Speeches by MacAlister.

“As an MP, no, I do not think so. There are few and far between moments where you would need an answer at that pace. On balance, thinking about what matters most for the parliamentary process and Parliament undertaking its functions—for accuracy and speed and getting the balance right—my view is that one model with one …”

“Our performance on named day questions is even worse than on normal written questions because it takes time away from the bottlenecks that we have in the standard process. It is a more acute issue. In answer to previous questions, Tony described how we have tried to compress those timescales for named day questions. Al…”

“In my experience, it definitely is not. The Department’s view is that we want to respond within the timeframe set and the expectation there. There are sometimes very inconvenient questions where you think that if the Committee had asked that next week, I would have been able to give them a fuller answer. However, we de…”

“Tony can say a bit more about this, but across the four buckets of the process, there is an accumulation of delay that gathers through them—some more so than in other areas. With Ministers and spads, the accumulation is greater. They are at the end of the process, so to some extent you might expect that, but it accumul…”

“There are a couple of things to say. There is a functionality distinction between our use and the role that AI could and should play in the education system—I imagine that topic was discussed at the Education Committee meeting this morning. That goes beyond the brief of this session. There are really important factors …”

“My answer to Mary’s question probably covers that. A simple thing would be to move to one model with one set of expectations. There are some characters who ask lots of questions. My one wish would probably be to see some of those volumes drop, but that may encourage the opposite effect.”

“Yes. The new system offers an opportunity to build in some AI functionality. Tony will come in on the potential of the new system coming in in September, but it is very limited, if of any use, at the moment in either the WPQ process or the Department’s correspondence process. In my view, where we have a clear repositor…”

“The new system is just one of four things that we need to do. The system we are using at the moment is quite old. It has not been updated for a number of years. Other Departments use systems that are better at doing the allocation and the tracking—you can see the timeliness in a more transparent way, which helps the sy…”

“From my own perspective, I have responses for colleagues who ask questions about my portfolio, which are in some senses slightly easier to move through quickly. The volume that I am responsible for is much lower than, for example, Minister Gould’s. She has responsibility for the curriculum and SEND, where the volumes a…”

“Tony will come in on this, but the system is being used by other Government Departments, so it is not novel. I am confident we can make good progress between now and September on improving timeliness. The Department used to be high performing on response rates using the current system. There is now a higher volume, but…”

“There is nothing specific to the Department. I have seen the evidence given to your Committee by Department of Health Ministers, and there were very similar issues about new policy and policies on fairly controversial areas, where there is a lot of constituency contact with MPs offices, which cascades through into lots…”

“Thank you to the Committee for the opportunity to come before you and explain a bit about the Department’s performance. As a Minister, I recognise the importance of the parliamentary questions process and the need for replies to be accurate, detailed and timely. The Department for Education’s performance is poor, and I…”

“I am Josh MacAlister, the Minister for Children and Families, and the Member of Parliament for Whitehaven and Workington.”

“Sir Christopher, you made a point about the bulge of issues as they come through—for example, SEND reforms. There is an important role for—Tony referred to this—making sure that the policy teams are really well prepped for being super-clear on the evolving policy position of important, high-profile areas where the volu…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) on securing this very timely debate and on the characteristically thoughtful case he made. I also give credit to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), a graduate o…”

“I completely agree. I will turn now to the Government’s actions, which will take the Open University to its next chapter, so that those opportunities are spread even more across our great country. Last October, we published the “Post-16 education and skills” White Paper. There is a powerful alignment between the Open U…”

“I thank the hon. Member for her questions and, again, for the spirit in which she has made her contribution. I also thank her for her leadership on this issue—she has spent a lot of time in this place raising many of these points time and again. She is right to highlight the work of the noble Baroness Tyler in the othe…”

“The Government have prioritised this issue, with £2.4 billion of funding for the Families First programme over the next three years to get some up-front spending into the system and achieve the rebalancing that is needed. For a smaller number of local authorities, the scale of the care population and the legacy of the …”

“That is a great question, because it gets to the heart of how the system behaves when it finds a parent who is perhaps struggling with a substance misuse problem, or is in a violent relationship, or has mental health needs and cannot continue to look after the child by themselves, but could be an important part of that…”

“I am blushing, Madam Deputy Speaker—the right hon. Member is very generous. There are politicians on all sides of this House who come to this place with a good cause and dedicate huge amounts of time, often behind the camera and unseen, to making real and lasting change happen. There are more of us doing that on all si…”