Speeches by Cane.

“I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of supporting neurodivergent people into employment. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I am pleased to have secured this debate on an important topic and I want to acknowledge that neurodiversity has a huge range of impacts. Many neurodive…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) on securing this debate and for an excellent and heartfelt speech. I want to share the story of my constituent Lisa—I thank her for allowing me to do so—who adopted her children when they were four and six years old. After that, they were able to …”

“Last Sunday I visited the River Snail, a chalk stream in my constituency, and was horrified to see not a river but a dried and cracked river bed. Our chalk streams, which are a really important part of our biodiversity, are under increasing threat from climate change. Could the Leader of the House make Government time …”

“So you are saying that, to some extent, it is in her hands to clarify to the House what her understanding is of those ambiguous—”

“From what you have already said, I suspect that you do not think the spirit of the principle is adhered to if announcements are made to the media first—at weekends or on a Monday morning—and then a statement is made to the House on Monday afternoon.”

“The principle uses the word “should”. Do you think that that effectively makes it feel optional to follow?”

“You have given us some ideas about how the judgment over “most important” could be reached. Do you think urgent questions provide an effective remedy when the Government has decided that the announcement was not of sufficient importance, but the House wants an oral statement?”

“The Leader of the House, when she came here, set out that she thought the principle in paragraph 9.1 was clear, but she highlighted the fact that there is some subjectivity in the wording. You also touched on that, in your earlier statements. So what is your understanding of the phrase “in session”?”

“I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which states that I am a sitting member of East Cambridgeshire district council. We can surely all agree that power should be devolved as close to communities as possible, because they know what is best for their areas far better tha…”

“Did you not feel it would be useful to do a recruitment process to make sure you got the best person for that role?”

“So a new senior role can be created without the board seeing the full justification.”

“But you would have had to have that justification regardless if you were having a recruitment process, would you not? Are you saying there was not a full justification package done?”

“You said that in an ideal world it would have been good to have a recruitment process, and then went on to say “and have a job description.” Are you saying there was not a job description?”

“You said normal civil service procedure, so would it not normally be necessary to run a recruitment process for a new role?”

“It has been covered now.”

“This brings us back to what the role of the board is.”

“Can I just ask one further question on that?”

“You gave this extra responsibility to someone who was responsible for HR because you felt it was to do with people. But we heard earlier that there seems to have been a culture of not wanting, or not feeling able, to pass problems up the chain, or maybe people up the chain not hearing it. So there clearly was a really …”

“Ms Rourke, this is a question for you initially. The annual report for 2023-24 indicates that a new post—director of operations—was created a couple of years ago. Why was it felt necessary to create that post?”

“You have pulled in more resource, which sounds good, but you have presumably taken that from elsewhere. We heard earlier that some has come from looking at getting comparative statistics between the devolved Administrations. Where else have you had to take resource from, and what are you doing to make sure that we do n…”