Speeches by Cane.

“The Venerable Bede first wrote of the “Isle of Eels” back in the 8th century. He explained that the Isle of Ely is known as such because it was surrounded by water, with an abundance of eels, but these eels do not spend their whole life in Ely or, indeed, in the UK. The biological story behind eels is a quite remarkabl…”

“You touched earlier on the fact that the register of lobbyists and the transparency register both had very thin evidence and it was therefore difficult to cross-reference them when you were trying to do investigative work to identify any breaches. You talked about how long it took: do you have enough resources in the t…”

“You think it is the reputation that is more important?”

“When you find a breach, your maximum fine is £7,500 which, frankly for a lot of lobby firms, is very little. Is that sufficient to deter people?”

“With things like the Bribery Act, if somebody tries to bribe you, you are meant to report it. Is there anything that says that if somebody tries to lobby you, you should check they are on the register and, if not, you should report it?”

“You touched on the fact that you are not sure all consultant lobbying is actually required to register under the current rules. Of those that are required, how confident are you that they are all registering?”

“Is that partly why you wrote to all the former MPs, to try to avoid that?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the petitioners and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for leading this important debate. We all know from our inboxes that the system is not working and that change is necessary. It is incumbent on all of us to fix the situat…”

“Where do you see the place of the Registrar in the wider ethics and standards landscape?”

“The current Registrar has highlighted a number of areas where lobbying transparency needs to be improved, but it does not look as if the Government are in a hurry to address them. How would you try to deal with those weaknesses?”

“Continuing with transparency, what balance do you envisage between your role in applying the legislation as it stands and, as you have touched on, advocating for ways to improve it?”

“Earlier on, in answers to the Chair, you said that you were pragmatic and that you would apply flexibility. Do you think that there is any room for applying flexibility to improve transparency?”

“Sunnica solar farm, which runs through my constituency, was given permission by this Government, and there are more solar farm applications in the pipeline. My constituents are concerned that these applications are being made without a land use framework, which would have provided reassurance that the competing demands…”

“I rise to speak in support of new clause 2, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) and has cross-party support. I really hope that that cross-party support holds up in the vote. As we have heard, disability does not stop at peak times. I represent a rural constituency…”

“I just want to pick up on the way that the director of operations post was appointed. You said it was within the civil service rules. Your chair seemed to be concerned about the way it was done, yet you did it anyway. Why was that?”

“You were trying to deliver quite a lot of change in the organisation, and you were under quite a lot of financial pressure. How much messaging did you get back about how the change was being delivered, how people felt part of the process, and how well they thought it was going?”

“I am going to ask mainly about the culture of the organisation. We have heard from other witnesses, and it came out of Sir Robert Devereux’s review, that there is a culture where open discussions regarding challenges are not welcomed. Do you recognise that description?”

“In your answer to the Chair’s question at the beginning, you talked quite a bit about having open meetings, but you talked about those meetings being quite large—in one case, you said it could have been 1,000 people. You also talked about trying to get your managers to cascade down. How well do you feel that that worke…”

“You have talked about systems for getting your message out and for cascading messages down—systems that may not, in themselves, have worked as well as you liked. What systems were there in place, other than the questions, for cascading things back up again?”

“You said that quite a few people came to you in 2021.”