Speeches by Norman.

“I am sure that is right. I do not need to tell any of you that, over the last 30 to 50 years, different elements of the British nuclear enterprise have had a pretty inglorious career of building things up and then not leaving much impact. The same would be true in Sizewell A and Sizewell B, and people think, “Hold on a…”

“Thank you. My final question is as much for Ms Buckley-Irvine as it is for you, Lord Case. In a wider context, higher education policy in this country has, without deliberate intention particularly, sucked talent out of the periphery and pulled it into the major cities. The higher education participation rate in Barrow…”

“Lord Case, thank you very much for coming in today. How do you build a town up again? How do you make Barrow a rich, thriving, successful and inclusive place? A lot of people would say that it is about infrastructure and investment, but as you may know, I have a great interest in technical education, and it is also abo…”

“Picking up the point you made about MHCLG, Nona, it has been interesting to look at the stronger towns fund and at which areas have been successful in place making and which have not. I say this with a naked personal self-interest because Hereford is an outlier in terms of success. What has driven that is the bottom-up…”

“It is not just about sand and cement.”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“May I start by recording my thanks to the Leader of the House for agreeing to the request to have the Ukraine debate on 4 December? I think we all feel warmly about that decision. Politics at the present moment may not be enormously pretty, but it has been a week of triumph in the sporting world. We have had the joyous…”

“Okay. Do you spend a lot of time on pillar 2? What can be done to improve its credibility and pace of change?”

“When do you expect that? The end of the year?”

“So you don’t think pillar 1 is going to be thrown into some doubt by the Elbridge Colby review?”

“Therefore, the Pentagon would have an interest. ITAR would be permissive—the ITAR changes would allow this—but it would have a positive desire to buy a collaboratively created piece of best-in-class technology.”

“So the maxim with new technology is to make them happen, get more excited about it, and then replicate.”

“Okay. This is my final question. Obviously, there has been some talk about new partners coming into pillar 2. What is your view on that?”

“If everyone has to communicate and contribute to every piece of technology that comes out across a four or five-partner institution, it is hard to imagine that ever succeeding.”

“So we have to wait and see where Colby comes out on pillar 2.”

“Again, it should be technology led—we should not accept partners into pillar 2 just because they have money and interest. It should be led by their ability to make profound technological contributions that add to the collective capability of the whole.”

“Do you think that view is widely shared across the other partners?”

“Obviously, it is a difficult question, because you want to hit the ground running. We have had testimony here about the importance of getting moving quickly—every day counts—but you are also talking about a 20, 30 or 40-year commitment overall. Is there any budgetary mechanism we can put in place with the Treasury to g…”

“Consistency of funding.”

“Yes, and of course civil nuclear is quite an interesting example, because we had 30 or 40 years in which we basically bought one of each of a different kind—in other words, we did not avail ourselves of any of the benefits of batch production or the fact that your first one is going to cost a fortune, but your average …”