Speeches by Lamb.

“Given your experience, would you suggest the use of those Henry VIII powers again? Would existing legislation enable the Government to do that?”

“That suggests that we need a fairly long period of preparation before kicking off a process of trying to rationalise arm’s length bodies.”

“Is the hon. Gentleman astounded, as I am, that the majority of that debt is with the public works loan board, which sits underneath the Treasury. Where was the Treasury when that debt was being allowed to accumulate?”

“On a point of order, Mr Vickers. Regarding my earlier breach, I just want to apologise to you and to the Chamber for referring to my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves) by their names rather than by their constituencies, and without forewarn…”

“What sort of challenges do you envisage they are going to face trying to head in this direction?”

“Much like yourself, the Government have indicated that they would like to see a number of arm’s length bodies closed. They have already announced several, of course, with NHS England being by far the most significant.”

“There are three areas, and social care is one of them. The finances of upper-tier authorities have been totally compromised, initially by the costs of social care, where we have still not taken decisions all these years after the Dilnot review. We all know that social care is slowly bankrupting councils. Go to any sing…”

“You were relocating the powers as opposed to the strategy.”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. Local government is an area of great interest to me. I did my master’s dissertation on models for English devolution; I have worked at the UK’s leading think-tank on devolution; for 17 years I worked as an adviser to local authorities, and I have served in …”

“How would you define that?”

“The reform programme was justified in terms of reducing waste and addressing accountability issues. Do you think there is a trade-off between those two areas?”

“That point about the Fulton report was made by someone else at a recent Committee meeting. In terms of specialisms, a number of recent former Ministers have observed that, as was alluded to earlier in this sitting, there are circumstances in which agencies appear to believe that they are the master in areas of policy, …”

“To continue that thought for a moment longer, the UK did experiment with that in the 1960s under George Brown.”

“It has been argued that specialist agencies often have better knowledge of their policy area than their sponsor Department. Has that been your observation? If so, how can that knowledge be retained as we do away with some of these structures?”

“While the triennial reviews are gone, you are still supposed to have a tailored review for each arm’s length body within each parliamentary Session, which I suppose, given how short some of them have been, has not necessarily happened. Another three years has passed since your independent report. Are the new tailored r…”

“Given that your view is that there is an aberration—you said that, within the restraints that you were operating, you were able to resolve as many of these as you felt able to resolve, and a look through the list suggests that around a quarter were permanently shut down and the rest were merged or retained in some othe…”

“During the reform programme, do you think the process of closing and merging public bodies was handled sufficiently well?”

“Does my hon. Friend accept that part of the reason for the difference in defence spending is that those nations’ security is at much more immediate risk than that of the UK? If we are going to maintain a leading role and ensure the security of our people moving forward, we must be honest with our constituents. The real…”

“Nothing, Chair.”

“Should there be greater regulation in this area for other public officeholders rather than simply Members of the Government?”