Speeches by McFadden.

“No one is going to be excited by a label, but there is a serious point underneath this, which is a loss of faith in the capacity of Governments to deliver outcomes because people are seeing their tax burden rise, but there is a feeling that things do not work as well as they should. Waiting lists are longer, we do not …”

“A lot of them cut across Departments. If you want children to have the best start in life, which is one of the things we talked about in the document, that involves the Department for Education, but it also involves the Department of Health and Social Care. It also involves making sure there are enough decent homes in …”

“The team spirit between us and the Treasury is very good, so there has been no need for any shouting.”

“It is a very good point. Regarding homelessness, there are well-documented examples of people bouncing around between different services, probably in a cumulative way, not getting a good outcome for themselves and costing an awful lot of money. There was a famous article written many years ago called Million Dollar Mur…”

“It is a good question. If you go through the different policy areas, some are reserved and some are devolved. If I take the example of energy, there are aspects of energy policy that are reserved, but there are also things like planning frameworks which are devolved in different parts of the country. The dialogue on th…”

“No, but I am saying it has not been updated for 13 years. There is no doubt that the document is out of date. It still has us as members of the European Union, as you may be aware, and various other things, so it will need to be updated at some point. But you will know the point I am making is that there has not been a…”

“I am not redesigning the whole of local government, but there is an English devolution White Paper coming. There is an offer to parts of the country that do not have mayors to have them, but it is an offer. My own personal view is that elected mayors have been a successful project in the country. We started it when I w…”

“These test and learn projects should involve residents. It is never a perfect thing to do, but they should be doing it. As I said earlier, this is about better results for citizens, so why would we not want to do that? At the more macro level, in a democratic system like the one that we have, the truth is that if a Dep…”

“There is variation around the country at the moment and we live with it. Some places have better bus services than others. There is this phrase, “postcode lottery”. There is always a tension if you can get something in one part of the country and not in another. In the nature of devolving power, you will get difference…”

“I will give you a quick answer.”

“Yes, it can, and they cannot magic up more housing and properties. What they can do is look at how the available properties are used, look how long families are staying there, whether there is a quicker way to move them into permanent accommodation, whether there is a better way to use data, or whether they are getting…”

“Is that is what they told you?”

“I do not know.”

“This is a very broad question. The Government want to deliver, they want to produce, they want to focus on outcomes. Sometimes you have to consult over big changes. You mentioned the NPPF, and it is generally acknowledged that it takes too long to get things built in the UK. My colleague, the Deputy Prime Minister, was…”

“Sometimes you have to consult by law and all of that, but we want to deliver, and time goes quickly.”

“OK, this is a big important question and the really important point that I want the Committee to understand about the Government’s position is that there is a mood abroad that somehow we have to choose between a relationship with the United States and a positive relationship with the European Union or with Europe. We d…”

“There is a standard review of the TCA timetable anyway, but I do not think you should expect this just to be around that. That may well just look at the technical operation of the agreement. There are other things we can add to it.”

“I am not sure. It is in your hands, Chair, but I think, if there’s a Division maybe people will want to vote.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Are you telling me that the previous Government made a promise to you, and did not keep it? I am shocked, Chair.”