Speeches by Dixon.

“As the hon. Gentleman well knows, the cuts made to local government by the Conservatives when in government, through the grant, hit councils such as Bradford district and those mentioned by other hon. Members the hardest. That is why Bradford council was pushed into exceptional financing, has had to borrow and has had …”

“My hon. Friend makes a good argument about the amount of local government funding that has to go into adult social care. The cuts that we saw under the Conservative Government have hit disabled and older people particularly hard. Does my hon. Friend agree that the new Labour Government’s uplift to local government fund…”

“In 2023, it emerged that a number of substandard retrofitting works were carried out as part of Government schemes. In some cases, properties were left with structural damage. When households sought redress, they found that many of the authorised contractors had folded, and they have been left to pick up the bill. Will…”

“7. What steps he is taking to introduce the warm homes plan.”

“Is there any way of stopping us getting into this position? Is it a bottomless pit, where, every year, there will be just a new lot of legacy? Is this money that, basically, we will be spending in perpetuity, or is some new way of procuring going to solve this?”

“I assume that you will be putting in bids again to the next spending review to, basically, deal again with funding.”

“Is that because new ones have moved into that category?”

“Briefly, if you can, because I know that we are pushed for time.”

“I am just going to pick up the issue of legacy systems. This has been mentioned as a very significant barrier. We are spending a lot of money on maintaining these legacy systems, and it is frustrating for staff if there is lots of time wasted on workarounds. This is a very simple question. How are you getting on with g…”

“Would one of the criteria be security, though, because the issue is too sensitive to leave it to the private sector?”

“We are very grateful that you have given us those. Hopefully, it will deal with one of the issues that we were looking at the other week, which is fraudulent registration of companies. Please solve as many of these problems in a collective way. That would be encouraging. My final quick question was this point about how…”

“In terms of these pilot initiatives, it seems very much that Departments pick their issues and work on them. Clearly, there are some things, as we have already talked about, that are common across Government Departments and the public sector. We have heard about many of them through this Committee, such as identity ver…”

“You have a mix of projects at the moment, some of which are more just operational and making processes more efficient, where I can see some of those metrics. When you start to get into the more generative AI and its use in decision-making support, I would suggest that that poses particular challenges for trying to eval…”

“In the way that you have talked about workforce and skilling up, it is about making sure that the analysts who are embedded, but also the research community on the outside, are equipped to take on some of that advice. Thank you for flagging that. Coming to the outcomes, you talked there about the financial perspective.…”

“Good morning to our witnesses. I would like to go back to pilots, but look at them from an evaluative point of view. You were quite clear that there has been a lot of experimentation. In an innovation environment, you do want lots of things going on, but at some point you have to know which ones to stop and which ones …”

“rose—”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) for opening the debate so eloquently, and I am grateful for the many excellent contributions that we have heard from Members on both sides of the House. As a member of both the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform and the all-party parliame…”

“We touched briefly on trust. In evidence that we received from Professor Michael Wooldridge, he said that transparency is essential to build trust. My colleague, Luke, already talked about the algorithmic transparency recording standard. I just wondered if you might say something more, particularly around data handling…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) for bringing this really important debate to the House and for sharing so movingly the case involving the tragic death of her constituent Harvey. Road safety is a serious concern for my constitu…”

“My hon. Friend talks about the importance of water quality. Will she join me in commending campaigns such as the Ilkley Clean River Group and other citizen scientists across the country? In the absence of data collected under the Conservatives and the work of the Environment Agency, they had to do the work themselves t…”