Speeches by Billington.

“The probation officers I have spoken to are supportive of the early release scheme inasmuch as it was necessary to deal with the chronic overcrowding in our prisons—a legacy of the previous Government’s dereliction of duty. Many offenders on the fixed recall scheme with a determinate sentence, however, are not being ri…”

“I would like to talk about the importance of the impact of both austerity and covid on entrenching the regional transport inequalities we have heard so much about today. I will also talk about the importance of our making the most of our existing infrastructure, which has ended up crumbling and neglected after the prev…”

“I cannot remember all the things that I wanted to ask in relation to this. Lorraine, it strikes me that what you are sort of saying, I think, is that this is not a comms problem, this is a policy design problem.”

“That comes to my second question. Stephanie, in relation to your experience about citizens’ juries—which I have contributed to by giving testament and so forth in the assembly that Luke oversaw before I came to this place. I know and understand the purpose and so forth of citizens’ assemblies, but it does strike me tha…”

“Forgive me, market research does that too. People get quite a lot out of market research, including language, policy, design and so forth. It is not just about your brand, is it?”

“Do you think that campaign groups—climate action campaign groups such as Greenpeace and indeed some of the stuff that I have been involved in, again before I came to this place—are well placed to engage with people to design things that will work for the outcomes of the people, bearing in mind that climate campaign gro…”

“No, no, I mean when we were talking about the north-east of Scotland. Why does Greenpeace think that it is in a good place to talk to oil and gas workers about what is right for them and what is best for them?”

“Heaven forefend you should meet them.”

“Angharad, as a Greenpeace campaigner, how do you feel about compiling your talking points in order to be able to support large international companies that are developing large energy projects in communities?”

“Slight?”

“Stephanie, what evidence do you have that the early engagement processes that you are talking about have averted the judicial reviews and slowing down of the planning processes that are the biggest anxieties that the Government had about introducing particularly the large-scale infrastructure?”

“We do not have that evidence at the moment?”

“Because those other organisations would not care enough about climate to do it?”

“I am struck by the fact that there are a significant number of obligations on large developers, and indeed a big organisation like National Grid, in order to be able to do this, yet they still end up with this opposition, people raising money for JRs and so forth. So, even with the obligations that are currently in pla…”

“Why don’t you leave them alone and leave it to people who do know those organisations, those communities, those institutions, and those workers better than you?”

“If it is a small project that might be possible. If it is a large, nationally significant infrastructure project, that is significantly more challenging, isn’t it?”

“Regardless of who it is done by or regardless of the profit and where the money goes?”

“I totally understand about sortition, and I understand about representation and all of that kind of thing. I also know that in some of those circumstances it is particularly challenging to make sure that the most disadvantaged and the most excluded get the same level of confidence; they do not have the same level of ca…”

“Where do you see the Government in terms of their attitude towards adopting those kind of tactics? As we have agreed that this is fundamentally a policy problem rather than a comms problem, are the Government open to using those strategies to design policies that might help the most vulnerable and most excluded?”

“This is all very interesting, but it goes back to Melanie’s point about lack of leadership and slowing things down. We have accountable democratic institutions at local level: they are called councils. What role do you see for councils and what problems are they currently experiencing in being able to make sure that th…”