Speeches by Kane.

“Why is it that the burden always has to rest with local authorities? Why can the burden not rest with you to get that information? In terms of what is happening with education, language support, integration services and social care—the Report goes into this—you used the language “reporting burden,” but the burden rests…”

“The question is this. In effect, you are giving them something to do—to deal with the asylum system—but you do not understand how much it is costing them to deliver all the associated services. You think you have an idea, and you have a broad idea. But, as the Report says, when you start interrogating that, you realise…”

“I am not necessarily saying that they will get additional grants. I am looking for assurance and I am not quite getting it. You are pushing this, and the Chair wants to move on, so let me try one last time. Do you think that the Home Office, and indeed all of this joined-up approach that you are trying to look at, shou…”

“My experience of working in local government is that national Government are very good at placing burdens and responsibilities on local government, but not at following that up with the resources to deliver on those burdens. The disconnect between what you are asking them to do and what you are giving them the funding …”

“There is a disproportionate number of people arriving in Glasgow to present their homelessness claims, compared with other local authorities in the UK. Are you looking at Glasgow and Scottish cities to ensure you are giving them additional resources to offset the difference in legislation, which is perfectly permissibl…”

“Josh, can I ask you a couple of questions? Paragraph 1.13 in the NAO Report says, “Actual spending by local authorities on supporting people seeking asylum is poorly understood.” Again, with my former council leader hat on, I think that is a very good and accurate statement. What are you doing to improve the visibility…”

“Sometimes they can get surprised. They can get very late notice. It isn’t just not quite as early as they would like it; it is sometimes incredibly late in the process when they get knowledge of it.”

“Do you think that you are?”

“Then it would put the burden back on you, and not on local authorities. I am just trying to investigate why we are not looking at that.”

“Does the Secretary of State agree that yesterday’s SNP budget, which metes out another round of civic vandalism to local authority budgets, demonstrates a failure to understand that economic growth is built from the ground up and requires well-funded local authorities delivering schools, infrastructure and clean, safe …”

“14. What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to support economic growth in Scotland.”

“Thank you, Chair, but I was just going to make a general observation, which I think is going to get picked up shortly. With what I am hearing from this panel on data collection, and what I heard from the previous panel, it is almost like we are talking about two different subjects. That is just an observation, and I wi…”

“Good morning, everyone. I am looking at paragraph 13 of the NAO Report, which identifies four main causes of the programme not progressing as intended. It states that several Government bodies, including the IPA, the Cabinet Office, the Government Internal Audit Agency and the Treasury, concluded that “NS&I had a weak …”

“Thank you for that look at the positive picture. Will you reflect a little on what made you annoyed, or a little angry? Looking back, talk about some of the things that you have looked at and thought, “Oh, this can’t happen again,” or, “I understand why that happened.” You used the example of covid, which is an externa…”

“James, may I ask you exactly the same question?”

“On one specific thing, the decision to look at multiple contracts rather than one, I believe you had three options: like for like, single contract, or multiple contracts. The NAO Report states: “NS&I set itself an overly optimistic timetable for the Programme. Decoupling a highly integrated operation, splitting it into…”

“I accept that those are the conclusions you reached, but what I am trying to get at is what assessments or analysis you undertook that led you to reach these conclusions? I am trying to get a sense of the depth that you went into to make sure that your decisions were underpinned by robust evidence.”

“Those are welcome processes to do that. However, there are a lot of things that you in your leadership position can do as smaller steps to ensure that a good news culture does not prevail. There do not have to be lots of sweeping reviews and sweeping changes. So I wonder whether you could talk about your senior leaders…”

“Just for complete clarity, you take the point that you have mentioned a lot of additional people and additional sources who can help to achieve that, but one of the key people who can do that is you yourself.”

“Again, there are a lot of external factors, you are speaking to other people and taking advice, but a lot of the tensions or problems seem to come from an internal problem. What did you look at in terms of your own assumptions and approach to evaluating some of this information? Were you alive to the possibility that y…”