Speeches by Olney.

“I understand that. Dax, do you have a sense? Might it be material?”

“Thank you, but to come back to you, Matthew, you mentioned commercial realignment and talked about higher headcount. That all suggests to me increased cost.”

“Matthew, we have obviously talked about what has gone wrong in the past, but we clearly need to look forward and think about what we are going to do now—or what you are going to do now. Currently, according to the Report, there is not “a complete and agreed integrated plan that informs the Programme end date”. Can you …”

“In answer to the opening questions you talked about the challenges with procurement and with recruitment of the right skills. Are you confident that those problems have now been solved, and that there will not be renewed challenges further down the line?”

“So are the options looking at how to bring that date forward to make sure it is within the 2028 end date?”

“I am really concerned that the Government’s fair funding formula sells many London councils short, such as Richmond and Kingston in the area that I represent. The majority of London boroughs already have lower core spending power per capita than the England average, and several are among the lowest funded councils per …”

“I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement. I welcome the Government’s announcement that they are stepping in to offer support and protect jobs in this vital industry. We have a duty to safeguard our national security and economic prosperity, and to ensure a fair transition to clean energy. This statement …”

“How successful is DESNZ in terms of strategic workforce planning? How much of a forward look do you feel able to do to get a better view of what your skills needs are going to be before you get to the point where you are having to hire a consultant?”

“What processes do you use to ensure that you are getting the best value for money when you are procuring consultancy services?”

“Mr Leigh, how much does your Department, DESNZ, spend on consultants, and what do you use them for?”

“Just to quickly follow up, you talked about your three objectives—cutting overall costs by 16%, halving consultancy spend, and a shift away from back office towards front office. Do you see any conflict between the commitment to halve consultancy spend and the other two objectives? Does that make it harder to achieve e…”

“Are you confident that you will not see too much difference, in either individual accounts or across Government, in spending on consultants once you have done that exercise?”

“Just very quickly to ask on that, is it consistent between Departments? Are they all classifying consultancy spend in the same way so that you can take, say, the DESNZ accounts and know that consultancy spend is classified in the same way as in any other Department?”

“Do you think they are misleading?”

“I have two questions about that. First, in terms of halving consultancy spend, what we have seen in this Report is that the Government find it difficult to say how much they are currently spending on consultants. First, why is it so hard to have an accurate estimate of current consultancy spend? Secondly, if you do not…”

“I am glad that the hon. Member has raised that. I was coming to that in my speech. Perhaps he could listen with a little more attention. Employers have finally been given the necessary clarity to make hiring decisions with confidence, and we have avoided the danger of unnecessarily slowing down the labour market even f…”

“It is so revealing of Conservative Members’ mindset that they cannot believe what I am actually saying is the reason for our change, and that they assume instead that we must have sought some benefit for ourselves. It is so revealing that that is what the Tories think. It beggars belief that the Conservatives, having h…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think that is disgraceful. The hon. Gentleman is literally implying corruption. I made it very clear in my speech what the basis of our change in support in the Lords was for, and I think it is intolerable that we are being accused.”

“Today we are debating the fourth round of consideration of Lords amendments to this Bill, and this long and protracted process says a lot about the way the Government have approached this legislation. The Bill was initially put together at great speed, missing much of the detail; there was a long series of Government a…”

“Good afternoon, Ms Little. I just want to start by asking about workforce planning, and what the Cabinet Office is doing to ensure that Departments and arm’s length bodies are properly carrying out their strategic workforce planning so that they can identify potential skills gaps in the pipeline.”