Speeches by Mullane.

“Would you say that the Home Office’s asylum team is responsive? When you have those conversations, where does that lead? Your organisation cannot actually deal with that, but you must be important to the Home Office, so if you come along and say, “Clearsprings is not performing well,” the Home Office would say what? Ho…”

“You quoted 337 staff on your phone lines. I get that you are speaking to very vulnerable people in very difficult situations, who often might be in hotels and they are ringing in. You are not going to be able to speed through that call. However, surely if there is that many staff and, for instance, Clearsprings, whethe…”

“Within the model that you have set up you are not responsible for pursuing or monitoring issues raised with you. Do you think there should be an advice and issue reporting service separate to you?”

“Do you not think that them marking their own homework and self-reporting is not ideal? Caroline O’Connor: That is why they took issue reporting away from the accommodation providers. They used to have call centres and handle their own initial reporting. It was one of the issues when the contract was let that the volume…”

“Would you like to? Caroline O’Connor: We have no contractual authority to hold people to task. The Home Office has access to our computer systems and a large analytical team that can generate reports and see patterns of behaviour. If we are concerned because we see a vast number of issues in a certain area or certain t…”

“Do you think you should?”

“We had the accommodation providers come in. I do not know whether you saw it. Clearsprings was highlighted as not performing well in certain aspects. How do you think it responds to you? When you are looking back at your data, if there is a big swell of Clearsprings accommodation complaints, what do you do about that?”

“Q7. Will the Prime Minister join me in condemning decisions taken by the Transport Minister of the previous Government, who turned their back on promises to deliver a new train station at Beam Park, which derailed growth in my constituency of Dagenham and Rainham? Will he also agree that the Grampian condition on the B…”

“Home Secretary, one of the Government’s priorities—and rightly so—is to halve violence against women and girls. In the short term, would you view higher reporting rates of violence against women and girls as a sign of things not going so well, or do you see it in a different way?”

“Home Secretary, you mentioned in a previous meeting with us the increases in neighbourhood policing teams, which we all welcome, but the Metropolitan police have indicated that their financial settlement will mean, in their terms, officer and staff cuts. What forecast have you made of how this will it happen?”

“That is good news, but how will you ensure that the neighbourhood policing guarantee does not lead to performance management problems and problems with abstractions?”

“Why would you say there is a higher concentration of hotels in London and the south-east than in other regions?”

“As you know, the Home Office’s goal is to end hotel use and get dispersal accommodation. To all of you, do you think that hotels have been more profitable for contract providers than dispersal accommodation? And if so, why would you say that is?”

“Does anyone want to add anything?”

“Thank you. Steve, given that the use of hotels has significantly increased, what motivation do you think Clearsprings would have to shift away from that and deliver cheaper dispersal accommodation?”

“So, as Clearsprings, would you say that that is one of your prime motivations?”

“Claudia made a point earlier about there being no light bulb and trying to fix that, or going to get a microwave. That is one thing, but to turn up somewhere and it is not habitable and fit for purpose is much more serious. I am back to the question again: why Mears?”

“I would, yes.”

“My question to you to follow on from that is why is Mears missing the most KPIs? I know councils, companies and so on also make mistakes. The accommodation might not be habitable and fit for purpose and very vulnerable people are searching for a home and hoping to have their asylum claim sorted. It is very stressful bu…”

“Why?”