Speeches by Hall.

“In terms of the individual Departments and the grasping of the sheer significance of change that this is going to bring about, the sheer number of legacy systems—I know that we are going to touch upon that later—and the workforce and skills that are going to be needed, do you think that the Departments are adequately g…”

“I would like to carry on looking at the adoption at scale, but also the recruitment, skills and needs challenges that this is going to bring along with it. Implementing a project of this scale will obviously depend on learning lessons from other complex cross-departmental transformation programmes. To start with, how i…”

“Looking to the long term, this is a huge opportunity for our young people going through the system as well. If we can get that right now for the long term, and make sure that they are learning the skills that they need to, that is a fantastic opportunity.”

“Yes, that is the next step. Before I go into the future thinking on skills, it is around the public sector and the adoption in the public sector, so thinking about local authorities as well and workforce of local authorities. We have seen significant cuts to budgets, which have left the workforces in local authorities …”

“Many of my constituents cannot afford to buy their freeholds under the current leasehold legislation. When does the Minister think the legislation to ensure that leaseholders can enfranchise easier, cheaper and quicker will come into force?”

“3. What steps she plans to take to reform the leasehold system.”

“Given the significance of phase 2 for the overall project—the speed element and the capacity element—and given that the DfT has estimated that the west coast main line will reach capacity by the mid-2030s, surely this is a priority. What alternatives are being considered as this has been scrapped?”

“Finally, has the Department looked at the effect of the cancellation on tackling regional inequalities, particularly in the smaller towns in north-west England?”

“That feels a bit like a sticking plaster, or a second-best option. You have the London to Birmingham option, and the phase 2 option is some extra, longer trains. It does not seem to tackle the issue.”

“There are fewer seats on those trains though, aren’t there? And there are infrastructure problems around the station sizes and the platforms.”

“Is Northern Powerhouse Rail still viable following the cancellation of HS2 phase 2?”

“I want to focus on phase 2, but from a growth perspective, how much value will phase 1 on its own provide the UK economy compared with including phases 2a and 2b? Has that been considered?”

“I know that with local authorities, there might be additional roles that they think the team could offer—for instance, support with funding applications. Is there a dialogue going on between the team itself and local authorities to see what the right level of support is?”

“On 14 June 2017, the country watched in horror as images of the fire engulfing Grenfell Tower emerged. I felt it in the pit of my stomach as the true scale of the devastation and loss of life became apparent. This tragedy should never have happened. I will call it out for what it is: a national scandal. I hope that the…”

“Hello. I want to look at the 2022 rough sleeping strategy in a bit more detail—[Interruption.]”

“I want to look at the 2022 rough sleeping strategy and the cross-departmental activity between Government and the homeless sector. My question is to Penny—you knew this was coming. What is the evidence that your rough sleeping strategy is helping to focus activity across Government and within the homelessness sector?”

“I am interested in what we learn from that work. To what extent was there data sharing and monitoring systems? Was that shared across Departments? How often was progress tracked, and what was the frequency of the identification of emerging trends and where things were not working ahead of time? How frequently was that …”

“Did that capture the wider determinants, such as health, mental health and benefits issues? How interactive was it? You said you published the data; that is great, but are local authorities able to use that data, for example to home in on their specific patches?”

“How might your rough sleeping strategy inform a wider strategy on homelessness?”

“How useful is the data? Is it real-time information that different Departments can draw upon and react accordingly, or is there a bit of a lag from when the data is published?”