Speeches by Cane.

“I am pleased that people are receiving their payments now, but I have a constituent who has received some payments but who has not received any paperwork to go with those payments. They are unable to check whether the payments are correct, exactly what they are for or whether any more is due. Do you know how widespread…”

“Did they ask the Cabinet Office for your view on Capita before awarding it?”

“In the light of all of these problems, it has been reported that Capita has got the civil service payroll contract.”

“I am a member of the civil service pension scheme.”

“There is opportunity cost anyway. We are going to be talking about infected blood—those people could be helping to surge on that. We have the whole issue of how to evacuate people from the middle east—we could have people working on that. There is an opportunity cost, even if there is not an extra financial cost, to th…”

“I would like to go back to the sunk cost argument. Most commercial organisations, even if they had sunk costs, would charge them on if they had the opportunity.”

“Did the Cabinet Office at the time really think that in-house civil servants would do a worse job than Capita?”

“Does that consideration take into account the fact that there are very few suppliers, and that one of the lead suppliers does not have a great history?”

“Okay, thank you. Going back to the contract, I understand, and you have explained, why you continued with the contract even though you were concerned, but I wonder why Capita was ever in the running for the contract, given its history with the MOD pension scheme, the teachers’ pension scheme and quite a lot of private …”

“Did Capita talk to HMRC in the transfer process about how this was going to work and how it might impact?”

“They have been through quite a lot of “try again” by this stage.”

“Just as a minor note, one of my constituents who raised the issue of not being able to get on the portal got an email in reply saying, “This email address is not monitored. If you need to get back in touch with us, do it through the portal.” That seemed a bit rich, given that their complaint was that they could not get…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this important debate. I agree with much of what she said in her speech, and much of what other hon. Members have said. My hon. Friend’s constituency shares many similarities with mine: they are a comparable size, have a comparable…”

“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Our constituents do not want compensation or apologies: they want a mobile signal that they can rely on. How can they have confidence that their digital connectivity will improve if Ofcom does not engage with a reliable reporting system to direct investment in response to on-the-gr…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to apologise to the House for failing to declare an interest when tabling three written parliamentary questions to the Treasury and one written parliamentary question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. When I tabled those questions, I inadvertently fa…”

“What would be the solution to the single member representing an area? How would that area still be represented?”

“I commend Cotswold district council for that work. Unfortunately, when I tried to get East Cambridgeshire district council to condemn the two-child cap, the Conservatives refused. This policy was poorly conceived from the outset and has amounted to little more than attacks—not on parents, but on vulnerable children gro…”

“Councillor Boughton, do you think that would work for principal authorities—such as counties where there may be only one member for the division? Is that the only sanction?”

“Like so many Members from across the House, I welcome the Government’s decision finally to scrap the two-child limit on benefits—I just wish they had done so much earlier. The two-child limit is a cruel and unfair penalty on those in the most urgent need of welfare and support. The cap does not tackle the exploitation …”

“I can see suspension working for parish councils, but once you get to town councils and principal authorities, people are elected to represent a part of that area. How do the people that councillor should be representing continue to be represented at those levels?”