Speeches by Cane.

“Is this on overseas voting now?”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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?”

“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?”

“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 you are getting comparatively low scores on leadership and development, compared to other Departments. Does that come to what you were talking about with your behaviour code for your leadership?”

“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?”

“So when you have an investigation with an outcome and you take action, do you sort of stand back from that and look at wider lessons to be learned for the Department?”

“Do you feel you are always able to take the actions you think should be taken, or are there any untouchable people or areas that you are not able to address?”

“Moving on, but possibly connected, you seem to have more staff wanting to leave than other organisations do, either immediately or in the next 12 months. What are you doing to try to keep those staff?”

“I welcomed much of the Minister’s statement. Shoplifting is a significant problem in my constituency, and shop workers in Littleport and Ely have recently told me how threatened they feel and how stressful it is. What will she do to ensure that our local police—who, as we have heard, are very stretched—have the resourc…”

“I agree that we need to make sure that as we are planning and building, we take flood risk into account and ensure that we are properly mitigating it. In her 2024 autumn Budget, the Chancellor committed £2.4 billion over the next couple of years for flood defences, but she added that significant funding pressures on th…”

“Thank you, Sir Christopher, for chairing this important debate on flood preparedness in Norfolk. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this debate and on his excellent speech highlighting the many challenges to flood preparedness in Norfolk and across our region. Indeed…”