Speeches by Carling.

“More broadly on the governance and the board, can you outline your perspective on the role of the board a little more and give us a sense of whether you think they discharged their function effectively during your time in office?”

“May I move on to a couple of broader questions on the board, unless there is anything more specific on that point?”

“Okay. The board chair said to us in a previous session that he made the point to you that he should have seen it, but did not. Your reply, as he put it, was, “Look, you’ve seen it now and we’ve acted on it.” Do you regret that approach?”

“7. What steps he is taking to improve skills in the defence sector.”

“Last week, I visited RAF Wyton in Huntingdonshire, which employs many of my constituents. Under the new cyber and specialist operations command, Wyton provides a critical part of our defence intelligence, and the plans to expand the work of the base will provide significant career opportunities for my constituents in n…”

“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister agree that developing the defence industry in Huntingdonshire will unlock local growth and prosperity? Can he outline how we will support skills development to ensure my constituents can access these opportunities?”

“In January, the sewer on Church Street in Northborough, a village in my constituency, collapsed. After several attempts by Anglian Water, it still has not been fixed eight months later. This means a risk of contamination, and because of road closures, it is causing huge potholes on surrounding roads. Householders on Ch…”

“A variety of things. As I say, the key thing is to stress to the Government, going forward with trade deals, that this is something that matters a lot to our constituents and to the country more broadly, particularly those farming communities who we really need to show that we are supporting. It gives us an opportunity…”

“Thank you very much, Chairman. Thank you to everyone for giving me the opportunity to present this application. I have a fairly rural constituency with a significant number of farmers in it, and I am regularly approached by that community about the impact of import standards on their business. What I mean by that, esse…”

“I know it isn’t.”

“I don’t think there is any dispute that that’s fine, because the House isn’t sitting; that’s how things need to work, realistically. To conclude, in the light of all these factors that you have to balance, and this Ministerial Code which is quite clear in what it says, and may be quite difficult to balance sometimes, t…”

“In terms of factors, your pipelines and processes within Government for thinking through these things and how you balance things, we said earlier that an announcement in the House is not the most interesting to members of the public a lot of the time. This is the whole point of a press conference; the media gets intere…”

“I am just making the point generally. There is probably a diversity of views on this, and it is difficult to ascertain exactly what the best way forward is.”

“That is useful. On the point about giving Members appropriate time to scrutinise documents before their question, I personally find that to be the most important factor. I would rather have it the day before—that would be the situation if it were up to me—so that I could come with a properly informed question to the Mi…”

“A lot of my planned questions were about whether the code needs to change, but a lot of people have dipped into that as we have gone through, so if you think you have already answered anything I ask, please just say so.”

“At Fletton Quays in my constituency, managed by Gateway Properties, leasehold residents are reporting that service charges have increased by as much as 150% in the last two years. Flats are under warranty and faults should be fixed by Weston Homes, which built the property, but instead are being fixed by Gateway, which…”

“11. What steps she is taking to reform the leasehold system.”

“But when would the board have gone a bit more nuclear? You had been raising these issues for months and months and nothing was happening. What would your next step have been? What was your next step?”

“I am glad that you have brought in so much reference to external views on this because that is what is really critical here. Were external stakeholders involved from the start of the process, or was it a case that the board had to point out to those leading on it and essentially say there are not enough stakeholder vie…”

“Sure, and I know that there is a reference in those minutes to the board requesting that the TLFS became a standing item to provide additional scrutiny, which was certainly the right thing to do. Since then, the board has essentially encouraged the ONS—as far as I can see from the minutes—to be clear that the final dat…”