Speeches by Norman.

“Can you comment for a second, General Ben, on the composition of the last 16,000? Obviously, you could have all the tough nuts being left to the last minute, or they could have been cracked early and it could be relatively smooth sailing. How is that working?”

“That would be very helpful. To pick up General Ben’s point, it would help us if you could comment privately on the wait for grant now, and the factors affecting that. To follow up on your point, Minister, are all aspects of the programme compliant with the KPIs that have been set?”

“You will have a sense, though, because you will have been sampling and you will know what the breakdown of application types is, won’t you?”

“So the number has been revised down by 1,000?”

“Sixteen thousand?”

“You have been at 800 a month for the last six months.”

“Mr Wilson, in view of what the Minister has just said about the generosity of the scheme and the availability of it now, compared with some of the alternatives, could you comment on the number you have given, which is that the remaining 17,000 applications will be processed by spring of next year? At the moment, how ma…”

“Eight hundred to 1,000 is the kind of number you are gesturing to for the last six months, if you have done 5,000 in that period.”

“I thank the Leader of the House very much for announcing the business, and I welcome all colleagues back to the House. I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating His Majesty the King not only on the Gracious Speech yesterday, but on his glorious triumph in the United States of America, in par…”

“Top of the morning to you, Mr Speaker. Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”

“No—and you are also flying the flag for responsible leadership in the civil service.”

“So every word of that report was written either by you or personally approved by you?”

“Yes—thank you. Can we just go on for a second? Given what you know, and what Mr Lincoln knows, imagine that we had the same crisis tomorrow, or something similar: a resettlement scheme needs to be set up in very short order. What do you now know that would make things different from what was done at the time, and how s…”

“Do you mean drafting the report? They were helping you draft the report?”

“I would have assumed that you would draft the whole thing.”

“In relation to the Triples, for example?”

“You and your team have certain professional institutional affiliations. What steps did you take to satisfy yourself that those were supporting the aims of the inquiry and not necessarily narrowing the range of evidence that you looked at?”

“Obviously. No one is thinking that, but the civil service would not be the civil service if it were not a lot more subtle about such questions.”

“I have some experience of that, as a viewer.”

“Mr Lincoln, did you want to add something?”