Speeches by Pinto-Duschinsky.

“Looking at the grand scheme and stepping back, you mentioned the flat-rate scheme and you placed a range on it between £3.5 billion and about £10 billion, which at the upper end is about 60% of the total policing budget for England and Wales for a year. As part of putting together your findings, did you make any assess…”

“I will be mindful of time, Chair. Building on Amanda and Johanna’s questions, you mentioned that you thought there might have been another route through, rather than just a flat-rate compensation scheme. Did you make any attempt to cost that?”

“Following up—and we will come to this in a second—you then impute a level, essentially, of loss from that. You must have some view on the impact of that, otherwise how did you arrive at a view on compensation?”

“I suppose my second question is picking up on John’s point about the two pivots. That was your first argument. Your second argument was about the efficacy of letters. I take the point that the DWP said that it should have sent letters, and part of this comes back to the material impact that might have had. What evidenc…”

“Can I pick up on that? It sounds like you accept the Government informed people broadly that there was a change. Your argument is that they failed to inform them exactly how it would affect them each individually, which, to your point, HMRC does not do. What is the role of the state and what is the role of the individu…”

“Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss this issue. I want to pick up on a couple of things you mentioned, starting with the numbers. You said that the debate on numbers was neither here nor there. You started with the statement earlier that it is widely accepted that it is the responsibility of the Government…”

“The Conservative council that ran Barnet for 20 years left Hendon’s roads in a dreadful state with terrible potholes and pavements. Since it was elected, the Labour council that took over has been investing record amounts in tackling the large backlog that the Conservatives left. I am pleased that the Government this w…”

“Thank you so much for your evidence. It is incredibly helpful. We have heard a lot about how vulnerable people interact with DWP and how the system can itself exacerbate, through its processes, some of the vulnerabilities that people face. My question then pivots to what we should do about that and I would like to focu…”

“Sorry, I am going to cheat and ask one further question. How then do you make sure that a proper clinical oversight is applied not just to the assessment side but to the other side of the house? It sounds like there is a risk of siloing there.”

“Two final quick questions. One is picking up on Gill’s previous excellent points around governance. Also you mentioned being a learning organisation. To what extent have you looked at other parts of the public services, other parts of the public sector—schools, medical and so on—to learn and incorporate best practice i…”

“Is there any follow-up to that? Knowing something about large bureaucracies, inputting the information is one thing, checking it has been acted on is quite another. What are the safeguards around that?”

“You mentioned they go to the clinical governance board and the serious review panel, but after that how does the Department use the findings that you produce?”

“When you say there are very few, how many is very few?”

“The previous Under-Secretary at DWP told the predecessor Committee that part of your role was to be responsible for reviewing all prevention of future death reports. Have you drawn out any trends or findings in this work?”

“One very specific example of where these things could bite, where the rubber could hit the road, is in the managed migration of people currently on ESA and other forms of benefit to UC. Carri, I know that CPAG has talked about the fact that this migration poses serious safeguarding concerns, and you have laid some of t…”

“That is very clear. Thank you for that. DWP has talked about introducing a trauma-informed approach. Are you seeing these suggestions reflected in the trauma-informed approach? Are there any gaps that you think need to be addressed to improve its impact?”

“I can only echo Bob’s points, all of which are fantastic. This is an incredibly important occasion, not just for the Jewish community but for Parliament to come together and take a day to reflect on the lessons of the appalling genocides we have seen, and also because of the particular significance of this day. Holocau…”

“Again, there is a helpful segue from Damien’s excellent questions and the points that Amanda and Frank raised. We have talked overall about pensions adequacy, and it is really interesting. I would like to step back a second and look at means-tested benefits, but start with the big picture of how our spending is allocat…”

“This is incredibly helpful, thank you. It reinforces the extent to which a lot of this is about lifetime income and prospects pre-retirement, although I absolutely take your point, Carl, about some people being consistently poor throughout and about housing and the interaction with that. What capacity do we have to pre…”

“Thank you. That was incredibly elucidating, and it provides a clear segue to the questions I want to ask, building very much on Steve’s questions. Listening to you, it sounds like there are a series of underlying drivers for pension poverty. It sounds like the headline broadly—not quite, but summarising roughly—is that…”