Speeches by Clifton-Brown.

“I do not want to give way to too many people; otherwise, you will reprimand me for taking too long, Madam Deputy Speaker. However, I am, of course, happy to give way to the hon. Lady.”

“I agree entirely with the hon. Lady. She has obviously been reading my speech— I will cover the announcement later in my speech, at which point she will hear exactly what it says. As I say, the NAO has confirmed that productivity levels have dropped by 23%. I welcome the Government’s commitment to a 10-year plan for th…”

“I shall be brief. I thank the Minister for her very comprehensive reply, and I congratulate her on her new role. I also congratulate everybody who spoke in this debate; there were some excellent speeches. Can I ask the Minister to thank her officials for appearing before my Committee? It is very much appreciated. I als…”

“The hon. Member makes an extremely powerful point. I am coming to the conclusion of my speech, which is on precisely that point. The social care system is not working in this country. It is a political football that keeps being passed from one Government to another. I understand that the Government have committed to an…”

“The Local Government Minister must be clairvoyant—or he must be reading my notes. I warmly welcome the Government’s consultation on local audit reform, which would establish a statutory and independent local audit office. It would be responsible for the co-ordination of the system to provide the quality oversight and r…”

“I will in just a second, but I want to make a really important point to the Minister about why all this matters. Why does it matter? If we do not have a set of properly audited accounts, we do not have a sound basis on which to know what we are spending money on. As the Local Government Minister knows only too well, it…”

“I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised the whole business of devolution, because I am going to come on to that at the end of my speech. What I think we should do is build it from the bottom up, as we did, and let local people have a real say in what they want for the future of the delivery of their loca…”

“Just a second. Another part of the budget that is consuming more and more is temporary housing accommodation; this, again, needs a fix in some way or another. Structurally, we cannot let these areas of spending go on unreformed, so that they continue to put huge pressure on the finances of all councils. I give way to a…”

“The Minister has partly answered the question, but he did say that it was a very short timeframe. I understand that we will receive the letter very soon and that is great, but how long will there be after that for the county council to work up a proposal that might be acceptable to the Government? That is what it will …”

“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, because I am about to raise a really important point that has not yet been addressed. A lot of councils are seeing their reserves diminished hugely, and I worry that there are a lot more councils in the pipeline that might well come under a section 114 agreement. Will she c…”

“I am pleased to follow my very hard-working, excellent deputy on the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who has huge knowledge on local government matters. In fact, whenever we come to local government matters in the Committee, we always defer to him. I echo the opening rema…”

“I, too, thank the Deputy Prime Minister for ending the uncertainty around the Gloucestershire county council elections taking place this May. Bearing that in mind, will she set out a clear timetable for those two-tier counties such as Gloucestershire as to when they are expected to provide proposals on any wish to chan…”

“The Justice Secretary has said that she agrees with the old legal maxim that justice delayed is justice denied. We currently have a record backlog of 73,000 in the Crown courts; rape cases are not being prosecuted for three or four years; and, in particular, on any one day 25% of cases do not take place, for a variety …”

“12. When her Department expects the Crown court backlog to decrease.”

“The people of Gloucestershire are expecting elections this May to their county council. If that is not to happen, will the Minister tell us precisely when the date will be decided, for all the reasons so excellently set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds)?”

“The Minister has already referred to his successful £6 billion deal to repurchase the MOD housing estate from Annington. It will give members of our armed forces the opportunity to have their homes refurbished, which they have longed for, for a very long time. Has he managed to persuade the Treasury that he will need t…”

“There are lots of examples. The second area is—”

“Thank you very much, Prime Minister.”

“Prime Minister, there has been dither and delay for the last six months. Not much has happened on HS2. Moving on, the third area where you could save billions by improving public sector productivity is skills in the civil service. For example, in digital posts there are 4,000 vacancies. There are vacancies in AI procur…”

“It needs you, as Prime Minister, to drive it. The second area is procurement. A lot of Government procurement, particularly large public sector projects, is woeful. To take AI at the moment, the Government is very slow at procuring, and it has not begun to adopt AI at the speed it needs to because it is moving so quick…”