Speeches by Caliskan.

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements (Amendment) Regulations 2026. I cannot tell you, Mr Twigg, how very delighted I am to be opening this debate. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 2 March. I am grateful for the opportunity to set out…”

“An additional pressure has just entered the room. Why and what changes are needed? Over time, it has become clear that parts of the current framework are not working as well as intended and are creating confusion for consumers, as well as unnecessary complexity for businesses. Having engaged extensively with a range of…”

“As outlined in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am a member of the trade unions Unison and GMB.”

“I want to ask a question or two on the back of the questions that you have asked. I am trying to understand if Government Departments are asking for this resource in moments of crisis, so to speak, or if it is part of their core planning.”

“I will be brief. For the record, I used to be a council leader and I am vice-president of the Local Government Association, having sat on the board. I absolutely recognise everything that you have said, Paul, about the live conversations. There is a tension, is there not? Central Government has grown in size, including…”

“That is why I am asking the question. Moments of crisis, emergencies, or things that you could not plan for, by their very nature, should not happen often. One might misinterpret the increase in numbers of the core team that you are talking about, as Departments just not planning for what should be predictable events, …”

“Is it fair to say that the profession helps get the day-to-day business functions as efficient as possible? What I mean is people not waiting on the phone, for example, or not having to complete a form several times, and the more complicated, individual-type cases that our constituents might need to face needing to be …”

“That is a perfect segue, because my final question, perhaps to Julie, was going to be about building capability and how the profession helps organisations build their capability. Specifically, I have the DWP in mind when I ask this question. I represent Barking constituency, in Barking and Dagenham. It is one of the ar…”

“That capacity has to come from somewhere. It is not an endless pot, nor is there a blank cheque. There is a fundamental question as to where that capacity comes from. Local government is not short of ideas, nor is it short of innovation. Some might argue there is more innovation going on locally than there is centrally…”

“Can I just give a final shout-out to a place-based approach? I understand that everything that you have said is really important for a system to work, but some of our public services are in need of transformation because, over a number of years, we have lost that place-based approach. If I was to be very cynical, every…”

“Can I ask you about the four key capabilities that the NAO Report specifically identifies? You have spoken about some of them already, including, as we have just discussed, dealing with particular demands, and also the need to take a whole-system approach. I wonder if you might be able to talk about how the four will b…”

“That is a helpful answer. My only other challenge back would be, in a climate where more agility is required for individual Departments, are you not, in a way, giving them a get-out clause by saying, “Don’t worry about making sure that your core teams are agile enough to be able to deal with things? We will always have…”

“I thank the panel members for your time. I want to build on the conversation that other Committee members have opened up about maintenance and lessons learned. It is not really acceptable that the FCDO has not had a coherent strategy. For the purposes of reflection—the point of this Committee is to understand how thing…”

“Finally, please can you say something about the restructure of the estates management department specifically? I am trying to get a sense of whether that happening prompted the governance focus, or vice versa. Often these things are interlinked. What has the impact been of the restructure of the estates management depa…”

“The FCDO’s overseas posts have long been responsible for managing their own operations, in terms of maintenance and looking after the estates, but the NAO Report outlines that the majority of respondents to the survey found it difficult to deliver preventive maintenance, which meant that they had to do more reactive ma…”

“That is helpful, thank you. My follow-up question was going to be on governance and oversight, because there is a governance and oversight element to this, as well. There are operational decisions that have to be taken on the ground, but there is also a role for FCDO centrally. Can anything in particular be done to imp…”

“I just want to understand what was happening, and what the intention is, going forward, a bit more. That is in the context in which I want to ask: how have you been working with overseas posts to ensure that they are managing their estates to a required standard? As you have set out already, there are different challen…”

“Isn’t the big risk that you have the data, you set out the guidance, but those who are responsible for maintaining the estate locally are just not doing it? What action do you take, or can you take, if posts and those responsible for those parts of the estate are not able to manage them effectively?”

“So the FCDO, since before the last Report—I think the NAO Report was in 2010—and over the past 15 years, has had a problem with data. You didn’t know the quality of the estate and you didn’t have some quite basic information. There was a question about not being able to monitor, once you got that information, whether t…”

“An opportunity to deliver better value for money?”