It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I want to reassure you before I begin that I have notified the Members I will be mentioning today.
I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) for a really important debate and for his long-…
I appreciate the Chair’s reflection, thank you. I will simply say that it is nice for some Members of Parliament to see a safe and secure future, which I am sure many of our constituents would dearly love for themselves.
My concern about the examples I gave is not just that it diminishes the indivi…
CommonsOral QuestionsCabinet Office25 June 20264 contributions
This Government are committed to delivering a truly national civil service, one that lives and breathes the communities that we represent across the UK. We have exceeded our target, having relocated 23,000 roles from London, and are now committed to over 50% of the senior civil service and our fast …
I thank my hon. Friend for a really important question. I started my career as a civil servant, and I recommend that career to all young people; it is a truly brilliant career to start off in. We want those opportunities to be everywhere around the country, so we are working with all Departments to …
I, for one, feel robbed of your contribution to this debate, Sir Roger; I think it would have been fascinating. It genuinely has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and a privilege to listen to the debate. I have certainly learned a lot about historical precedents and other things; it h…
The hon. Gentleman is very impatient, because I was barely getting started on my speech. I will address that, because it is an important question that we have to challenge ourselves with, and it is right that we are here to debate it today, but I wanted to set out the primacy of party politics becau…
I thank my hon. Friend for that really important question. We have undertaken an arm’s length body review, and it is making serious progress. We have already seen NHS England removed, to make sure that we bring our important services under democratic control. We are also looking to make a huge amoun…
CommonsWestminster Hall2 March 20264 contributions
It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for introducing the debate, and thank the hon. Members for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) and for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for their contribut…
That is absolutely on the record. But the reason that we had those general elections was because of the chaos and instability that the hon. Member’s Government brought about, including the resignation of a wide number of Ministers, which I will come on to talk about. As a result of that instability,…
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CommonsWestminster Hall4 February 20262 contributions
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I have a civil service pension, having started my career in the Home Office in 2001.
It is tradition to thank the Member who secured the debate…
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s flagging that point, and I was coming to that. I have taken the quite unusual step of bringing a print-out for colleagues, which will be available at the end of the debate and will be shared with colleagues more widely. It has an email address on it. I am keen that …
CommonsWestminster Hall12 January 20264 contributions
It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for moving the motion on behalf of the signatories of the e-petition across the country asking for a general election. I was very struck by how many Opp…
I appreciate the hon. Member’s attempt to reiterate the speech that he made, but I would have thought that he would be grateful that there are 3,250 children in Keighley who will benefit from the lifting of the two-child limit. Those are children who we are investing in and who are going to contribu…
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CommonsOral QuestionsCabinet Office4 December 2025
Our great civil service serves citizens from across the UK, so it should look like them, sound like them, and come from the same towns, cities, regions and nations as the communities it serves. Through our places for growth programme, we are moving more roles from London to locations across the UK, …
CommonsOral QuestionsCabinet Office4 December 20252 contributions
This Labour Government are proud to be taking historic steps to end child poverty. We are extending eligibility for free school meals to all children and households receiving universal credit next September in an unprecedented boost for children. That is going to benefit over half a million more chi…
We want to ensure that all families can claim the support they are entitled to, and we recognise that there is some great best practice happening around the country, so we will continue to keep the matter under review. By broadening the criteria to everyone on universal credit, it will be a lot easi…
CommonsWestminster Hall12 November 20254 contributions
It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I want to take a moment to pay huge tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz). She is the epitome of a first-class MP and a doughty champion for her constituents, picking up local issues …
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. She articulates the struggle that so many of us find in picking up bits of casework and trying to champion our constituents’ needs and wishes; we can get lost in the matrix, and it can be deeply frustrating. I know that Secretaries of State, including the Heal…
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CommonsOral QuestionsCabinet Office23 October 20252 contributions
Our great civil service serves all the people across the UK, so it should look like them, sound like them and come from the same towns, cities, regions and nations as the communities it serves. By 2030, half of the senior civil service will be located outside London, with half of the fast stream pla…
My hon. Friend is a real champion for his constituency. We greatly value the contribution of the 23,000 civil service staff who are based in the east of England, and are determined that the people of Southend East and Rochford should have the same opportunities as those in Redcar, or anywhere else i…
CommonsOral QuestionsCabinet Office23 October 20254 contributions
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
This Government’s aim is to recruit the brightest and best talent into the civil service—brilliant people from across the UK with the skills to deliver the priorities of the British people. We have already taken steps to improve recruitment, with the first ever cros…
The fast stream programme, of which I am proud to be a graduate, is the No. 1 graduate employee scheme in the country. We are proud that we have had over 70,000 applicants for just 754 appointments. We know that we have done very well in increasing diversity, with applications from ethnic minority c…
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CommonsStatutory Instrument2 June 20252 contributions