Speeches by Milne.

“Many of the Vanguard businesses are large, though, and if you are a business of five people, it is a huge impact if one of them requires significant interventions or whatever. How would you respond to that?”

“Talking to small and micro-businesses, in the report there are lots of recommendations and a number of them would put costs on to business. Unsurprisingly, they were not terrifically keen on that aspect. Obviously, they are under a lot of pressure in general. Do we think it is reasonable to put extra costs on business,…”

“You see it, with that evidence coming in along the way, as generating actions that will be taken a whole lot sooner than seven years?”

“We heard evidence from Sir Charlie Mayfield last week and talked through some of the recommendations in his “Keep Britain Working” report. We also heard from representatives of disabled groups and small businesses. People observed a certain tension between the report saying we are facing a crisis—i.e. urgency—yet it su…”

“That is very interesting. Ruth, the same question to you.”

“I have one last quick question. Where do most of your referrals come from? From jobcentres or somewhere else?”

“In any programme like this, the co-operation with local employers is absolutely crucial to success. I know that in my own constituency of Horsham, many of them have disengaged with the local jobcentre because they felt they were getting the wrong sort of candidate put in front of them. How well engaged do you think emp…”

“Thank you. David, how is the integration of local and national health in London?”

“There is a great variety of services across the country, and the idea is to give freedom to allow local delivery, but there is also the national programme. How well do you think the national programmes integrate with local services? Ruth, you were talking earlier about how you did not want to conflict with or cancel ou…”

“I very much appreciate the action that the Government have taken to uprate UC—for the first time in its history, as the Minister says—but does he accept that it still will not cover the cost of basic essentials such as food, heating and rent for many of our most put-upon constituents?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I also thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for shining a light on this important issue. The Liberal Democrats strongly support the principles of devolution and localism so we welcome the Government’s stated ambition to expand place-based e…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) for bringing attention to this important issue. Pressure has been building on postal services for decades. In my former career in advertising, I worked on behalf of the Irish post office, An Po…”

“The third recommendation in the report is about the workplace health intelligence unit, which we referred to earlier. The idea is to set up a positive feedback loop that informs and improves the other two recommendations. I have a simple question: do we think we really need another body to drive reform on top of all th…”

“One of the new intelligence unit’s key jobs will be to design incentives. James, you predicted this question last time around. It is about incentives for employers and for employees. What incentives do you think they could create, and what is the balance between employers and employees?”

“Good morning. In your analysis, you identify three key problems or challenges, which are fear, the lack of a support system and structural challenges. Could you expand a little on that analysis?”

“Do you foresee removing the fit note process altogether?”

“It has been commented that there is a relative lack of detail about this third structural problem and how to solve it. What would your response be to that?”

“I used to work in advertising. I believe in incentives, not sanctions, but what about the employers’ perspective?”

“Ian, briefly.”

“I visited my local court just a few days ago. In Horsham, we are lucky enough to have a sufficient number of magistrates, but we still cannot maximise throughput because of a lack of support staff. In July last year, the Justice Committee reported that shortages of support staff were having significant impacts on delay…”