Speeches by Carling.

“I, too, will start by agreeing with a member of the Opposition, specifically the former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. He was quoted as saying that under his own party, our armed forces had been “hollowed out”.”

“The shadow Secretary of State says, “Under successive Governments”—that includes his own, for 14 years. It is not often that I agree with Ministers from the last Government, but the former Defence Secretary was absolutely right. The smallest Army since the Napoleonic era, a record 13,000 complaints about defence housin…”

“What I am very happy to say about defence spending is that when we last hit 2.5%, it was under a Labour Government. The right hon. Gentleman’s party failed to do so throughout their time in office. Although it has been quite entertaining in some respects watching old marital woes play out on the Opposition Benches toda…”

“In the meantime, how do you deal with cases where you get a huge dossier of information around why you need to revisit your decision or whatever it may be? Are you are going through that in great detail?”

“We have just been talking about the public value model. How are you measuring the impact of that model on your service delivery and outcomes?”

“Secondly, I refer to a point that Rebecca mentioned earlier about people who are dissatisfied with a complaint outcome and send you 20 pages of details. We get that too, so I can sympathise. How are you dealing with and getting around the impact of that? Are you going through it all, or are you saying, “Look, this clea…”

“You have been very clear that demand for your service is continuing to rise; there are various reasons for that, and research is ongoing. Is there any sense that this could be due to a rise in the underlying problem of maladministration, or is that not the case?”

“I look forward to seeing that. If it is indeed the case that public services have seen more maladministration and more underlying problems despite all the recommendations you are giving them to improve, why is that happening? You can decline to answer if you think it is best to wait until after the research concludes.”

“The hon. Gentleman has just made a point about the concentration of defence investment in the south-east. Can he remind us where Trident is based?”

“I would like to move on to a couple of questions that have come up about AI. First, the use of the algorithmic transparency recording standard has recently been made mandatory across Government Departments and its arm’s length bodies. Although the PHSO is an independent body accountable to Parliament, I do not suppose …”

“I am not 100% sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, but he has put it on the record. There is a huge amount of drone activity going on, and a lot of ways in which that needs to be dealt with. I am heartened by what this Government have done so far, including, to name just a few achievements: the largest…”

“Thank you. The Grenfell example was particularly interesting, in terms of an early warning that went unheeded. Do you see a trend that when we have an inquiry into a major issue, when we look back, find a coroner’s report from a while back that flagged the same issues?”

“This question is primarily to you, Ms Ellul. Do you think that there should be a difference between how recommendations coming from statutory public inquiries are monitored and scrutinised compared with those coming from other routes, for example prevention of future death reports or investigation bodies?”

“That is a really useful parallel to draw; thank you for that. Finally from me, we have already talked a bit about how different chairs of different inquiries have had varying views on this, but it would be interesting to hear your views. When should scrutiny of the implementation of an inquiry’s recommendations come to…”

“Sure. We have talked a lot about various options for the monitoring and oversight process, but to take it back to first principles, what key elements does the process need to include? What key features should we be looking at when designing it?”

“Thank you. That is helpful.”

“I have to say that young people can also be very keen on condensing public bodies.”

“How big was the Treasury's role in driving the agenda forward?”

“Fair enough. Finally, we have the sense that the ongoing review programme under the current Government is primarily asking Departments to look at how their public bodies are working and doing it on that basis, rather than having a particularly strong central drive, although I am sure that is happening as well. Do you t…”

“I have a brief follow-up question based on what you were saying about savings. I often find that when there are discussions about public bodies being set up, you see the argument that they can be more financially efficient than doing the same function within a Government Department, be it because you can get around civ…”