Speeches by Scrogham.

“How many do we actually need?”

“Thank you, Chair. I will declare some interests at the outset: I am a proud member of Team Barrow, and I am born and bred in the area. Listening to it laid bare exactly what has happened to Barrow in the last 50-plus years that I have been there has been quite difficult. The whole boom and bust, feast and famine is pos…”

“Does the local authority have in place what is needed, when it comes to planning and the structure, to deliver those homes? We know that wherever you stick a spade in Barrow, something underneath will need removing; it costs an awful lot more to build a house there than it does in a lot of other places. Do we have thin…”

“And we have 1,200 in the pipeline.”

“Do you think that Whitehall understands the challenges we face? Does everyone there realise what their role is? Obviously, the whole country is asking for more funding for every service. All services are on their knees. Most councils have been underfunded for at least a decade and a half. They all need the extra cash. …”

“Where are we with transport? Again, we are talking about a transient workforce and getting people to travel to, or to come to work and live in Barrow-in-Furness. The A590 has been the bane of our life for many years—it is one road in, one road out. I was really interested when we travelled to Australia, to Adelaide, an…”

“I want to pick up on the comments that Alex Baker made about the supply chain and how we as MPs can communicate. I chair the AUKUS APPG, and this is something we have been working on for a year. It has proved incredibly challenging to get that information from the MoD or from the primes, because of the sensitivity of t…”

“What do you see as the current biggest risk to that both here in the UK and with our partners?”

“On the SDR commitment, they have said that they want to acquire up to 12 AUKUS submarines. Do you think that the “up to” gives enough to industry to be able to do their job, or are we giving them the wrong signals?”

“I would like to move on now to Team Barrow. Obviously, the town of Barrow-in-Furness is central to delivering what we are going to be doing with AUKUS. The local infrastructure, whether it is the roads, health, education or housing, needs a substantial uplift to attract the workforce that we need to build those submari…”

“I absolutely agree. It is an incredible town, and the people delivering what they deliver there have been doing that for generations, building the nuclear deterrent to protect the nation. I would suggest that the infrastructure around them has not been delivered to the level they deserve. One example of that is the one…”

“In terms of the level of investment needed, you do not get an awful lot for £200 million when it comes to roads. My concern is whether we will actually be able to deliver what we need in that area with £220 million over 10 years. We are using it at the moment on Team Barrow as leverage and seed funding, but in terms of…”

“You mentioned earlier the immense scale of what we will be delivering with AUKUS pillar 1 and the lengthy timeframes that it will take to deliver it. The mantra at BAE in Barrow now is: “Every day counts”. For AUKUS pillar 1 to succeed, we know that that is true. Do you think that political decisions within Government …”

“What could they be doing to make it better, in your opinion?”

“I was guessing that would be the answer.”

“Thank you for the evidence you are giving this morning; it is disturbing, to say the least, to listen to some of the reports that you are telling us about. I would like to move on to the resettlement. Specifically, when you gave in your written evidence, you said, “As time went on…the ARAP application process was not f…”

“You easily accessed the payroll and proved that they are on the payroll. What purpose do you think the MoD had in saying that they hadn’t paid them?”

“Can you tell us what the impacts have been on targeted Afghans because of the Government’s handling of the resettlement process?”

“You said that the ARAP process was handled particularly badly during the period of the super-injunction. Has there a been a time when the process has worked better?”

“How do you feel the current programme has built on the reforms from the previous programmes? To what extent do you think it is avoiding the challenges that caused the previous ones to fail?”