Speeches by Atkinson.

“Roker park is loved by our community, and there is loads going on there—from bowls and model boating to a miniature railway. Recently, I met some of the volunteers who keep the park so vibrant, along with Councillor David Newey, who has attracted investment for the restoration of the bandstand and the installation of n…”

“The Minister mentioned strengthening the process for direct ministerial appointments. Could he say a little more about that and how quickly he believes those strengthened processes will be put in place?”

“Network Rail has rightly apologised for its failure to deliver a functional Sunderland station following refurbishment. We now have the bare basics in place, and plans for improvement. Will the Secretary of State join me in asking Northern Rail to get on with delivering those improvements, and will she arrange a meetin…”

“So it would contribute to building a positive culture as opposed to tackling a negative culture?”

“To finish off on the standards piece, what is your response to the Government’s proposals on a licence to practise, and how do you see that linking to how you do standards work in the future?”

“You made a number of changes to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection command. To what extent has the culture there changed?”

“In terms of the regulatory environment and perhaps other considerations, is the Met now in a position to be able to attract and retain the firearms officers it needs to keep London safe?”

“You have previously called for changes in the accountability regime for firearms officers, and the Government proposed some of those towards the end of last year. Can you give us your view about the changes that have been proposed?”

“I wish to thank NHS cancer teams in Sunderland for doing such incredible work in my constituency. Other Members have mentioned the unacceptable variation in NHS performance against waiting times, and I commend the Minister’s focus on that. Can she say a little about the variation in waiting times by tumour site? In Nov…”

“Can I drill down on this? Is the issue the numbers that have arrived, or is it the potential scale of the recourse to public funds as a result of the numbers?”

“Absolutely, but is the policy intention to, by a set of changes, encourage people who may have arrived to now leave, or is it to have the same amount of people—that 800,000 a year you mentioned—staying here, but with much more limited recourse to public funds, given the social housing waiting lists and other issues acr…”

“There is a set of communities that would say, “We never came seeking public funds,” and that decoupling recourse to public funds and settled status—for example, by linking it to citizenship rather than settled status—would be an option that would increase integration and manage the recourse to the public purse. Is that…”

“Home Secretary, you have, as you say, set out a longer implementation period for changes to forces. Whatever their views on their local force, what everyone probably would not want to see is chopping and changing because of different Governments choosing to change boundaries every now and then on force sizes. Clearly, …”

“Specifically on that point, Home Secretary, accepting everything you have said—there has been abuse, and no one would doubt the Home Office’s work on clamping down on that—that would mean there are 40,000 people currently in the country genuinely working as adult social care workers. The ministerial foreword to the soc…”

“Adult social care is clearly stretched. How genuinely joined up are you with the Department of Health and Social Care on this? We have had evidence saying that the Government is about to publish an NHS workforce strategy but there is no adult social care strategy planned at all; there is no analysis that can be seen of…”

“When you call the police, they should come. When you report a crime, it should be properly investigated. But too many constituents of mine, and I am sure many others, do not feel that that is currently the case. Recognising that you have set out a longer implementation period for macro change, what can constituents of …”

“Will that be coming in more quickly? In the next year or two, will people be able to start seeing those standards?”

“So would you say that when migrants lose their sponsor through no fault of their own at the moment the support is sufficient? Does the system work for those people?”

“Professor Green, do you have any view on sector specific sponsorship as opposed to employer?”

“Thank you. I will come back to the impact on workers and, Peter, perhaps you first. On the implications for workers if they have to maintain a sponsored visa for 15 years or longer and I think you alluded before and I have also heard some stories of sponsoring employers using sponsor status as a lever in a pretty unscr…”