Speeches by Kane.

“I was going to ask more about where you are in developing the oversight and how it is going, but I wonder if it might be better as a note. Do you want me to ask about that now, Chair?”

“You now have the first contract, and you have said that you are “developing” departmental oversight. Where are you in that process?”

“Can you speak to the knock-on effect on the expansion and the track 2 projects? What are you thinking for the timeline, based on where we are after this week’s announcement?”

“Can I talk to you about the assessment of value for money? I know we have touched on it, and Oliver mentioned it in his questions. First-of-a-kind projects make it very difficult to judge value for money, but you have said that the projects will be subject to an assessment of value for money. You are now moving forward…”

“Thank you. How are you weighting your five targets in relation to, for example, the first one, which we have had this week? How are you approaching the weighting of these five criteria?”

“Well done for bringing that out from your mind! Thank you for that. When you are looking at the value-for-money evaluation, what impact does being a first-of-a-kind project have in all this? It is always easier to do an economic impact assessment in 30 years’ time, when we have got lots of these under our belts. How ar…”

“Not going ahead with a project is obviously a consideration as well. Could you talk about that? How does that factor into your thinking?”

“I suppose there is always a case when you are talking about a theoretical future contract that you will say, “None of these tests have been met.” You have obviously had good news this week that you are moving forward with one. Could you talk about getting that over the finish line? How did you find looking at these fiv…”

“My instinct is that judging the economic benefit is easier to be theoretical about in terms of the deliverability. You have now got your five tests, you have got one project over the line, so what are your reflections on the tests themselves and how easy it was to say: “Yes, we are quite happy with this. We are going t…”

“Everybody goes on about value for money, whether we are investing in the right places and whether we should be taking this money and putting in offshore wind and other things. You come back with, “We have to do this. This is part of the mix.” How are you ensuring that this money, particularly in this area of the indust…”

“I have been learning about this over the past few weeks, and there is a real push to say, “Well, this money could be better spent somewhere else. It could go on other projects.” For me, the most defendable line is, “No, no, we have to do it in areas that we can’t decarbonise in other ways.” As we go forward, you will c…”

“Will you talk to the pressure? My assumption is there is a lot of pressure to divert this into other areas. Are you finding that is a factor? There is a great deal of people saying, “No, do this”—”

“Can I take you on to the next steps? You have the track 1 project—your first one was announced this week—you have your track 1 expansion projects, and then you have your track 2 projects. I want to start with all of them. How confident are you that the track 1 projects will go operational by 2027? How confident are you…”

“As I was a Scottish council leader, can I get an assurance that you are dealing with local government not just in England but across the devolved nations?”

“As a council leader up until the election, I can say that Home Office dealings always came with a bit of heightened stress for council officers. I am looking at one of the conclusions: “We are concerned that the Home Office has not engaged effectively with local authorities about the impact its work is having on local …”

“I know we are running out of time, Chair, so I am happy to move on now.”

“What are you going to do if you cannot bring the costs down as quickly as you need to?”

“We are moving on now to some questions looking forward. We have obviously had the Budget. We have had phase 1 of the spending review. You have a big savings target to meet over the next couple of years. I think it’s £2.2 billion. With the Rwanda scheme not being there, a big bit of the pressure, I imagine, is no longer…”

“Will you indulge me with just one more question? “With the benefit of hindsight” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in this session, and I am hoping that we are doing more than just saying, “I promise not to do it again.” What brakes have you got in place? What procedures have you written down? What can we look at …”

“So it is not a lesson learned to go from two to one?”