Speeches by Kane.

“Can I put on the record my membership of the National Union of Journalists? I should have done that earlier. This is a plea, I suppose, following on from the earlier question about freelancers and IP. Freelancers already have slightly fewer rights than employed staff in the way they interact with the BBC; employed staf…”

“Can I come back to intellectual property for a minute? Watching movies in the last 10 years, I think we have all realised that exploiting current IP is preferable within the industry at the moment to creating new IP. I wonder how much of a leadership role the BBC is playing in creating new IP. While you have not met yo…”

“I do not know whether this is helpful or unhelpful, but on the Public Accounts Committee next week we will be looking at that. You have reported two dividends—last year and this year—in this year’s accounts. I was a little bit confused about that question as well. A shared understanding and clarity are required, becaus…”

“These internal targets you are talking about would be useful information to see, to help us evaluate, as you are doing, how well things are working.”

“But I do not think you are setting targets for tackling evasion, so how are you measuring success without targets?”

“Can I ask about setting targets for tackling evasion? I do not think you have set targets for doing this. This is a general question—my curiosity is about not just the scale of the problem, but the scale of the answer to the problem. That is one part of it, but I note that, for example, you are putting a huge amount in…”

“I think it would be important to know. What assurance do you have that the people undertaking the surveys have an appropriate understanding of the mentality and motivators of freelancers, when I would imagine that the survey takers and survey makers are probably employed and less likely to be freelancers?”

“In my dim and distant past, I was a freelance broadcaster. Do you have any data on the threshold at which a freelancer would feel comfortable reporting bad behaviour, compared with someone who was employed? Do you have any data on whether the length of tenure of a freelancer—or, indeed, the pay point of a freelancer—wo…”

“When will it be fixed?”

“I am worried that we are not approaching that with the same laser-like focus.”

“I was going to ask you about cyber and flying instructors, but perhaps I am going to try to bring it all together in one question. There seems to be a disconnect, in my mind. There is a laser-like focus on delivery for the actual operational weapon, once it is up and running, but there is almost an acceptance of factor…”

“Yes, I am going to cover that. One of the things that paragraph 2.4 says is that you miscalculated the number of engineers you needed in the first place. While you have talked about the overall engineering shortfall and some of the reasons behind it, there is another factor as well, which is the miscalculation. Can you…”

“Air Chief Marshal, I want to talk about the personnel associated with the F-35. I want to ask you about engineers, cyber professionals, pilots and qualified flying instructors, but let us start with the engineers. At paragraph 2.3 of the NAO Report, it says, “Shortages of suitably qualified engineers represent the bigg…”

“Transparency of reporting has been a big part of this hearing. That is important. The PAC is about transparency of money, so you have to remember that reporting to Parliament is a big part of this Committee, but you have to report the money transparently. There is no way for you to do that within this scheme, as far as…”

“Two years ago, you would have known that you would be here and that one of the questions you would be asked by the Public Accounts Committee would be, “Can we delve into the weeds of the money here to make sure that we know what it cost and that the money has been spent appropriately?” You have been here many times bef…”

“We are going to have to take your word for that now, because we cannot then investigate it by looking at the costs separately. You have managed to keep this secret for two years. Could you not have found a way to account for this separately, knowing that, once the super-injunction was lifted, this Committee, among othe…”

“Can I ask about how you accounted for the costs of this, given that you have not accounted for them separately? Why did you not account for the costs in a manner that would allow you to separately identify the costs specifically associated with this Afghan response route from other areas?”

“I am not good with spreadsheets—I am more Microsoft Word than Microsoft Excel—so I am going to ask what I would call some “daft laddie” questions here. It strikes me that what I heard you say was that the individual who sent the email had no idea that there was an embedded something in the spreadsheet. Then you said th…”

“Before I was elected, I was a beekeeper—I do not have as much time to do it now. Can you tell me how your ongoing response to animal disease outbreaks is affecting your ability to deal with risks to honey bees, such as Asian hornets?”

“Before I ask my question, we do not have time to get into this—the Chair will rightly move me on—but I have a comment, because it is a frustration for me that we talk about doing things differently. You made the comment about Scotland procuring a different ear tag. Devolution was meant to allow us to make our own choic…”