Speeches by McFadden.

“We do a lot: we talk to local resilience forums and industry. We have what we call critical national infrastructure, which are obvious things such as the power system, the utilities, the major financial institutions and so on, so we have a lot of stakeholders in this. We also have the National Cyber Security Centre, a …”

“I cannot say never to that because you never know what a Prime Minister might decide to do on machinery of government, but we came into office without the intention of tearing up the departmental structures. I am one of the few people in this Government who served in the last one.”

“There is a Cabinet Manual, but it is out of date.”

“Yes. It is hard to defend a document that is out of date.”

“He meant that when you set out big, long-term goals like we did last Thursday, it is clear what the direction of travel should be so people know what their aim is over the next five years.”

“If you are the Secretary of State for X and you have an aim in this document, you know the Prime Minister is instructing you to do everything you can to deliver it.”

“Thank you, Mr Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here with you. I will do my best to answer the Committee’s questions over the period of time that we have. To begin with missions, the idea was to have some big long-term aims, as well as managing the day-to-day stuff that any Government have to manage. A Government have t…”

“A lot of the metrics were set out in the Plan for Change that we published last week.”

“We may come to that, the metrics certainly. In terms of attendance, that might vary depending on the subject under discussion. Location might also vary because one of my messages to all the mission leads is that this is not just a Whitehall exercise. We need to get out of Whitehall and speak to all the expertise there …”

“They are not a replacement for the traditional Cabinet Committees. We have Cabinet Committees, a Home and Economic Affairs Cabinet Committee, and so on, that deal with the day-to-day business of government. Their work carries on as normal.”

“The Prime Minister is ultimately always the ringmaster, but Prime Ministers are very busy people.”

“On a day-to-day basis, he has asked me to co-ordinate and drive this work, but I stress that there was a decision taken to have these boards chaired by the mission leads to make sure they were accountable for delivering their mission. It would not be the right thing to do to just relieve the Departments of their respon…”

“Ultimately the Prime Minister can, of course.”

“If there was a dispute, it would be elevated to the biggest authority in Government: the Prime Minister. We prefer to work in a collaborative way, but ultimately the reason we have stocktakes with the Prime Minister is so that he can press us. The function of the meetings is to ask if we are going far enough, fast enou…”

“There are not very many of us because we were out of power for so long, so most Ministers are new. We have some collective experience of the past, but not a huge amount. Machinery of government changes might have their fans; they might have their sceptics. On the sceptical side, you could argue that they can take up a …”

“The systems do not always focus on delivery as much as they should. There are a lot of process, and processes are there for a reason: people like to do things properly. What I think the Prime Minister was saying in using that phrase was, “Let’s focus on delivery and focus on outcomes,” which is very much the spirit of …”

“We have officials and people can be invited in. I am keen to open these things to outside expertise so it is not just Ministers—so that Ministers are there, but others are too.”

“No!”

“It has not really been a shock. There we are.”

“A lot has changed. My goodness, since 2010, when the last Labour Government left office, the two most obvious things have been Brexit and the experience of the pandemic. They both had a big influence on Government and what they did. When we left office in 2010, we were just coming out of the great financial crisis. An …”