Speeches by Hatton.

“That is useful to know. I appreciate that there is obviously that work within the civil service, which you mentioned, on making sure that Departments with higher risk publish that information. Again, there still seems to be a lack of information for Parliament and the public to be able to pore over and say, “There are …”

“Is the Treasury listening?”

“Good. Do you think it will be able to move towards an approach where there is greater certainty for Whitehall Departments on their funding for building maintenance?”

“One of the things that struck me in the Report was that it was difficult to see how you could have consistency if all the Departments have such different starting points. Moving on to the last area from me, I want to touch on the way that maintenance for Government buildings is funded. The NAO Report is clear that curr…”

“Thank you; that is helpful. It would be useful if the Committee could have some more detail on when that is going to happen so we can see that greater consistency.”

“One of the things I found difficult to fully comprehend when reading the Report was that the definitions behind the calculations for the maintenance backlog seem to vary between Departments. There was one that was referenced in relation to the MOD. It would be useful to understand to why that is the case and how we can…”

“Moving on slightly, could you outline for the Committee what work is being undertaken to support different Government Departments so that they have a better understanding of the scale of the maintenance backlog, particularly bearing in mind, as we have discussed, that there will be gaps in knowledge about the buildings…”

“Moving slightly on, the Chair very kindly started to investigate this point earlier, but it would be useful to get a bit more detail from the three of you about the RAAC crisis and to understand how destabilising, if at all, that crisis was to the work of the Office of Government Property and its ability to implement t…”

“The list that you have just given is all mentioned in the NAO Report. What would be useful for me, and hopefully for the Committee, would be a better understanding of the buildings that fall within scope where there are those gaps, rather than all the things that you have just told me that do not really count for the p…”

“In the meantime, what can the three of you share with the Committee about the condition of that 36% of buildings that are not currently reported on? We do not have a formal or official understanding of their condition. My concern, when reading the Report, was that they were likely to be the buildings that were in the w…”

“I, too, pass on my best wishes to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In South Dorset we urgently need to restore clinics and shift services back into our community hospitals in Weymouth, Portland, Swanage and Wareham. Sadly, the previous Conservative Government hollowed out those community hospitals, meaning…”

“1. What steps he is taking to shift care from major hospitals into community hospitals.”

“Q12. South Dorset is ready to play its part in making Britain a clean energy superpower, but after 14 years of Conservative failure, there are many untapped opportunities on our doorstep. Green investment opportunities such as Portwind, Morwind and a hydrogen storage hub are all coming down the track, so can the Prime …”

“T3. The previous Government failed to build much-needed new school buildings at Dorset studio school, and failed for years to open the proposed Osprey Quay special school for children with special educational needs. Dorset studio school urgently needs a new home, and families in my patch are hugely in need of a SEND sc…”

“If I could press a bit further there, we have touched on this previously when you have come before this Committee. In total, taxpayers spent 719 years on hold to HMRC in the past year, so you can understand why, if an individual watching this today sees that the internal figure that you use is three years out of date, …”

“Without the Office of Tax Simplification, is HMRC able to measure this and report progress? It is really important for this Committee to be able to see whether it is working.”

“Building on what Nesil was saying, the NAO Report makes very clear that there is declining trust in HMRC among both businesses and individuals. Why we have touched upon this today is because this is probably one of the causes of that declining trust. If I may, I have one final, separate point to this. I would be really…”

“I thank all Members for a thoughtful and constructive debate. I thank the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for their particularly thoughtful contributions, my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for his powe…”

“I beg to move, That this House recognises that loopholes in regulation allow for opaque funding of political parties; expresses concern over the prevalence of substantial financial contributions from corrupt individuals and foreign governments, which render political parties susceptible to manipulation and undue influe…”

“I completely accept that, but you can understand why the public find it very frustrating. Would it be more accurate to have a different calculation for extremely wealthy individuals versus the majority of the country when it comes to how much time is spent on administering their tax, particularly considering that those…”