Speeches by Jones.

“What do you think it should be now?”

“It is definitely significantly above what was previously committed. We are putting more money specifically into the affordable homes programme because the Government is committed to making sure that, as part of our 1.5 million homes target, we are making particular progress on affordable and social housing. The best wa…”

“We will be able to tell you when we have figured out who is going to do what and on what basis, which, as I say, we are not in a position to confirm today.”

“Well, is anything?”

“Exactly, and that is one of the problems for them and then collectively for all of us. As Conrad was saying, we are trying to update the approach the Government takes to how it procures temporary accommodation to avoid that competitive bidding pressure between Departments. That is the bit where we have got a little bit…”

“Yes, I agree with the diagnosis of the problem; I just cannot give you the specific numbers.”

“We agree that temporary accommodation procurement across the piece is not being done well enough. We know we have got different Departments bidding against each other for the same properties in parts of the country, which is just driving up price. We know it is a real challenge for local authorities at the point in the…”

“I might need to write to you with the answer to that, just so that I do not give you the wrong answer.”

“I was going to say “in due course”, but that is a bit of a cop out of an answer.”

“I think we are teed up for success on reform. SEND is a complicated area, and we are very conscious that each individual person is unique—it is sensitive for them and their families. It is not an easy area of reform, but it would be wrong for the Government not to want to invest in improving the system, given that we k…”

“I think we all agree that the SEND system is not performing well for children, young people and their families who rely on it. As constituency MPs, we will all have casework where we know the system is not functioning properly. It is right that the Education Secretary wanted to fix the SEND system, and has plans to be …”

“That will largely be dealt with through the mission boards and, where it is not directly relevant to mission boards, through what we call the small ministerial groups, where the teams come together. As part of submissions from Departments, for example on SEND, you obviously provide funding in the core school budget in …”

“If you were to ask the Ministry of Defence that question, they know we are not in that place. We just have to work hard to ensure we do not end up making the same mistakes as in the past. I recognise it has been a challenge for many Governments over many years. The Defence Secretary is the first to recognise that the i…”

“The budgets we have agreed are the budgets that are set.”

“We have set up a couple of new Whitehall functions with No. 10 and the Treasury to look at how the Ministry of Defence is spending its budget, which I think is new. We have something called the defence oversight board, which the Chancellor chairs, where we look specifically at how money is allocated and spent against t…”

“If only it were that easy. The challenge with HS2, of course, is that we have lots of existing contractual requirements and an enormous workforce of people. The commercial leadership failings of HS2 are not the failings of the workforce, who are working hard to develop the line. We would not stop, overnight, funding fo…”

“Yes, and the Chancellor was very clear when we announced our initial policy intention to increase spending on the Ministry of Defence, that we wanted to make sure that we were spending this money in a way that generated the best opportunity for UK plc and UK jobs, so certain commitments in the overall spending are on R…”

“I think we are being very forward leaning in defence spending, with significant increases in the defence budget to recognise the fact that we have very challenging geopolitical circumstances and a need to increase investment in our defence capabilities. That is why, in this spending review, we fully funded the Governme…”

“No problem. I think that the main place for that will be the 10-year plan. When that is published by the Department of Health, that will be the place to look.”

“I am not sure I have a particularly developed view, so you might have to ask my colleagues in the Health Department. I suppose the points I would make are that we inherited a healthcare workforce that had been repeatedly on strike and had felt completely ignored and undervalued. People were not working with them to try…”