Speeches by Hatton.

“I welcome the Bill that the Secretary of State introduced this evening. It has the potential to transform public transport for communities across the country, especially in South Dorset. In towns and villages across my constituency, passengers—or indeed, would-be passengers—rely on buses to go about their daily lives. …”

“I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s overview. The new bus services that councils look to put in place must link people with services such as GP appointments. With that in mind, I hope that the new powers granted to local authorities such as Dorset council under the Bill will enable them to franchise their bus serv…”

“I am happy to support my hon. Friend’s campaign, and I will be meeting him shortly to discuss how I can best do so. Given that Bournemouth is the airport nearest to my constituency, my constituents would certainly benefit from that bus connection. I am desperate for the Bill’s reforms to be introduced as rapidly as pos…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for securing this important debate. Over the last few years, too many patients living with Parkinson’s disease have sadly been left facing unacceptable waits to be diagnosed and treated; th…”

“To build on the line of questioning that Chris was pursuing, one thing I found quite difficult to understand when going through the Report was, when you look at areas where there is a serious shortfall in the number of coaches, it often is only at quite a large level. We are unable to go down to that granular level. Co…”

“I definitely would welcome further information for my constituency. The reason why I was raising it today, though, was that it is useful for us, when we look at these quite large districts, to say, “This is one of the worst affected areas when it comes to a shortfall of coaches”. Is it fairly evenly spread, or are ther…”

“That is why it is helpful for us as a Committee, but also more generally.”

“Are you confident that, through greater digital resource, particularly AI, we can increase the productivity of coaches, particularly if there is not going to be a huge increase in funding for jobcentres?”

“On that point, Sir Peter began to talk about the issues around pay compared to other job opportunities, particularly in certain regions, and then talking about dropouts there during the initial period of starting the role. Are those, as far as you are concerned, the two main reasons why retention can sometimes be a cha…”

“That certainly would be the case in my patch. If you were able to provide any further information, that would be very helpful. To move on, the big question is why you find it so difficult to retain work coaches. How are we going to address some of those challenges where we have the biggest shortfall of coaches, such as…”

“That certainly sounds like the strength, but what I am asking for is to understand what the challenges are and how you are looking to reduce that. Also, could you go into a bit more detail about why turnover is so high when it comes to people not actually sticking around that long as a jobcentre coach?”

“That is really helpful. It would perhaps be useful for this Committee to better understand whether this is a systematic approach. Is this a strategy that will be implemented by the DWP to look at how we can make our existing coaches more productive. Is this something that is just being picked up on a more ad hoc basis,…”

“If I might move on slightly, I am also interested in looking at the existing workforce of coaches and how we enable them to be as productive as possible. I know that the Report touches on a number of the significant changes that have been made to reduce wasted time or particularly cumbersome administrative tasks, parti…”

“Too often, sanctions evasion happens via our British overseas territories, particularly through secretive havens such as the British Virgin Islands, and a lack of public ownership records complicates efforts to find out who is involved in sidestepping our sanctions regime. With that in mind, can the Minister set out ho…”

“Q3. Found in my constituency, Durdle Door is one of the most iconic bathing sites in all the country. Last Friday, I was joined at Durdle Door by my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) and for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan)—and, most importantly, by Ron the local …”

“9. What steps her Department is taking to support the Serious Fraud Office in tackling economic crime.”

“I thank the Solicitor General for her answer. Since their introduction in 2015, deferred prosecution agreements have resulted in the SFO raising some £1.7 billion in fines, yet those DPAs have dried up—the last DPAs that the Serious Fraud Office signed were some four years ago, in 2021. I welcome the SFO’s new strategy…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. The Dorset clean energy super cluster, in my constituency, has proposals for fixed and floating offshore wind, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen storage. Does my hon. Friend agree that having all that energy generation and storage in one place is a reall…”

“To build on the previous two contributions, I suppose one thing that was clear in the NAO Report, which has been demonstrated again today, is that the conflict in Ukraine has meant that the Department has had to look at much more innovative ways of sourcing military equipment. The way that this has been done broadly se…”

“On that last point, where we have taken this more innovative approach, how much of it has been done in lock step with our allies? How much of it sits solely with the UK? Have we found that, because of that level of co-operation, which maybe did not exist in the recent past, we are able to start applying it to our own d…”