Speeches by Williams.

“Recently, I attended an incredibly informative special educational needs and disability roundtable organised by PEGiS—the Parent Engagement Group in Stoke-on-Trent. As we know in this place, we make our best policy when we listen to people with real, lived experienced, so will the Leader of the House please join me in …”

“What a day to be a Stokie! As the Chancellor knows, my mum proudly worked in the pot banks of Tunstall and Burslem, and 10 weeks ago I asked the Prime Minister in this place what support the Government could offer our ceramic sector. The good news is that my mum is watching again right now at home, and she is clearly h…”

“10. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.”

“There have been a number of deeply disturbing cases of women being targeted and attacked on the basis of their perceived religion, including two horrific cases in the midlands. What steps are being taken across Government to tackle this form of targeted violence against women and girls and ensure that our communities a…”

“I recently walked around Ball Green with Sharon Rospendowski, a local champion who helps to keep the fabric of her community together. Residents in Ball Green and places like Norton share a common concern: they have lost vital services over the years, including Sure Start centres, youth clubs, post offices and local po…”

“If I broaden it out from the Triples—I will come back to the Triples at the end—part of the reason I am sitting before you today as the former permanent secretary of the Ministry of Defence, rather than the current one, is that I accept that an element of the buck for this departmental failure has to stop with me. It i…”

“My direct responsibility was around whether the security culture and the system of data protection and information security were adequate to the task that we took on, as we discussed in response to Mr Bailey’s questions. Mr McIvor also says in his introduction that in his experience, most data breaches are the results …”

“I said this to the PAC in the autumn: I do not think that when the super-injunction was granted in early September 2023 anyone expected that it would still be in place in the summer of 2025. Certainly, in those opening exchanges, the Ministers present would probably have expected scrutiny of their actions while they we…”

“The implementation of the DACS database, for instance, meant much greater access controls—the ability to understand who was viewing data and to control that data view. We had introduced processes by which emails outside Government systems needed a double lock; that is not particularly relevant to this data breach. Ther…”

“There were 39 recommendations from McIvor and the majority of those were implemented pretty quickly—”

“I do not think that the handover between Ben Wallace and Grant Shapps particularly had a material impact on timeliness. As you will have heard from those former Ministers, we sought the injunction under Ben Wallace and it was granted two or three days later, by which time Grant Shapps was in post. But the ministerial l…”

“The initial focus, in terms of relocations and resettlement immediately after the breach, was to ensure that we were running the pipeline of ARAP-eligible individuals as well as we could. There is a substantial overlap, in terms of the dataset that was part of the data breach, between those who would be eligible under …”

“Yes, I think that is fair—but it is a fact of life.”

“Within central Government, in the end, the key people in other Departments who needed to be engaged were within the circle of knowledge of the super-injunction anyway. This can be quite easily overlooked, but I pay tribute to both the civil servants and members of the armed forces who worked under incredibly difficult …”

“But if you are asking about others in the system, in the immediate investigations we did, we engaged with the Metropolitan police. There was no evidence of malicious intent or criminal wrongdoing. As I have already said, data breaches like this are often the case of well-intentioned individuals trying to do the right t…”

“Recommendations around changes of policy, oversight of policy or introduction of controls were implemented, I would say, almost immediately, so within a month or two. That accounts for 25 or so of the 39 recommendations. There are also a number of recommendations that are, if you like, never really done. One of the imp…”

“Mr Bailey and Chair, thank you. I appreciate that we are tight for time, but if I may, I have two very brief points of contact before I come to the specific question. First, Mr Bailey, you mentioned my appearance in front of your sister Committee in the autumn. I would like to start this session by repeating the apolog…”

“Let me come back to another topic that we have discussed. When you think about data protection and information security, there is a point for me in the lesson about how the MOD is thinking about security in the round. We have had exchanges about RAF Lakenheath. That was not particularly at the forefront of my mind as I…”

“I have a couple of observations, and then Mr Lincoln may want to come in on this. One of the lessons about setting up for success is absolutely being clear about the roles and responsibilities of individual Government Departments in what needs to be a joined-up response, as well as being clear about where the lead sits…”

“The question of super-injunctions and parliamentary transparency, as I said previously—I stand by this—is unprecedented. Of course, there is a point about what level of knowledge and insight you need for effective scrutiny. It will be a matter for the Committee to take a view on whether, if we had read in only the Chai…”