Speeches by Reed.

“That one I have seen. It is in a very advanced state. We can do that one before Christmas. Sarah, did you want to come in? Is there some additional work on this?”

“They should, because standards should be high. Let me get back to you, Chris, rather than just give you an answer.”

“That is a good point.”

“Yes, I have seen an advanced draft of that one. I know it is close. For that one, I can give a timeline. I want to avoid giving you commitments at this table that I then cannot meet. I am going to be as honest and transparent as I can be.”

“No.”

“You are right to point to that. There are concerns about recruitment and retention. It is not just that, in real terms, local government workers have seen a decline in their incomes over that time. They have also seen a considerable increase in their workload in many cases. The number of cases that a social worker is c…”

“I have indeed told Treasury colleagues that, and we will wait with anticipation for the Budget to see what the Chancellor announces.”

“Yes, you are right. We still intend to publish that shortly. That will be this side of Christmas. You will have that very soon.”

“As I was saying to your colleague, I have always been an advocate of devolution, and that includes fiscal devolution.”

“I am not sure that section 151 officers ever smile that much, but we will see.”

“There are other factors at play there, including the cost of children’s accommodation, some of which has just been growing exponentially without any capping on it, so we need to look at factors such as that as well. You made a statement about the number of tier 1 authorities that were going to be losing out, in your te…”

“I am wary of giving you a hard date now, but my intention would be for it to be before that, yes.”

“There are other factors to take into account, including population.”

“The end of December is when you will get the final report, just before the Christmas recess.”

“We are working on it currently, yes. We want to get it to you as soon as we can. I am a bit wary of giving you a date now in case the date that I give you is wrong. We can correspond afterwards, perhaps, and I can give you more certainty around that.”

“All else being equal, yes, but I do not know whether the population has decreased considerably. If there has been a decrease in population, you would expect funding, even if it is being allocated based on deprivation, to decline as well. I do not know the specifics of your locality. Either I or my Minister would be hap…”

“What is driving the review is that, if you look over the last 14 years, the correlation between funding and deprivation was drifting apart. A key objective of the fair funding review is to better align those things so that resource goes where the need is greatest, so that we can start to tackle deprivation and the fact…”

“If there is any delay, it will be absolutely minimal. I do not want to make commitments to you and then give you a report that I am not fully comfortable with. We are talking weeks, if anything. If I can meet that deadline, then I will meet that deadline.”

“There are two approaches there. First of all, we have to get a grip on some of those areas where costs are rising exponentially, because that is then sucking resource out of other areas, including transformation work on the way that services work. SEND is one of those areas. We discussed temporary accommodation earlier…”

“Thank you for the figures. It has increased exponentially, yet the number of young people with the relevant conditions has not increased by the same amount, so there is clearly a problem that is going on here. It looks like the problem was the removal of support in school to such an extent that parents pushed to go on …”