Speeches by Coghlan.

“Baroness Manzoor, we have seen so far that there is an awful lot going on. There is a 40% increase in cases, the car finance scandal, fraud is up 30%, and you told us that the board’s expectation is you will have 90% of cases dealt with within three months. You are at 44% right now, so why am I seeing a headcount cut o…”

“I understand with any severance payment that what the exact amount may be now might be slightly different to what is disclosed in the accounts, given the audit process and the accounting standards, but given you have your auditors coming in soon, perhaps you can run that by your auditor.”

“You are not very far off your auditors coming in anyway. Is it possible to write to the Committee about the exact amount, if any, that you will be disclosing in your accounts in any severance payment, given that your audit is only two months away?”

“I assume your financial year-end is 31 March.”

“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that one lesson from the pandemic is that the last thing countries should do is withdraw from organisations such as the World Health Organisation and reduce international co-operation, given the risk of a future pandemic at some point?”

“indicated assent.”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks and for supporting our amendment 3. We tabled that amendment because, when the Bill was first debated, the Minister spoke about it enhancing the resolution regime in response to the failure of small banks. We believe that that is appropriate. I guess it is an assessment of ris…”

“By “NHS data” what exactly do you mean? Do you mean that, if I am applying for incapacity benefits, I then get my doctor to sign me off and that, arguably, it is the same thing, or do you mean more than that?”

“Let me just ask a follow-up on some of Mr Dean’s points, just because it is a fundamental issue about whether the UK has a chronic long-term health problem in the labour force. If I am right in my understanding, you are very confident that it does, not only because of the robustness of your methodology and data collect…”

“You told me that you are over a third down in terms of the number of data collectors that you would like, and that you have had huge budgetary challenges, yet you are still very confident in terms of the robustness of the data that you are collecting.”

“In 2016, Sir Charles Bean found that the move from London to Newport had a detrimental effect on quality due to staff turnover, which could be permanent. Is that still a factor today?”

“Is that now being released?”

“What exactly are those ringfenced budgets that have now been released?”

“That would be helpful. Thank you. In your letter to the Committee, you highlighted that budgetary constraints have been an issue. To what extent did budgetary constraints contribute to the problems with the labour force survey?”

“As part of your financial inclusion strategy, are you looking at innovations in financial inclusion in developing countries? I am thinking specifically of east Africa with M-PESA, with the use of mobile banking to include people, using very simple, non-smartphone technology around mobile payments to bring people in who…”

“I would like to see slightly more humility from all political parties on the subject of defence spending. [Interruption.] Thank you. The Minister is right that defence spending was cut under the coalition, but we are in a different world now, with a great power attacking Europe. I would also like to inform him that one…”

“11. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to ensure that SEND provision is adequately funded.”

“Every headteacher in Dorking has told me that early intervention is vital for our special needs children. The London Business School told me that hiring people with special educational needs can be a source of competitive advantage for companies. Does the Minister agree that those principles could be the basis of a mor…”

“I congratulate the hon. Member on her excellent chairing of our Committee and on this excellent report. Given that the Office for Value for Money has only 20 staff and only 12 in post, whereas the NAO has 1,000, I share her concerns about whether it will be able to deliver value for money. What additional steps would s…”

“How do you measure that the changes in tax revenues are a result of changes that you are making at HMRC versus changes in economic growth leading to higher tax revenues?”