PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 18 January 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

This week, I signed an agreement on biological security between the United Kingdom and the United States. This strategic dialogue will mean sharing more data, collaborating on research and co-ordinating action, preparing for a whole spectrum of biological threats. I also signed a memorandum of co-operation on cyber partnership with Japan, helping to fulfil a key element of the Hiroshima accord.

This week, the Government are making available a free portrait of His Majesty the King. Available to all public buildings, this portrait will hang in schools, police stations and local authorities, serving as a reminder of the country’s ultimate public service. I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in wishing His Majesty the King and Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales very swift recoveries.

I am not aware of those allegations, but they sound very concerning and I am very happy to look into them on behalf of the hon. Lady.

Yes, the service is available, but it is up to local responders to determine whether to put in a request for it. In this case, they did not do so. I would commend the local responders—whether the Environment Agency, the police or the fire service—for their response. That tool is available to them should they need it.

I call the shadow Minister.

I echo the condolences that have been given to the family of Tony Lloyd.

Further to the question about flooding, yesterday the Public Accounts Committee said that over 200,000 properties in England were vulnerable to flooding, and the budget for flood protection is now expected to cover 40% fewer properties than the Government originally said it would. We have seen the devastation that flooding can do in recent weeks and the terrible consequences for those affected. Given the Cabinet Office’s responsibility for resilience, can the Secretary of State explain why the plan is so far behind schedule and what the Government will do to protect the 200,000 properties that may now be left without adequate flood protection?

As the right hon. Gentleman highlights, the Cabinet Office has responsibility for resilience under a lead Government Department model, but the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is responsible for individual flood defences. We have put record sums into flood defences and we have provided record flood defence building. Clearly, there is more to do to allocate those resources, but we have made considerable progress.

This week, Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office, said that Ministers could save up to £20 billion a year of taxpayers’ money by modernising IT systems, tackling fraud and better management of major projects such as HS2. He also said that out-of-date IT exposes the UK to a greater risk of cyber-attacks, and we have heard reference this morning to the cyber-attack on the British Library. Why is it that time after time, the Government reach for tax rises—such rises will leave a typical family paying £1,200 a year more in tax—instead of saving money by getting a grip of these IT projects and major infrastructure projects, as has been called for by the National Audit Office?

That is precisely why we have created i.AI—the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence—under my leadership to make sure that we apply artificial intelligence to drive down the cost of public services and to improve outputs. I say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that it is a bit rich to be taking lectures from the Labour party, which wasted over £26 billion when it was in government on failed IT projects—failed IT projects in the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and DEFRA. And where was the right hon. Gentleman? He was sat in Downing Street while that happened.

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and the work she has done in this area; I know she has thought about it a great deal. I will be writing to her in due course. It is a complicated area of constitutional law, but we appreciate the position from which she is coming.

That is precisely why we set up the Public Sector Fraud Authority and I can update the House that in its first year it met more than double its target. In addition, there are both civil and criminal investigations ongoing to bring every person responsible to justice if they have defrauded the taxpayer.

My constituency boasts the highest number of veterans of any in the UK, with about 12% of people having served, but the veterans agency is not assisting me and other MPs like me in serving my constituents, because when I raise issues with it, it insists on responding via ministerial correspondence from the Ministry of Defence. There can therefore be no direct interface with it, making it very time-consuming and frustrating for my constituents. Will the Minister get the veterans agency to introduce an MPs helpline so that veterans’ concerns can be answered quickly and efficiently?

I believe my hon. Friend is referring to Veterans UK, which is being retired because I am well aware of the plethora of issues. We have staff there who work incredibly hard but with very poor resource, and consequently the experience of veterans has not been what I want it to be. We are retiring that brand and completely revamping those services—I take on board the point about an MPs hotline, which exists in other Departments. I can confirm that we are looking to establish the same thing in the new organisation to meet these claims.

The next stage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill in the other place will be the week after next, and that is where the Government will make clear their response to what the Commons has decided. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) a few moments ago, the issue of further interim payments will need to be considered in the round as the Government consider the recommendations of the second interim report. We are very aware of the urgency of this. However, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will understand, there is a lot of complexity with respect to the different cohorts and we are working on those as rapidly as we can with the experts now in place.

Ending veteran homelessness and rough sleeping has been an absolute passion of the veterans Minister. Can he give us an update on how this is faring after the festive period?

We made a commitment that this Christmas we would end rough sleeping for veterans in the UK because of a lack of provision, and we met that promise. We housed 407 of the most desperate, most vulnerable veterans across the UK and I am incredibly proud of that. The charge towards ending all homelessness across the UK is clearly something we are all engaged in, but I am incredibly proud of the team at Op Fortitude. I pay tribute to Lee Buss-Blair and the Riverside Group who worked throughout Christmas to achieve that objective. It is a fantastic base to build from and I look forward to the day when these services are no longer required.

Better competition and better procurement are at the heart of the Procurement Act 2023, which the hon. Lady will have seen go through the House of Commons and the House of Lords last year. The Act creates a world-leading framework for the good use of public money in acquiring goods and services.

As I have said, if the House of Commons has indicated its will by the amendment, that piece of legislation moves to the House of Lords and the Government will respond at that point. That is the week after next. That is the process of the House. I have recognised the need to ensure that we get the clinical, legal and care experts in place. They are in place, and they are working on some of the complex issues the hon. Lady alludes to. The psychological support is now in place, but I am doing everything I can in every dimension of this complicated problem to deliver as quickly as I can.[Official Report, 5 February 2024, Vol. 745, c. 2MC.] (Correction)

I have just listened to the Minister’s response, and I appreciate that the situation is complex, but people are dying. My constituent contacted me earlier this week. He has renal failure and cirrhosis of the liver. He wrote asking for

“faster resolution to the infected blood scandal compensation before it is too late for myself and others to see full and final resolution”.

It might be too late for my constituent—he cannot wait two more weeks—but can the Minister outline how many people have received interim payments and how many are still outstanding?

A large number of payments were made available quickly in the last quarter of 2022. I fully recognise the absolute tragedy that this is. Every death is a tragedy. This is the biggest scandal in the NHS’s history. I recognise and acknowledge that. The victims’ organisations said that there were 141 deaths last year, and I am doing everything I can to find solutions as quickly as possible.

Arm’s length bodies across Government spend more than £200 billion a year, and my Committee has been looking at that issue. The Government launched the public bodies review programme as part of their latest drive to look at quangos, but there is little in the public domain. Will the Minister commit to publishing the review of individual quangos as it goes through? What will the final publication date be for the outcome of the review?

In the spring statement in March 2022, the review of public bodies was announced, as the hon. Lady knows. That will give us significant savings. There are 125 arm’s length body reviews, covering 90% of arm’s length body expenditure. Honestly, I am not familiar with the exact protocols around publication, but I am happy to look into it, and I will come back to her.

In 2012, the Cabinet Office rejected my request that it fund the forensic investigation into the Horizon IT system by Second Sight. Indeed, the Cabinet Office insisted that the Post Office pay for its own investigation, which ultimately allowed the Post Office to try to control and coerce the lead investigator Ron Warmington, thus delaying justice for the sub-postmasters. Will the Minister look into the reasoning behind this historic decision and write to me about it, please?

I am happy to do that.

What discussions has the Minister had with the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s cyber protect team in relation to learning the hard lessons that have arisen from the numerous data breaches of office information across the PSNI and throughout the United Kingdom?

This was an appalling incident, as the hon. Gentleman knows, and it highlighted big flaws in how data is handled in respect of freedom of information requests. We have issued further guidance on how such requests should be handled, but I continue to work with officials in my Department and across Government to make sure that that sort of incident never happens again.

That completes Cabinet Office questions, and we will soon be going on to the next set of questions. As I said, next week we will be paying tribute to our friend Tony Lloyd following his tragic death, but I have no doubt that the shadow Leader of the House, who took over his previous seat, will have a comment to make. I am just watching the clock tick down—we are nearly there.