Speeches by Kane.

“Just before she does, looking historically at HMRC and IT projects—and, I suppose, at Government generally and IT projects—they have not been particularly successful in reaching the milestones. Are you confident that, overall, this project is on track, and that it is a realistic track to get us where we need to be with…”

“Chair, I can tell that Lloyd wants to jump in very quickly.”

“I am going to ask a question about IT infrastructure, which comes up quite a lot in this Committee. The NAO Report, at paragraph 2.12, refers to the “ambition to modernise…IT infrastructure by 2030” and about last year’s spending review giving HMRC an extra £1.6 billion “to achieve this.” When do you expect to see the …”

“I will ask about IT, but first can I take you back to your comments on the special measures changes? You can clarify this if I have got it wrong, but I think you said that generally it is working most of the time as a deterrent, but that you will do a review of whether you need to make changes to legislation. Can you t…”

“That is the overall picture. Drilling down into the large business directorate, talk to me about that and the investment elements for this directorate: how are you getting on with that in delivery?”

“The observation all of us would make in the Committee in some way is that, often, the follow-up from that is when it all goes horribly wrong in three years’ time, and you are coming back and we are asking you why. We are keen in this Committee to get honest engagement, because we get how ambitious it is and how difficu…”

“To finish my metaphor—not about the SNP—we must hold steady, make the adjustments needed and focus on getting safely to better conditions. That is the task in front of us, and that is why I will support the Prime Minister to continue doing the job that he was elected to do, keep a steady hand on the tiller and guide th…”

“A referral to the Privileges Committee, particularly involving a Prime Minister, should be rare. The bar should be high, because we have so many other processes available to us in this place, and with this issue, many of those processes are already in action. The Foreign Affairs Committee, excellently chaired by my rig…”

“Thank you, Ms Lewell, for calling me back. Please give me one second to find out where I was—is it still Tuesday? As I was saying, if we want to avoid such situations in the future, we need to involve mountain rescue and the wider search and rescue community much earlier in the policymaking process. They must be part o…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. In Stirling and Strathallan we are served by three outstanding teams: Lomond Mountain Rescue Team, based in Drymen; Killin mountain rescue, operating from Killin and Callender; and Ochils mountain rescue, operating from a neighbouring constituency, but also …”

“As a former council leader, I always say that the Scottish Government have to keep on top of what that figure is and invest in it, because volumes can change, and the amount of money is never enough to do all the work required. They need a robust approach to ensuring that the funding model is adapting and changing, par…”

“I refer to paragraph 3.26 on page 42 of the Report, on your role as a convenor and enabler. Paragraph 3.26 talks about “common resilience issues and opportunities,” such as cyber-threats and scope for introducing further shared services. It says in 3.27 that, “The majority of M&Gs told us that DCMS supports efforts to …”

“I refer to paragraph 3.26 on page 42 of the Report, on your role as a convenor and enabler. Paragraph 3.26 talks about “common resilience issues and opportunities,” such as cyber-threats and scope for introducing further shared services. It says in 3.27 that, “The majority of M&Gs told us that DCMS supports efforts to …”

“I am going to try to bring this all together very quickly; I know I am pushing my luck. I love what I am hearing, but it feels like, although you are convening everybody there, you are not showing them the carrots and the sticks to make them do better. You are enjoying the sharing of the knowledge, but you do have carr…”

“It is the sharing I am interested in. They are the best example, but you are supporting 14 other museums, and you have dozens and dozens of other museums around the country that would benefit from that knowledge. It is about getting economies of scale and sharing best practice. What are you doing to get all that inform…”

“There are a lot of good things there. Your enthusiasm for all of this is coming through. Let us try to unpack some of that. I think my colleague Sarah is going to talk in a minute about some of the physical problems, so let me stick with cyber—let’s talk about that. I also want to talk more about cost sharing and what …”

“Cyber is about the sort of bad stuff, and we will have to help them as much as we can, but what about some of the good stuff around digitising collections? I guess that is laborious and time-consuming and can be expensive, but ultimately that is going to make the collections more accessible. What are you doing to suppo…”

“I am conscious that I only have a little while before the Chair takes me off the gallery floor and puts me back into storage, so can we talk about sharing financial costs? Paragraph 3.28 says that, in helping the sharing of financial matters through forums, cost saving did not seem to come up as much as it could, and. …”

“I am going to try to bring this all together very quickly; I know I am pushing my luck. I love what I am hearing, but it feels like, although you are convening everybody there, you are not showing them the carrots and the sticks to make them do better. You are enjoying the sharing of the knowledge, but you do have carr…”

“I am conscious that I only have a little while before the Chair takes me off the gallery floor and puts me back into storage, so can we talk about sharing financial costs? Paragraph 3.28 says that, in helping the sharing of financial matters through forums, cost saving did not seem to come up as much as it could, and. …”