Speeches by Olney.

“Last week, ahead of the launch of its ethnicity code, the Lending Standards Board announced it would be closing, following the withdrawal of support from major high street banks. This was going to be a groundbreaking step towards tackling the barriers that ethnic minority business owners face in accessing finance. What…”

“Thank you very much.”

“Ms Healey, the Chair has kindly given me permission to ask a particular question about a constituent who came to see me just last Friday. They have just been given a bill for community infrastructure levy for £50,000—it is increasing every day due to interest on an unpaid amount—on a house extension. It seems that they…”

“Can I write to you about this case and ask you to have a look at it?”

“Do you have a timeline for that, particularly with these underground assets?”

“We had another committee hearing in May 2021. As a result of that, the Government major projects portfolio started publishing summary business cases following final approval and evaluations. What difference do you think publishing that those business cases and evaluations can make to project governance that is overseen…”

“I appreciate we have the infrastructure strategy and we have the 10-year pipeline. I suppose this is my question. When we have evaluated in the past why previous infrastructure strategies or approaches have not worked, and we have come up as a committee with recommendations, are you saying that you do not think that so…”

“Mr Loveday, will one of the roles of NISTA be to facilitate some of those cross-government conversations?”

“I have just a little bit more about developing those project controls and standards. How long do you think it is going to take you before you have those in place?”

“Mr Loveday, we have done inquiries on infrastructure before in this committee and in the past. We have been speaking to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority about its data collection. I am interested in how that data collection can be used across different projects to aid the costing mechanism and to identify effe…”

“You say there is shared learning. How are you facilitating that?”

“You have said the Department for Education is in a very good place. That is not because the condition of its assets is good, which is not what we are hearing, but because it has a good understanding of where the assets are that particularly need attention. By implication, you did not say the Department of Health and So…”

“How will you change the way you are working with individual Departments? You have talked about schools and hospitals. There is a role for the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care there. How will you change the way that you are working with those Departments and others to ensure that the spe…”

“Will this change mean that the Treasury can maintain a focus on long-term value for money as opposed to having to balance the books in the short term?”

“Mr Donlevy, what is your view? Is the infrastructure strategy going to resolve some of those root-cause problems that we have with getting infrastructure built?”

“That will provide investor certainty and, picking up on something Mr Bowler said earlier on, less pressure on suppliers, so you do not have lots of things going on all at the same time requiring the same contractors. Are there other elements to the infrastructure strategy that you think are going to improve project del…”

“I want to speak a little bit about the infrastructure strategy. Since this Report was published, the infrastructure strategy has been released, to great fanfare. Mr Loveday, you talked a little bit earlier about the importance of the pipeline, which is being released slightly after the infrastructure strategy. I think …”

“In my constituency, Hammersmith bridge has been closed to vehicles for over six years. During that time, buses have been unable to cross, emergency vehicles have experienced delays and businesses on both sides of the bridge have lost out. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury was recently unable to confirm on the radi…”

“Q12. London boroughs are collectively facing a funding shortfall of at least £500 million for the current financial year. Despite that, the money allocated to local authorities in London by the Government’s spending review fell 35% short of the amount requested by London councils. Under the Government’s planned changes…”

“T7. In July 2024, the Secretary of State pledged to launch a consultation on the regulation of frontier AI systems “shortly”. [Interruption.] However, recent reports suggest that it will not be forthcoming until summer 2026. As leading AI companies have admitted that their systems could be used to develop biological an…”