Speeches by Olney.

“You have said the Department for Education is in a very good place. That is not because the condition of its assets is good, which is not what we are hearing, but because it has a good understanding of where the assets are that particularly need attention. By implication, you did not say the Department of Health and So…”

“Mr Donlevy, what is your view? Is the infrastructure strategy going to resolve some of those root-cause problems that we have with getting infrastructure built?”

“How will you change the way you are working with individual Departments? You have talked about schools and hospitals. There is a role for the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care there. How will you change the way that you are working with those Departments and others to ensure that the spe…”

“Will this change mean that the Treasury can maintain a focus on long-term value for money as opposed to having to balance the books in the short term?”

“I have just a little bit more about developing those project controls and standards. How long do you think it is going to take you before you have those in place?”

“I want to speak a little bit about the infrastructure strategy. Since this Report was published, the infrastructure strategy has been released, to great fanfare. Mr Loveday, you talked a little bit earlier about the importance of the pipeline, which is being released slightly after the infrastructure strategy. I think …”

“You say there is shared learning. How are you facilitating that?”

“Mr Loveday, we have done inquiries on infrastructure before in this committee and in the past. We have been speaking to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority about its data collection. I am interested in how that data collection can be used across different projects to aid the costing mechanism and to identify effe…”

“I appreciate we have the infrastructure strategy and we have the 10-year pipeline. I suppose this is my question. When we have evaluated in the past why previous infrastructure strategies or approaches have not worked, and we have come up as a committee with recommendations, are you saying that you do not think that so…”

“We had another committee hearing in May 2021. As a result of that, the Government major projects portfolio started publishing summary business cases following final approval and evaluations. What difference do you think publishing that those business cases and evaluations can make to project governance that is overseen…”

“Mr Loveday, will one of the roles of NISTA be to facilitate some of those cross-government conversations?”

“In my constituency, Hammersmith bridge has been closed to vehicles for over six years. During that time, buses have been unable to cross, emergency vehicles have experienced delays and businesses on both sides of the bridge have lost out. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury was recently unable to confirm on the radi…”

“Q12. London boroughs are collectively facing a funding shortfall of at least £500 million for the current financial year. Despite that, the money allocated to local authorities in London by the Government’s spending review fell 35% short of the amount requested by London councils. Under the Government’s planned changes…”

“T7. In July 2024, the Secretary of State pledged to launch a consultation on the regulation of frontier AI systems “shortly”. [Interruption.] However, recent reports suggest that it will not be forthcoming until summer 2026. As leading AI companies have admitted that their systems could be used to develop biological an…”

“The Liberal Democrats welcome the publication of the Government’s national security strategy, because we recognise that we are living in a world that is less stable and more insecure now than at any time since the end of the cold war. Putin’s forces continue to wage their war in Ukraine, the middle east is teetering on…”

“Just quickly going back to the mediation point, do you think that it is a risk in terms of good outcomes for more cases to be encouraged to go through mediation, rather than going through the court process? If you do, what mitigation can you put in place around that risk?”

“Is that because there are more private law cases in London—just picking up on what Mr Taylor was saying?”

“Various responses have talked about Pathfinder. Do we think that rolling out Pathfinder in London is going to be part of that improving picture of productivity?”

“Mr Goodwin, why is it that the average length of time to resolve each case is still so high?”

“Ms Rees, we are still seeing backlogs in the family court, although not as bad as it has been in other parts of the justice system. What do you think are the biggest factors contributing to the fact that we still have a large number of outstanding cases in the family courts?”