Speeches by Grady.

“I wish to make some progress if I may; I have been waiting a long time to speak. Our plans will not see additional taxes coming out of a worker’s payslip. We are supporting small businesses by doubling the employment allowance before companies and charities have to pay national insurance, which will protect hundreds of…”

“But just for today, not for ever.”

“With your indulgence, Chair, a final question from me. You have expressed some enthusiasm for devolution within England to metro mayors and the like. In Glasgow there is a real concern about the state of Glasgow, and whether it has enough support from central Government, and whether things are over-centralised in Scotl…”

“Moving on to the Council for the Nations and Regions: how will that interact with the existing structures?”

“On the reset of relations with Scotland, Sir Keir was in Scotland on the Sunday afternoon having been elected as Prime Minister with effect from the Friday morning. We have heard a lot over the last few years about things that Westminster is stopping Scotland doing, but of course what the Scottish Government do can hav…”

“Three short questions then.”

“Thank you, Chancellor. You talked earlier about the move for responsibility for intergovernmental relations from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to the Cabinet Office. The Cabinet Office website lists you as a Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, but it is not included in your official lis…”

“I am happy to ask a question, Chair, if that is helpful?”

“I think it might be my good friend Mr Baker here.”

“Ms Little, I wonder if you could give us some concrete examples of how you are going to go about that, or how the Government go about that. Where do they see improvements could be made?”

“You pointed to a need for a greater emphasis on users of services, on not having a cookie-cutter approach, and a need for regional and, in my case as an MP for Glasgow East, different approaches across our family of nations, which was interesting. Something that has long vexed me is whether homelessness policy people s…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for his opening speech, which covered many of the points that I want to make. I also wholeheartedly echo everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) said. Bonfire…”

“And the training. The Civil Service has grown significantly since 2016. In your view, is it too big?”

“Would I be right in thinking everyone in the Department has to have mandatory training on behaviours such as bullying, discrimination and harassment, and they are absolutely clear that—consistent with employment law—if they cross thresholds for bullying, harassment or discrimination, they can face very serious conseque…”

“Moving on to the consultancy spend and reduction of that, what do you think the Government need to do make sure the outcomes increase or at least stay the same?”

“It has not worked very well, has it?”

“To sum that question up, one issue you face with using the Civil Service numbers as some sort of pointer towards government efficiency or inefficiency is it is actually fairly meaningless when you pick away at it because you have policy people and prison officers; there is such a wide variety of people in it. With the …”

“If I was to sum that up to someone back in my constituency, is your position that we need to probably do less or different things, better, and that may be associated with a reduction of headcount and/or redeployment of people to the things that we should be doing from the things we should not be doing?”

“You have taken the words out of my mouth for the next bit of questioning. If you have a series of reorganisations, moving people around and redundancies in the Civil Service, how can you be sure you will retain key capabilities and competences as opposed to losing really good people? Which is actually what happens a lo…”

“I wonder if there are two other things that are worth looking at, and I will be guided by you on this. The first actually takes us back to the culture point we were discussing earlier where we had a chat discussing bullying, harassment and so on. I wonder whether part of it is, if you have less of that, you have a more…”