Speeches by Kane.

“You are definitely getting it right in north-east England and Scotland. The Report says what you estimate and what you have. In Scotland, you are 0.1% higher than what you estimated, so that is pretty much bang on as much as you will get. If you look at southern England, though, you have a shortfall of 12.3%. What less…”

“Before we come to Barbara, as a Scottish MP, you are already working in a devolved nation, in a devolved environment. You are going to have to put resource into this new devolved world in England. Can I just get an assurance that you are aware that you already have a slightly different way of working in Scotland and th…”

“Can I ask Barbara some questions now? What impact has the reduction in support had on claimants?”

“I heard from your answer that this shortfall is a perfectly normal thing that is just to be expected, yet you have a framework and we are seeing throughout the Report that there is a huge workload. We will come on to all of that, but the shortfall is having an impact on staff and outcomes. I heard that this is just a n…”

“At the start of your answer, you described what I would imagine is normal planning for your Department. You are going to get variations in job figures around the country. You have introduced a temporary framework to, I assume, allow for a temporary change in this. Your answer, to be fair, described how you would work u…”

“I am just asking for clarification of what I am hearing you saying. I am just making sure I understand it.”

“It is the Department’s decision to reduce the number of work coaches, rather than the funding following the decision for that.”

“Apologies; I am just trying to get a sense. What I heard there was you saying, “We set a figure at month 1. Then we realised at month 6 we needed less and adapted accordingly.” Is that what you are saying?”

“It is a holistic conversation with the Treasury and you come back to it and say, “Actually, we made a mistake. We did not need as much but we can take less.””

“Can I move on now to funding for work coaches? This is paragraphs 11 and 2.12 of the NAO Report. You do not have the funding for the coaches that you asked for. Why? Why have you not secured enough funding to pay for the work coaches that you need?”

“To move us on, you might want to write to us when you have decided what is going to be permanent and when it is going to be made permanent. That is what we are we are trying to get to. What will be made permanent and when will it be made permanent?”

“Paragraph 2.21 states, “DWP is examining whether some of the measures in the local flexibility framework could be made permanent”. Can you tell me what sorts of measures could be made permanent? When do you think you will make a decision as to whether that will be the case?”

“We will probably pick up on that.”

“You said that it has been minimised, but what has been minimised? What is the impact, even if it has been minimised?”

“When we talk about youth services, we are really talking about the kind of country we want to be. We often discuss crime prevention, education and mental health in silos, but the thread that runs through all those issues is clear: we need to invest in our young people through properly funded, long-term youth services. …”

“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank him for recognising Billy Bremner—a very good Stirling man. As I was saying, many projects rely on a patchwork of short-term funding, but that reliance points to a deeper problem: the retreat of local government, especially under the SNP Government in Holyrood, who have…”

“Does my hon. Friend also recognise that there is also a funding crisis in Scotland, with the Scottish Government starving local authorities of the funding they need to provide these vital services? This is not just in England; it is a UK-wide problem, and the SNP Scottish Government are certainly not making it easy.”

“On the location of libraries, certainly in Scotland, there is a statutory duty is to provide a library service. That means that only one library could be provided for my constituency of nearly 2,500 sq km. Does the hon. Member agree that access and proximity to the library in terms of travel time is important to any st…”

“I have said before in this place that libraries are the NHS for the soul. They are funded by our taxes, free at the point of use and there when we need them the most. Libraries are no longer just about borrowing books, although that is still reason enough to love them; they are community hubs, digital lifelines, maker …”

“In my constituency, residents of the rurally isolated community of Balquhidder did not wait for a major provider; they dug and laid 34 km of fibre optic cable themselves using the Government’s broadband voucher scheme to partner with a small business and deliver gigabit broadband—a remarkable achievement. That success …”