Speeches by Lamb.

“Building on the fact that the Cabinet Office has now had a mention, and the earlier conversation around sponsor Departments, Departments are obviously responsible for the bodies that they are sponsoring, but there is also an overall responsibility for public body policy with the Cabinet Office and with HM Treasury. Cou…”

“Even if you are spending an awful lot of time talking to people like us rather than in the organisation?”

“They are generally well equipped to do the role. As far as you are aware, are most boards full or do they carry vacancies for long periods? And are there any reasons why that might be? I will open that one up.”

“Why do you think the process is so clunky?”

“Is that Cabinet Office that is working through that?”

“Mr Smith, how resource-intensive do you and your members find it managing a relationship with your sponsor Department?”

“Do you feel that the requirements put on you by your Department are reasonable and proportionate?”

“If it was not set up right, would that be a different story?”

“Do you feel accountable?”

“In terms of well held, is it that it is best located there, or that they are currently undertaking that role very effectively?”

“Are there any other views people want to share on that?”

“Who do you feel accountable to?”

“That sounds like almost excessive levels of accountability.”

“Do you feel that that level of division between different organisations that you are responsible to may potentially result in things falling between the cracks?”

“Does that in any way impinge upon your ability to conduct the role, though?”

“Could I then broaden that out for the rest of the panel to ask, do you feel the current levels of accountability are effective, and where might there be potential areas for improvement?”

“Yesterday we had a Cabinet Minister and permanent secretary here, and one thing which really came out of that was actually, while there are all these different lines of accountability, there were areas that did not appear to fall directly within anyone’s particular remit, which is where things started to go wrong. I wo…”

“Ms Glazzard, in practice what role does the board play in arm’s length body accountability?”

“And you are comfortable with the prioritisation that it is giving? That is the question here, really. When it comes to economic statistics, additional resource is having to be put in in order to do the core role. We have seen that across the world: economic statistics are increasingly hard to gather in an effective man…”

“The Cabinet Office is the overseeing Department of the ONS. Does it not have a responsibility to try to advocate on its behalf? I guess that in this case you think the ONS has already been issued with the budget that it requires. However, if we are to have mission-led government, if those missions are to be delivered a…”