Speeches by Olney.

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. In July, a Treasury Minister agreed to meet me about the closure of the Lending Standards Board ahead of the launch of the ethnicity code. This meeting was scheduled to take place in September, but was cancelled due to the Government reshuffle. Despite an initial indication th…”

“Businesses across the country are struggling with unaffordable energy costs. The burden of this Government’s national insurance contributions rise and uncertainty over the Employment Rights Bill are compounded by the immense struggle caused by sky-high energy bills. I urge the Government to act with more urgency in add…”

“I also welcome the ministerial Front Benchers to their new roles. The Liberal Democrats have long championed an industrial strategy. In government, we created the Green Investment Bank, the British Business Bank and the regional growth fund, and we opposed the Conservative Government’s damaging decision to scrap the in…”

“It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) and the Petitions Committee for this debate. As a survivor of three maternity leaves—all on statutory pay—a c-section and a spell in the neonatal unit, all the topics…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The Liberal Democrats support measures that work to strengthen employment rights. We welcome aspects of the Employment Rights Bill, such as boosting statutory sick pay, strengthening support for whistleblowers and increasing support for carers, all of which move us in th…”

“Sorry, but I am going to interrupt again. When you are assessing client need and identify that someone is vulnerable and may have difficulties accessing face-to-face or remote services, what are you then doing to ensure they get what they need?”

“Sorry, I am going to interrupt. I hear that—solicitors are best placed, and it is their relationship with the client and so on. My question to you is: what are you doing to ensure appropriate access, and what are you doing specifically for people in more vulnerable groups to ensure that access is possible?”

“Finally on this—well, maybe not finally—and this is really important: there are vulnerable groups who are more disadvantaged and are finding it harder to access legal aid. Specifically, what information do you have about the impact of reducing legal aid on them, and what are you doing to address that?”

“Jo, there was a lot of concern about the impact of the breach on the operations of the legal aid providers. You wrote to the Committee at the beginning of this month to say that, “the attack and subsequent response have” not “led directly to any providers withdrawing from the market,” which seems quite a high bar. Do y…”

“I want to ask about the cash flow point. Were you making loans to providers?”

“We have talked a lot about the cost of the lease and the radon mitigations. Dr Farrar, do you have a full understanding of all the costs associated with keeping this prison going without prisoners? There will be security costs, business rates, I assume, and other associated costs. Do you have a sense of what the full c…”

“Per year?”

“So where you have overpaid in the interim, you will not aim to claw that back straightaway. You will claw that back over time.”

“Thank you; that is good to know. Gemma, is the improved data that you have and will have on litigants in person going to help you to differentiate between the litigants in person who are more actively engaged in their cases and the ones who are not engaging at all?”

“Okay. I will go back to my main question about the overall impact of litigants in person. Before I interrupted you, you were saying that there is no evidence that there is any less efficiency in having litigants in person.”

“Excellent, thank you. I want to move on to how the contingency arrangements have affected the delivery of justice. We have talked about the contingency arrangements—particularly the representation service—and we have identified that family courts are one of the main areas for that. What impact has the contingency had o…”

“There isn’t?”

“What about appearance in hearings?”

“Jane Harbottle, this is a follow-up to a previous session we had about getting value for money from legal aid. We expressed our concerns at that point that the removal of remote legal aid provision was having a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups. What steps have you taken to understand the full impact of that…”

“So we are saying that the data will record just that the participant is a litigant in person; it will not record whether they are actively involved or whether they are a litigant in person by default, but they are not actually speaking up for themselves or making an active attempt to present their case.”