Speeches by Norman.

“By all means, come in after that. I just want to get a sense of what is not being met from an operational standpoint.”

“In terms of any KPIs that have been published in relation to the scheme.”

“That would be very helpful. To pick up General Ben’s point, it would help us if you could comment privately on the wait for grant now, and the factors affecting that. To follow up on your point, Minister, are all aspects of the programme compliant with the KPIs that have been set?”

“Will you write to us on the KPIs that are being missed at the moment and give us a sentence or two on why that is happening? The other question is, where you are missing them, is your strategy going to be to change the KPI or change the plan?”

“And you will respond to the question in each case as to whether you are going to vary the KPI or hit the plan.”

“That is extremely helpful. The clarification there is that spring is actually spring—please inform the Treasury. Spring is spring; we like that very much. It will be March. One would have a worry that if you were operating at roughly 1,000 a month, it would take 16 months from now, and therefore well into the end of th…”

“Top of the morning to you, Mr Speaker. Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“I thank the Leader of the House very much for announcing the business, and I welcome all colleagues back to the House. I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating His Majesty the King not only on the Gracious Speech yesterday, but on his glorious triumph in the United States of America, in par…”

“I have some experience of that, as a viewer.”

“I apologise if I missed bits of that—I had to be at another Committee briefly. To pick up on that, a Cabinet Office SRO-led model would enable problems such as competition between Departments, unclear responsibilities and what you might call either overlaps or empire building. Presumably, those kinds of behaviours that…”

“Okay. I am just trying to get clear what is happening. You said you gave some emerging findings to colleagues at the MOD. Were they reviewed by Ministers?”

“Yes—thank you. Can we just go on for a second? Given what you know, and what Mr Lincoln knows, imagine that we had the same crisis tomorrow, or something similar: a resettlement scheme needs to be set up in very short order. What do you now know that would make things different from what was done at the time, and how s…”

“No one wants responsibility or they all want all of the responsibility.”

“Neither of those cases were necessarily as effective as they might have been, but nonetheless, they were a better model than the one that we ended up with.”

“Were you aware that it would be quite convenient if the report that you put in was able to support closing the resettlement schemes and lifting the injunction?”

“I would have assumed that you would draft the whole thing.”

“So every word of that report was written either by you or personally approved by you?”

“Obviously it was convenient, as it proved, and you were to some extent aware of that—I think that is what you just said. It did not necessarily shade your judgment, but you were aware of that.”

“No—and you are also flying the flag for responsible leadership in the civil service.”

“When you think about accountability, how would that clarity of purpose relate to Ministers?”