Speeches by Jones.

“I have not been privy to any discussions beyond some of the financing arrangements. You would have to ask the relevant teams.”

“There have been requests to support them from the centre, which has often been an FCDO plus DCMS decision, given the soft power implications that you referenced.”

“It is often a debate, not just with DCMS, but with the Foreign Office. In theory, the BBC is supposed to pay for that service itself. In the previous spending review—”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I think so. That was a conscious ask of the Foreign Secretary, both in the one-year spending review and the multi-year spending review. His view and that of his permanent secretary is that they need to reshape the overall headcount and structure in the Foreign Office. We funded a voluntary exit scheme last year, w…”

“In terms of reflecting on the spending review process itself, I am conscious that I asked a lot of our officials by changing the process. We did a lot of new things for the first time in this spending review, including with other parts of Government—particularly the centre of Government. Our focus now is on the settlem…”

“I will need to check and write to you. It was not a conscious decision to do what you are suggesting, because I am not conscious of it. My answer to the question on flood defences is that, clearly, it is a requirement for the Government to get on with flood defences, given the forecasts that we have. It is an important…”

“I think it might be a hypothetical counterfactual that I am struggling to answer. We recognise that combined authorities in themselves are not the sole answer to the national growth challenge. But as well as significantly increasing the maintenance budget for roads through councils in non-combined authority areas, we h…”

“So you think it would be better if we did not devolve that money to mayors. Is that what you mean?”

“But we are trusting mayors in combined authorities by giving them the responsibility for a fund where they get to decide what they want to spend it on.”

“Combined authority mayors are accountable to their local scrutiny functions. They have to report back on their integrated settlement outcomes to MHCLG.”

“No, we have just given them the money based on the population they look after in their area. They get a flat rate and then a top-up based on the number of people they look after. We did that because we believe that enhanced intra-city transport is a way to unlock untapped growth in cities and city regions that currentl…”

“No, we are very committed to and respect the devolution of decisions to mayors in their place. Our new transport for city regions fund, where we have increased the amount of money going into these mayoral combined authorities, is based on the principles that we think are growth-enhancing from the Treasury—”

“Yes. We have come to a point of agreement that we are going to give it a go, but we have to work out with colleagues across Government what pilots we are going to do first.”

“No, I cannot. If they were to provide me with specific examples, I might be able to write to them. I will stress again that the place-based pilot is not something we have done yet, so we should write to you to tell you—”

“It will be for Departments to make the case for that. One of the great things that NISTA will be able to do for us in this co-ordination, including in the place-based pilot, is to flesh out our assessments of non-monetised benefit collaboratively in those places, among different types of bids. It is a pilot for a reaso…”

“We are not going to be reappraising previous business cases, but we will use the new approach in the Green Book for any resubmitted business cases or new business cases. You are right to focus on the role of BCR decisions in the past. We are obviously still doing BCR assessments, but we recognise the challenge that you…”

“There are a couple of key outcomes that have been broadly welcomed by stakeholders. The first is that we want to try to streamline and simplify this as much as possible. I think everybody holds the Green Book up as this kind of mystical deciding book somewhere in the Treasury, but it is just guidance that we need to fo…”

“The SNP position on defence spending is quite clear. The SNP tends to be quite anti-defence spending, especially on nuclear capabilities and facilities. But Scotland has an enormous role to play in our national security framework. We are putting enormous amounts of money into the Ministry of Defence to protect the coun…”

“The growth and city deals are an area where we work in partnership with the devolved Governments to deliver a particular economic output and benefit for a place. We use money directly from the UK Government, alongside money that the devolved Governments have, to invest in those areas. We want to be working hand in glov…”