Speeches by Atkinson.

“You mentioned that you now meet with Ministers on a weekly basis. Obviously, there has been a change of Government. Has that changed your working relationship with Government? Has it changed or impacted on your priorities?”

“The contract that our Defence Secretary has announced at Rolls-Royce in Derby today is the biggest Ministry of Defence contract in its history. It will make a major contribution to the long-term investment in our city that I and neighbouring MPs have been calling for, creating 1,000 jobs and protecting 4,000 more. It i…”

“I fully agree that the list in subsection (2) is clearly not an exhaustive list, and many local authorities, as a matter of good practice, will set out the variety of services available to children who live in kinship care and to kinship carers. However, I also invite the Minister to consider the guidance already avail…”

“I rise to speak to amendments 36, 37 and 18. It has been a number of years since I was regularly involved in care proceedings as a barrister, but I did so for the best part of a decade. I and a number of my former colleagues hugely welcome this requirement for family group decision making to ensure that it can consiste…”

“Giving that discretion is really important, but by saying “should”, amendment 37 would give a directive to the local authority to first look at including the child, and only reject that in circumstances where it can be demonstrated that including them would be harmful and inappropriate. In my view, that fetters the dis…”

“Can I follow up on skills for one moment? Do you envisage a specific role that GBR will have on skills? Certainly, one element when you are talking about workforce planning is that you get a lot more investment in workforce when there is a clear pipeline of work. One of the inquiries that this Committee will be looking…”

“Laura, you have talked a lot about the need for real cultural change, and Lord Hendy was talking about concerns around blame and fragmentation, and different metrics. What is your assessment of what has gone wrong with the railways in Great Britain?”

“Thank you. You talked about the need to model behaviours, but, practically, what can shadow GBR, you and the constituent organisations do to address those kinds of issues in the interim?”

“In making sure that you enable those successes to come to the fore, and move away from the silos we have seen, how can the design of what GBR will look like address those issues?”

“Will that design then be fixed in the legislation?”

“Thank you. To follow up from that, a lot of the focus of what we have been discussing has been on passengers, but you have both mentioned freight. Certainly, looking at outcomes, the previous goals for freight were not considered particularly ambitious. In terms of what the Secretary of State, I think, will set out as …”

“Do you anticipate greater ambition for growth in freight than we have previously seen?”

“When we were talking about some of the things that needed to change, an issue that was not raised but I hear regularly when talking to different rail bodies is concern that part of the delays has been created by micromanagement from the Department and the Treasury. With that in mind, I would be interested, Lord Hendy, …”

“You do.”

“It is one thing for the Secretary of State to set direction, and absolutely that is right, but it is anticipated that GBR will be arm’s length, isn’t it?”

“Some of the concerns arise from the view that when you are talking about taxpayers’ money more is being spent because of delay and micromanagement at lower levels rather than setting the direction at the top. Is that something you recognise? Do you feel that there will be progress away from that?”

“I am interested in the social and environmental outcomes that GBR will be focused on. What role will GBR play in addressing the concerning skills shortages in the rail industry?”

“GBR would be addressed maybe more to Lord Hendy, and then certainly what SGBR is doing in preparation for that.”

“We definitely have a vested interest.”

“Would acknowledging the real value of pipelines also apply to looking at how we progress electrification and ensuring that we retain and increase the skills involved in that?”