Speeches by Kane.

“I have a couple of final points. Once you have implemented this strategy, you have to measure its success. I would be keen to know how you are going to measure success, but also whether you are alive to the need to use the leverage of the size of the contracts to evolve the contracts in a way that possibly suits our bu…”

“It is not that you probably could do more; you definitely could do more. The reason I know you could do more is that the data you have is not enough at the moment, and you are procuring. If you are procuring with insufficient data, you are procuring insufficiently. I recognise, and we all recognise, that you could do m…”

“We are seeing that fundamental shift—that step change in technology—coalesce around a few suppliers. It has completely changed. I probably still have one of the cardboard sleeves with a Microsoft Office subscription code in it. In terms of how the market is changing, you are going to have to change as well. Where are w…”

“You would accept that until we get better at collecting the data in order to analyse it, we are going to have inefficiencies within procurement, which will cost money.”

“It fair to say that if we do not work with data, we do not really think about it too much, but, when we do, we realise how much of it surrounds us in multiple forms. Every day in this place I walk past shelves groaning under the weight of volumes of Hansard: an institutional memory of all that has happened here. New te…”

“Why did you offer such favourable terms—the 2% simple interest rate over the whole loan period—for the loans? It sounds to me as though, on a period of reflection, that could have been done differently. That may be a learning lesson.”

“I am going to cover specific points, but first, you came in after it had started; hindsight is a wonderful thing, but so is a fresh pair of eyes. You are looking in two years into the process, so are you comfortable that everything was fine and there was nothing you would change? The way you presented the answer is not…”

“You had to set this whole process up during covid, which was a very chaotic time. You had to make decisions. It must be commended what all of us had to do right back at the start of this. As we go through this process, we will talk about establishing things; we will take you through. But the decision-making process sta…”

“So you would not change much?”

“I am surprised to hear that, because the Report says all the way through that there is a lot that could have been done differently and that still could be done differently. Is it your assessment that you are quite comfortable that, other than tweaking around the edges, most of the decisions were solid and you would go …”

“Of course, but I am just asking whether I am hearing what you are saying.”

“For my last question, I want to go back to my first question: if you had to do this all again, based on your answers in the past 10 minutes, is there anything you want to update? Would you do anything differently?”

“On that point about doing the thinking about where this fits in, can you talk about the timescale? Certainly to me, but also to others, it feels like you should be doing that right now. It feels as though understanding how it fits in strategically is work that should have been done already. So when will it be done? Whe…”

“Okay. Lastly from me at the moment, the Report mentions—or looks into—that by managing the loan book in isolation, how it fits in with the Government’s portfolio of financial assets is not quite as clear as it could be. How does the DCMS loan book fit in, from your perspective, as part of the Government’s overall asset…”

“Would it not be more efficient to consolidate the DCMS loan book with others across Government?”

“Permanent secretary, what assessment have you made of the risks of managing this loan book in isolation?”

“Are they aware of the plan? They will not have to wait until the legislation goes through to get enough of the details to begin the workforce planning and the resource implications that they are going to require.”

“I will try to be very circumspect about this. I am a bit troubled by the fact that a death can cause you that lack of information. It sounds like it would be useful for us to understand a bit more about that, perhaps in a letter. I am keen to understand whether it is a one-off—a highly unusual situation—or whether some…”

“And you have assured yourself that this was a highly unusual, one-off situation, not something that is going on elsewhere?”

“I don’t think it is the scheme. What I heard was that, within the Department, one person managed to cause quite an issue with data. My worry is that there are more points of failure within the Department. The assurance I am looking for is that, based on what you have found out in this instance, you have done that work …”