How are you going to convince the staff, in particular, that they are going to be assessed on how they went about it, the lessons learned, and what it can lead to in the future, rather than assessed on the fact that it did not succeed?”

“You touched on the fact that some will fail. How are you going to bed in the acceptance—from the Minister all the way through—that the project failing is about learning the lessons from it, rather than a failure that therefore should not have been done?”

“Will they have different rules to the standard civil service rules, financial regulations, and governance? Will they be able to move quickly?”

“But there are still lessons to learn; how are those going to be shared widely?”

“I want to go back to the test and learn idea, which is interesting. How are the teams going to be made up? Are they going to have junior and senior staff, and external people?”

“Moving on, but possibly connected, you seem to have more staff wanting to leave than other organisations do, either immediately or in the next 12 months. What are you doing to try to keep those staff?”

“But you are getting comparatively low scores on leadership and development, compared to other Departments. Does that come to what you were talking about with your behaviour code for your leadership?”

“Do you feel you are always able to take the actions you think should be taken, or are there any untouchable people or areas that you are not able to address?”

“So when you have an investigation with an outcome and you take action, do you sort of stand back from that and look at wider lessons to be learned for the Department?”

“I understand what you are saying about some of the pressures that might make people feel less comfortable, less valued, but I am not quite sure how those pressures would lead to higher levels of discrimination?”

“My questions largely relate to the staff survey which you touched on in your opening remarks: culture issues came up several times throughout the survey. Do you now understand why Cabinet staff were reporting much higher levels of discrimination and bullying than other Government Departments, and why fewer of them thou…”

“I welcomed much of the Minister’s statement. Shoplifting is a significant problem in my constituency, and shop workers in Littleport and Ely have recently told me how threatened they feel and how stressful it is. What will she do to ensure that our local police—who, as we have heard, are very stretched—have the resourc…”

“I am sorry, Sir Christopher. I will draw my remarks to a close.”

“I agree that we need to make sure that as we are planning and building, we take flood risk into account and ensure that we are properly mitigating it. In her 2024 autumn Budget, the Chancellor committed £2.4 billion over the next couple of years for flood defences, but she added that significant funding pressures on th…”

“Thank you, Sir Christopher, for chairing this important debate on flood preparedness in Norfolk. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this debate and on his excellent speech highlighting the many challenges to flood preparedness in Norfolk and across our region. Indeed…”

“I want to thank those who elected me as the first MP for the new Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency, although I follow in the Liberal footsteps of Clement Freud and others before him. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) on making her first speech to this House; her constit…”