Speeches by Baxter.

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for indulging me a second time. He references Brexit. Can he clarify for the House why his party spent less on campaigning against Brexit than on a local by-election campaign in Scotland? The newfound conversion to opposing Brexit might be welcome, but that clarification would be helpful.”

“I thank the hon. Member for giving way. He is right to talk about growing the economy. Does he agree that if the Scottish Government had used the powers they actually have to grow the Scottish economy between 2012 and 2023, it would now be £8.5 billion larger and my constituents would be much better off?”

“I was also one of the Members on the list of people sanctioned by the Kremlin yesterday. I want to make it clear in this House that if Vladimir Putin thinks that sanctioning me will silence me, he is very, very wrong. It is no coincidence that the sanction came on the day when I launched a report that I co-authored wit…”

“At the last session of business questions, the Leader of the House kindly joined me in congratulating one of my constituents, Jean Gallagher, who had just received a provost award from the Renfrewshire provost for her 25 years voluntary service at the Johnstone learning centre. Little did we know that at the same time …”

“T7. It is right that the Government have ensured that funding is in place to compensate victims of the infected blood scandal, but many of them, particularly those in my constituency, are still concerned that the process is taking too long. Will my right hon. Friend say a little more about what we are doing to speed up…”

“I wonder how we spread that good practice so that it is not just dependent on a particular individual in one jobcentre or another. My colleague talked earlier about the lessons that we heard from the Mayor of Greater Manchester. It is definitely not just co-location, but how do we make sure that your interaction with K…”

“Thank you. I am sorry to labour it. Culture is such a difficult thing to change from the top. We are trying to get all those best practice lessons.”

“I am a member of the GMB and the CWU, but I should also declare that immediately before entering this place I worked for UNISON and a long time ago I also worked for PCS.”

“It is a small world. Finally, what opportunities for training would you like to see for careers advisers in the new jobs and career service?”

“I totally take the point about trying to get rid of that conveyer belt approach and making sure that work coaches have that time, but if you are saying 2,100 is an underestimate, what do you think the real figure is in terms of the number of staff who would need to be recruited to give work coaches the time to provide …”

“I will come on to the career service in a moment, but what do you think the Government could do to make the work coach role a more attractive profession? If you are saying we need to recruit an extra 6,000 work coaches, what is it that the Government could do to make that an attractive profession for people to go into?”

“Do you think your members get sufficient training in their roles to provide that person-focused support to claimants at the moment? Or is it the numbers, the caseload, that is the issue?”

“I guess the challenge there is making sure you have those national standards but tailoring services to the challenges of each local area. It is getting that balance right.”

“Yes, and there are examples of good work that is happening to break that down, certainly. My local jobcentre in Paisley is doing incredible work on that. If I can turn to the career service, the Committee previously heard that the funding only covered one in-person session for people referred to the service. Is it real…”

“I think in your submission you had said that there was too much generalisation and not enough specialist support. How would you address that? Should there be more specialist advisers like disability and employment advisers and the like?”

“We have touched on a lot of this already. What do you think makes the best partnerships between local organisations and jobcentres? What makes those partnerships work?”

“We have talked a lot about the pressures that work coaches are under. How can the Government free up their time and capacity to provide that personalised support that they want to provide?”

“That was helpful, thank you.”

“I am conscious that as a smaller organisation you might have come across a number of barriers in engaging with the jobcentre in the past. Can you talk to us a bit about those?”

“What do we do about that? Do you have any recommendations?”