Speeches by Lowe.

“I know what it is, but if you put rubbish in at the bottom, you get rubbish out at the top. It is a bit like these local councils—it is a very good question. If you amalgamate all the local councils that are all a mess, you just get one big mess.”

“Yes, but for your individual companies—”

“I am still struggling to see, but again, what it bears out to me is the complete separation between the private sector and the public sector. This would not be the way in the private sector. If I ran a public company or a private company with an audit report like this, I would end up in prison, probably.”

“No doubt you would be here for another reason.”

“So we don’t know what the exact cost is. When we look at ’23-24 where, to Chris’s point, you made some aspirational statements, it does not seem that we have made the progress that we hoped to make, and today we have heard more aspirations. I just question how this Committee will know you are going to make the progress…”

“I am a new MP, and I am also new on the Public Accounts Committee. I have attended four or five of these meetings now. I read in the NAO audit report that “of the 407 English Local Authorities that should have submitted audited data to the WGA, 167 (41%) did not submit data…and a further 224 (55%) submitted data that w…”

“Will the Minister now commit to publishing these figures on a regular and transparent basis, or will I have to continue exposing this? Further whistleblowers have already come forward with additional information, and I thank them for that. My warning to the Home Office and to other Departments is this: be very careful …”

“indicated assent.”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will indeed write to the Committee. I have one final question for the Minister: what else is the Home Office lying about?”

“I can count, thank you. Why did the Minister mislead the British people? Who is being sacked?”

“My questions are these. Where are they now? What is the Minister doing to detain them? Where did they come from? What are their convictions? How has this been allowed to happen?”

“I do agree with the hon. Member’s helpful intervention. Unvetted and unknown men—sex pests, misogynists, and even far worse—are in our communities, on our streets and near our schools, in the thousands and thousands. This is a national security emergency and must be treated as such. The evidence is undeniable. I have s…”

“I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, and I will come to that point in a minute, but I completely concur. To recap, I asked the Home Office “what information the Department holds on the number of irregular migrants defined as absconders.” A Minister replied: “The requested data is not readily accessible from p…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention.”

“I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, and I completely agree with what she has said. The girl was then pushed to her knees before being brutally raped. Another—one of too many. Last year, a 35-year-old old Iranian small-boat migrant raped a 15-year-old girl in an alleyway. He was known to police in Germany, whe…”

“The scale of illegal immigration and its impact on our country is simply not understood in this Parliament, and nor do most Members even care. British people are genuinely scared—women are frightened to go into their towns alone, and parents are terrified to let their children walk to school. It is getting worse and wo…”

“As the Minister may know, we have been running our own independent inquiry into the rape gang scandal, funded by over 20,000 concerned people. Our hearings are taking place in early February next year. We have made immense progress to date, with more to come. Will the Home Secretary meet me to discuss how our work migh…”

“The Chancellor has embarked on a Fabian programme of brutal tax-and-spend economics that might please the dwindling number of Labour voters, but is hollowing out the nation’s productive base. Those who take risks, invest long term and create high-quality jobs are increasingly voting with their feet. Record numbers of t…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable I feel sitting on the Government side of the Chamber, but I could not find a spare seat anywhere else, which is a testament to the fact that this subject is contested extremely passionately and that arguably it needs to b…”

“You say zero to £60 million. It cannot be zero.”