Speeches by Cane.

“Is this on overseas voting now?”

“Thank you. Thank you, Chair.”

“How do you find those people in order to communicate with them?”

“Do you have plans in place for communicating with overseas voters to make them aware of all the current options, at least?”

“One of the other recommendations you had was to make sure that people are more aware of the ability to use proxy voters. Some issues that arise from that are not just for overseas voters but for UK ones as well. The proxy voter obviously has to be someone you trust and someone with some connection to you, so they may n…”

“Would there need to be legislative change to facilitate that and enable it to happen?”

“It is ironic given what you said earlier about high turnout in Australia for their elections that there was such a small proportion of our voters living in Australia who managed to get their postal vote back in time. You sound reasonably hopeful that we might be able to set up a structure that would allow overseas vote…”

“What are you doing to try to get a fuller picture?”

“Rural crime is a major issue in Cambridgeshire and in my constituency. Yes, we can mark big farm machinery, but people are stealing parts from farm machinery, and those parts are much more difficult to track. Hare coursing is also a major problem. The hon. Member has mentioned the sheer size of the area of Cambridgeshi…”

“I understand that the Government have inherited a big problem, but the situation is urgent. I have a constituent who has heart problems, so his oral health is really important to him. He cannot get an NHS dentist, so constituencies such as Ely and East Cambridgeshire need urgent action.”

“I hear that, but how are you making sure that the more junior staff are convinced by that?”

“When these various projects have happened and you have learned lessons, good and bad, how are those lessons going to be shared more widely around the civil service?”

“Where you do not get success—”

“But there are still lessons to learn; how are those going to be shared widely?”

“I want to go back to the test and learn idea, which is interesting. How are the teams going to be made up? Are they going to have junior and senior staff, and external people?”

“You touched on the fact that some will fail. How are you going to bed in the acceptance—from the Minister all the way through—that the project failing is about learning the lessons from it, rather than a failure that therefore should not have been done?”

“Will they have different rules to the standard civil service rules, financial regulations, and governance? Will they be able to move quickly?”

“But how are you going to embed that? How are you going to convince the staff, in particular, that they are going to be assessed on how they went about it, the lessons learned, and what it can lead to in the future, rather than assessed on the fact that it did not succeed?”

“My questions largely relate to the staff survey which you touched on in your opening remarks: culture issues came up several times throughout the survey. Do you now understand why Cabinet staff were reporting much higher levels of discrimination and bullying than other Government Departments, and why fewer of them thou…”

“I understand what you are saying about some of the pressures that might make people feel less comfortable, less valued, but I am not quite sure how those pressures would lead to higher levels of discrimination?”