Speeches by McFadden.

“Ultimately the Prime Minister can, of course.”

“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…”

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

“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.”

“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 …”

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

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”

“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.”

“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.”

“This document was written in 2010 or 2011 and has not been updated since. Is it the view of the Committee that the lack of the updating of the document has had a serious effect on the operation of Government?”

“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 …”

“Of course, a very good Committee. On cyber specifically, I made a speech to a NATO conference that took place in London a few weeks ago: the threat of this is very real, involving both state and non-state actors, although on that day I was talking probably more about state actors. The security services are very aware o…”

“There is a Cabinet Manual, but it is out of date.”

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 It is hard to defend a document that is out of date.”