Speeches by Carling.

“I wonder whether the Minister has the same experience as I do. When I speak to employers in North West Cambridgeshire, I hear time and again that young people do not have the skills for the workplace and that the education system has not left them with the right mindset and abilities. Is something going direly wrong wi…”

“My hon. Friend is giving a powerful account of the inadequacy of SATs. Does he agree that the fact that so many secondary schools retest their pupils when they arrive shows that they do not have trust in SATs either?”

“Before the summer recess, I hosted a “Truth about SATs” parliamentary drop-in with educational reform group More Than a Score. It was a great event, with MPs from all sides of the House sitting down to take some mock SATs exams themselves. Lots of colleagues sat there quite relaxed, chatting to others and evidently fai…”

“We have just heard the Minister speak about having statutory guidance on this issue. Does the hon. Member agree that one way of making this change, rather than through these amendments, would be for the guidance to include some clear indications to the remuneration panels about what roles they should consider comparabl…”

“With your permission, Sir John, I will make some references to schedule 3 as well as clause 9, just to do it all in the same place. I will start by responding to some of the hon. Lady’s points. She raises some valid concerns. I will just give the perspective of someone who lives in quite a fractious combined authority …”

“I have some more thrilling financial commentary, so I hope the Committee will forgive me. First, I welcome what the Minister has just said. Exactly this situation happened in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, where our mayor went on medical leave for some time. His deputy, Councillor Anna Smith, who is a good friend of …”

“I am really lucky in North West Cambridgeshire to represent a whole variety of heritage sites of different sizes, including Burghley House, which I visited recently—a 16th century stately home that welcomes thousands of visitors each year to the house itself and the gardens—and smaller sites such as John Clare Cottage,…”

“Sorry. Would you favour adding provisions to the Bill for strategic authorities to take over licensing powers to deal with that issue? Sam Chapman-Allen: None of my 169 members has ever asked for taxi licensing to be removed from a local principal council up to the strategic authority. If that is the Government’s inten…”

“Q This is a question for Councillor Chapman-Allen about the balance of powers between councils and strategic authorities in the licensing space. A number of our district and unitary councils, including Peterborough and Huntingdonshire, in the area I represent are grappling with problems of taxi licensing, where taxis a…”

“Q We have talked a lot about governance and the need to safeguard how financial procedures work on audit committees. I am interested in the flipside of that—in how we can protect taxpayer money through measures such as those in the devolution White Paper, including local public accounts committees. Could you give us yo…”

“Q Thank you; that is really helpful. On to my main question: in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, our mayor announced that he intends to appoint as his planning commissioner a former leader of Peterborough city council, who is still a councillor, although currently in opposition. We have a democratic problem, where we h…”

“Q I have a question for the whole panel, but first I would like to come on to something Mayor Brabin just said. I was really pleased you raised the issue of taxi licensing. We have a border problem around my area of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, where taxis register in certain councils because they have laxer standa…”

“Q That is useful. You talked about potentially having only one that perhaps has quite a big remit across the whole country. Do you think that would have enough time to do the work it would need to do, or is there a kind of midway point where perhaps you have regional committees or some other mechanism? Mark Stocks: I t…”

“I recently met a police officer in Cambridgeshire who told me that that force had a policy requiring all footage from stop and searches to be reviewed by a more senior officer. Due to this, they feel discouraged from doing proactive patrols due to the extra work that it adds for already stretched supervisors. Will the …”

“I have been supporting constituents living in ex-military housing on Embry Road in Wittering, in my constituency. The Ministry of Defence sold the homes years ago, but my constituents have been left in limbo because their properties remain wrongly classified under MOD commercial energy contracts. Despite repeated attem…”

“I apologise for being late, I was delayed by the tube strike. Your answers to the questionnaire were really helpful, and thank you for going into such detail. You will no doubt be aware of the seven principles of public life. I wondered if you could give us a couple of examples of those and how you have met them.”

“Thank you. That is a really comprehensive answer. On a slightly different topic then, how do you envisage having a relationship with this Committee during your time in office?”

“That answers my question, but I am really shocked by the severity of that. The whole point of a board is to be a critical friend to the senior leadership of an organisation, to allow these sorts of issues to be explored, and for the expertise of board members to be used to help resolve them. Was there a reason that you…”

“But even before Sir Robert came in, the previous board was not sighted on the report.”

“Sir Robert Chote took over in ’23. I have that it was published in March 2023.”