Speeches by Hall.

“I begin by declaring an interest: I am proud to be married to a serving Cheshire police officer. In the year ending September 2024, there were 1 million incidents of antisocial behaviour, 490,000 shop theft offences and more than 55,000 knife or sharp instrument offences. Those are not just numbers; they are real peopl…”

“Like the Minister, I am proud to be a Labour and Co-operative MP. Today’s announcement is a great win for our movement, putting power where it belongs: in our communities. In areas such as mine, community can be found in our proud grassroots sports teams. Will the Minister update us on what more can be done to empower …”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that community asset transfers offer a real opportunity for grassroots clubs such as mine in Warrington South, allowing for the enhancement of community facilities while also giving local people a stake in how their clubs are run, putting people over profit and retaining an identity rooted in …”

“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.”

“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…”

“It is not just about taking it seriously. It is more grappling with the sheer scale of what this actually means, because it is not a small endeavour, is it?”

“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…”

“Moving on to skills, I have two particular questions. One is in the short term. The first question is around the target for 6% of the civil service workforce to be part of the digital and data profession by 2025. How far along are we on that? Longer term, there is a skill shortage in this area, so what is the plan to m…”

“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.”

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

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

“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?”

“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?”

“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.”

“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?”

“Is that being fed back by the team to you guys as well, so it is being factored into whatever you are doing?”

“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?”