Speeches by Kane.

“Are you confident that today you have access to the data that you need in a way that Treasury colleagues would also be happy with?”

“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…”

“Thank you for that. I will just dig into one final part of this. Paragraph 2.3 of the Report talks about the Infrastructure and Projects Authority gateway review in September 2020, which found that “the Programme had not developed its understanding of alternative options as comprehensively as for its preferred option.”…”

“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.”

“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 …”

“I will leave you with more of an observation than a question. This Committee is happy to take statements like that as long as the evidence is there to our satisfaction that the statement is underpinned by the processes and that they are robust. What we are seeing here is that, when it comes to the robustness of the thr…”

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

“What are you doing to ensure that the data exists to produce better cost data for your next business case?”

“How are you setting milestones for suppliers and working them into the plan, if that integrated plan is not quite there? How are you judging how suppliers are doing?”

“Very quickly, James, could you expand on the different steps of this interventionist model? What step are you at and what information do you need to decide whether to escalate further or de-escalate?”

“You mentioned the staff satisfaction scores going up, yet the programme is not delivering what it should be. How do you reconcile the disconnect between how staff are feeling in their work and the outputs that are being measured, and what you are asking them to do?”

“It does. I have one point on a line in paragraph 20, which says, “there remains a lack of clarity about the role of boards, and NS&I staff think that decision-making can be slow and hierarchical.””

“I want to ask about culture. Paragraph 3.5 in the Report says, “Programmes also need the correct culture and leadership”. Here is an interesting line from NAO colleagues: “In our previous work on major programmes, we have observed good news cultures presiding, where decisions are not made and disagreements between stak…”

“That was a really good example of good news, and possibly good news culture, in your answer. So can I put it to you that in that line they were talking about NS&I, and that there is a good news culture that is causing problems? And maybe I can just get you to reflect, if that is the case, on how you would take that, ho…”

“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.”

“Yes—I take all of that, but, again, it goes back to this general point about a good news culture. This Committee does not read press releases. We are not interested in that layer of what the media pick up. We are looking at what you are saying and making sure it is underpinned by evidence. You have just told me that yo…”

“You mentioned the leadership development programme. You have mentioned various other internal things that you are doing. Can you just speak briefly about how they are going? I am less interested in the mechanics of what they are doing and more interested in your reflections on what positive change you are seeing that i…”

“Okay. Can I ask a couple of questions about governance? We have picked up on parts of this. I might be asking you questions that have already been answered, but I just want to do this for clarity. I know, James, that you have been talking about some of that and looking in at NS&I. Let’s talk about NS&I internally. Dax,…”