Speeches by Gilmour.

“I see that the spring statement forecast for 2025 says that overpayments would fall to the pre-pandemic level of 3.1% by 2028-29, which you have just referenced. That does not sound to me to be very ambitious. In fact, it seems to be rather unambitious. I am wondering how confident you are that, in due course, you will…”

“I have a charming elderly constituent who, after a series of major medical interventions, has been left in excruciating, uncontrolled pain after her opioids were withdrawn, pushing her to suicidal ideations. Can the Prime Minister shed light on what plans His Majesty’s Government have to help people manage pain in orde…”

“I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing this debate. We have Shelter’s vicious cycle: “No home? No address. No address? No bank account. No bank account? No job. No job? No home.” Rural homelessness is a unique challenge. In a way, it is unlike homelessness in urban centres; it is less visib…”

“So you could look my constituents in their eyes and say that you could give them an absolute assurance that they are as safe as they could be, and none of you would ever want to hold your hands up and say, “Sorry, we have got it wrong for the last few years. This is why this report reads like it does.””

“I will remember to tell my constituents that when they have been mugged for the third time by a reoffender.”

“Funnily enough, I was sitting on a board this afternoon talking about digitalisation and the changes that it could make, so it is particularly pertinent to my brain at the moment. As a follow-up question, my constituency is Tiverton and Minehead. I have a higher than normal elderly population and a higher than normal d…”

“The gap that I would like to see filled is the gap in confidence that the general public and we as a Committee have. There is a massive confidence gap.”

“No, it definitely is not.”

“Could you replace the word “open” with “desperate”?”

“But it is desperate, is it not?”

“I wonder whether you had ever considered that the answer to my colleague’s question was that, yes, you would accept responsibility.”

“It was quite astonishing that there were so many caveats there. I would like to ask about the extent of poor probation performance influencing worsening outcomes such as reoffending and recalls to prison, which is not a happy situation. Could you expand upon that part of the Report, please?”

“As a Liberal, I am very supportive of restorative justice, but I just want you both to absolutely clarify this point. You can both absolutely say, hand on heart, that there is no correlation between the very poor performance of the Probation Service and the number of people reoffending and/or being recalled to prison. …”

“Do not tar us all with the same brush.”

“So the answer to my question is yes.”

“They must be very naughty.”

“You referred to paragraph 13, but paragraph 3.16 notes that an internal review said you would need to go beyond the 25% to allow time for learning needed to improve performance. That is just for the learning. It is not the improved performance.”

“You do not agree with your own internal review.”

“It is very expensive, I would imagine.”

“Going back to the concept of risk, what progress have you made in setting clear risk thresholds or red lines for the Our Future Probation Service programme?”