Dame Meg Hillier
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have huge respect for the Minister, but she has said that she will not take any interventions. She is a very good Minister, and I trust that she will answer in detail the points that have been raised in the House today; having discussions with her and the Government after the debate is too late…”
“My hon. Friend talks about who makes our laws, and she has talked in articles that she has written about the primacy of this place. If the Bill goes forward, is she willing to accept amendments?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place and thank her for that response, which demonstrates the complications of these schemes. I asked the National Audit Office to look into this, and yesterday the Public Accounts Committee published its report on compensation schemes, suggesting that a central body be established.”
“I am pleased by my right hon. Friend’s answer, but she is in a unique position across Government to ensure that we are protecting not only women, but those who are blind or have visual impairments, who really value this technology.”
“I welcome the Chancellor’s clampdown on speculation and leaks ahead of the Budget; it is certainly an important step he has taken. On the issue of certainty, the National Wealth Fund is a critical investor in crowding in private investment around the UK. I noted that he has changed the remit.”
“Further to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes), it is important that we talk here and that we have diplomacy, but what practical actions are the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence taking to ensure that there is a review of physical defence and security, so that we send a clear message to t…”
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“But that scheme was scrapped as a total failure—predictably—and cost the taxpayer the equivalent of £17,000 per loan granted.”
“I want to see some commitment from this Government that they will help my constituents. Let me move on the specifics of the Queen’s Speech. Her Majesty talked about the Government continuing to “lead the way” in tackling climate change. It has been my great sorrow, in one of my responsibilities as the former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—a role I hope to resume in this Parliament—to have pored over the detail of the Government’s policy on climate change. And what do we see? There was carbon capture and storage: three expensive competitions, wasting millions of pounds achieving absolutely nothing. There was the much vaunted green deal, with the noble aim of greening our homes, because, let’s face it, more domestic emissions come from housing than from aviation.”
“Some in my constituency earn enough money to work a four-day week, but many, many more work three or four jobs on poverty wages on zero-hours contracts just to pay the rent. There is also the invidious bedroom tax policy, which does not work. On one estate, the Wenlock Barn estate in Hoxton, 74 families are hit by this policy and they do not have an option to move to a different property. It is a cloud cuckoo policy, and if the Prime Minister is anywhere near honest about his desire to be a one nation Conservative, it is one that he would abolish right now. All Governments should be creating a ladder of opportunity for the people of this country. This Government, or the Governments before them, have ripped away the lower rungs of that ladder, so it is a very long reach for too many of my constituents.”
“Without more from this Government, it will be difficult—if not impossible—to deliver for those 3,000 families who need help, and for those children who will be living without a permanent roof over their heads and who will be celebrating Christmas in one room in a hostel or in short-term, inadequate temporary accommodation. I would not want to suggest that this poverty is also a poverty of ambition, because boy, do my constituents want to get on in life. None the less, without those basic building blocks of primarily secure long-term, affordable housing, and swift and easy access to proper healthcare, to secure and properly paid jobs and to skills development, they will never get there.”
“Half of all households are represented in social housing, which is more than the other two combined. A real stain on one of the richest countries in Europe and in the world is the fact that more than 3,000 families are living in temporary accommodation. Just in the past few weeks, a man wrote to me begging for help because for two and a half years he has lived with his eight-year-old son in one room in a hostel. We have a fantastic Labour elected mayor in Hackney, who is doing his utmost to resolve this housing crisis, which is costly to the individuals concerned, costly to our communities and costly to the taxpayer.”
“Although some people talk about our being achingly cool—they think of the hipsters with their beers and of our bread makers and our beer makers and so on—a very high percentage of my constituents are in great need, with more than a third living in financial poverty, earning 60% of median earnings after housing costs are taken into account. I wanted this Queen’s Speech to say a lot more about housing. In my borough, it takes 17 times a person’s salary to buy a home. That compares with the London average of 13.8 times, which is pretty high, and the England and Wales average of eight times the amount, which is also high. It means that home ownership is out of the reach of so very many. In my constituency, there are more private renters than homeowners.”
“In my constituency, that includes half of our children who live in poverty after housing costs are taken into account. In my constituency, or across Hackney, 30% of deaths are still premature, and the leading cause of that is cancer, so investment in our health service for early diagnosis and treatment is absolutely vital. One fifth of adults, which is above average, still smoke in my constituency, compared with around 14% of the London population. With a ratio of nearly one in 10, Hackney has the highest rate of diagnosed depression of any London borough. I would welcome a review of mental health support, but, as the former Prime Minister said, I think that we may need to be more radical than that, so I will be watching what happens closely. Hackney as a borough is the 11th most deprived of the 326 English local authorities.”
“It feels a bit bitter to hear talk about investment in broadband from the same Government who rigged the most recent broadband competition, particularly for rural broadband, so that only one bidder could win, but it is important that we invest in infrastructure in our country. Even in my constituency—even in Shoreditch—where we have the best tech businesses beating like a heartbeat for Britain, we have too poor a broadband service. I will join the Government in supporting investment in broadband if they will deliver in my constituency and across the country. I cannot stand here today without highlighting the real challenges for the people of Hackney South and Shoreditch. As the former Prime Minister said, everybody counts.”
“The promise of more funding for schools comes now, but only after nine years of funding cuts that have led to an 8% per pupil funding decrease over the past decade. The Government talk about more police, but who was it who cut their numbers in the first place? The Prime Minister has been keen to talk about the past as though it were a different country; were he in his place, I would remind him that he has been not just the Prime Minister for a few hundred days but an MP and the Mayor of London. He cannot dodge responsibility. I will of course welcome things in the Queen’s Speech that will deliver for the people of my constituency.”
“It is a pleasure to welcome you back to the Chair of the House, Mr Speaker, and it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), because despite our political disagreements she and I agree on what she said about everybody counting and the Government’s being there for everybody. I thank the people of Hackney South and Shoreditch who re-elected me for the fifth time to stand up for them all—not just for the 73% of them who voted for me, but for the others who did not. I will stop at nothing to stand up for them in this House. The Queen’s Speech is quite incredible. It talks about investment in education, the NHS and public services, but this Government have slashed spending over the past nine and a half years.”
“Let me assure the Government that if I am returned to the position of Chair of the Public Accounts Committee—or, indeed, even if I am not—I will hope that that Committee watches every penny and pound of taxpayers’ money that is being spent. I will be challenging the Government on the efficiency, effectiveness and economy of every promise made in this Queen’s Speech and every plan that emerges from it. But above all, I will challenge, cajole, criticise and at every stage make sure that this Government are doing what they can to deliver for the best interests of my constituents in Hackney South and Shoreditch.”
“Of course, I want a fair system, a clear system and a faster system, but we should not be putting up barriers to people who have demonstrably shown that they have a legitimate right to be here and are being pushed through a bureaucratic process that delays their eventual proper opportunity to fulfil work and family hopes and to contribute to our communities and our economy. The Government have talked about investment and borrowing in this Queen’s Speech. That is a very simple phrase and I look forward to seeing the detail. Her Majesty talked about the Government “keeping borrowing and debt under control” and “a responsible fiscal strategy”.”
“On immigration, I am sadly an expert in the failings of the Home Office in this area, as one of its top six customers among the 650 Members of this House in representing constituents’ concerns. I represent the world in one borough. People from across the world come to my surgery telling me their problems with immigration. We have 40,000 European citizens in Hackney, as well as many Commonwealth citizens. The hostile environment is a reality in my borough. When leave to remain was reduced from five years to three years, guess what—that meant that constituents had to pay two fees before they could apply for their citizenship. Then, in a very mean-spirited way, it was reduced to two years, so they have to pay three times the fees before they can qualify for citizenship. Many of my constituents really struggle with those costs.”
“Many of my constituents who are women returning to work, had been in low-paid jobs and had children do not want to take the risk of a loan in order to possibly get a better-paid job. They cannot afford that, they do not have the credit record for it, and they are very nervous about it. If the national skills fund supports them, then fantastic. If it also makes sure that our young people are training in the tech skills—the global skills—that many of my tech businesses in Shoreditch find hard to get in the UK, then great. As I said at the very beginning, if there is something that the Government are doing that will help my constituents, I will work with them on that, but I wait to see the detail.”
“We must not have stop-start and reversal; we must make sure that there is proper investment in our criminal justice system. A royal commission worries me. It kicks the can down the road as there is a danger that we will never actually deliver. A royal commission can take a couple of years and then the Government have to consider it. We do not have that time to wait. Actually, it is much simpler than that. I hope the Government will look at those bits of our work and make sure that they take those points on board. I am interested in the national skills fund. I hope—maybe too much—that this might mean investment for people in low-paid work who want to improve their skills, as the Labour manifesto proposed. I hope that it will end the barrier to skills and training in further education that is the loan system.”
“It rather surprised me to hear Her Majesty talk about setting up a royal commission on justice. I do not think this is really necessary. I could refer the Government to a slew of Public Accounts Committee reports and concerns raised on probation, where we have seen a failure of the modernisation of the system and an attempt to reverse those changes; on prisons, where we have seen a slashing of prison officer numbers and huge issues there; on chaos in courts and tribunals; and on a huge IT project that is behind schedule. The problem is that several Secretaries of State for Justice were throwing everything in the air wanting to change everything overnight, and that is a recipe for chaos. We need to go back to the basics—to stability.”
“Yes, knife crime is a scourge, but if we simply say that we will criminalise more the people who carry knives, people will choose to carry other sharp weapons. We will need to look closely at the detail of that legislation to ensure that it achieves what it sets out to—not just a headline. The Queen’s Speech included new rules requiring councils, police, schools and housing associations to work together. Of course, the Labour Mayor of London set up the violence reduction unit to do just that, and my constituency has the Hackney Integrated Gangs Unit. Once again, I genuinely and openly offer the Government the opportunity to come and see what we are doing locally in Hackney. We do not have all the answers, but we are tackling this issue—unfortunately, from bitter experience of the impact on our community.”
“Of course, we await reshuffles, but I invite the relevant Minister to come and see what my borough is doing; we can show them how we are leading the way. The Queen’s Speech also touched on “swift justice” for knife possession. There is a scourge of knife possession among our young people in particular, and too many people in my borough are fearful of walking their own streets because of the impact of knife crime. Only during this election campaign, another young man’s life was lost and another family are bereaved. I am angry and disturbed for the families I visit who have lost loved ones and whose lives have been devastated as a result of knife crime. However, I urge the Government to tread carefully.”
“In order to compare this situation with what Labour in power can do, I turn to my own borough—the Labour-run Borough of Hackney—which has set bold targets to tackle climate change, and is achieving those targets. Already, half the electricity for the council and local schools is generated from renewable sources, and that will rise to 100% by April next year. Only very recently, the council established a publicly owned clean energy company that will maximise all council-owned roof space to generate renewable electricity. The council is also decarbonising its vehicles and tackling many other issues. I do not have time to go into everything today, but it is setting an example to show what can be done. If one London borough can do this, what could a Government do if they set their mind to it? This Government really need to step up.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her point, which I am sure she will be making more firmly later. We have to look at this issue in the long term. Let us be clear: Governments of different colours did not deal with it early enough or properly, but we now need to tackle it, and a Government with a majority of 80 have every opportunity to be bold and ambitious in this direction. But they privatised the green investment bank, which became the Green Investment Group and now does not even need to deliver on any of its green principles. There are very few guarantees about where that money will go. Had the green investment bank remained in public hands, we would have had a huge opportunity to invest in emerging green industries to create jobs and opportunities as well as tackle climate change issues. But that was another squandered opportunity.”
“The right hon. Gentleman will know, as a former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how long it takes to get these major projects that will deliver big change up and running. In my speech, I outlined three failures that happened because of this Government and their predecessor. Does he agree that we need to get action going now?”
“We have to put our own house in order and call out bad behaviour where necessary—but we need to prevent it before it gets to that point. We do that externally and we need to do that here. I would be utterly committed to this. I have worked up plans, and I have talked to staff and unions about how to deliver on this. We need to work with staff. We cannot talk about them without them. We need a culture shift. We have to lead by example. Don’t let this moment pass.”
“It is just over a year since Dame Laura Cox reported and, yes, we need an independent process in place, but we need more than that. Gemma White’s report earlier this year highlighted problems in our own offices. There is a good list of MPs to work for and a bad list of MPs to work for—staff know this, we know this. It may be an uncomfortable message. It may not be a vote-winner today, but we should not be complacent even if we are on that good list. We should not rest while young staff in this building are fearful and tearful and afraid to raise concerns about how they have been treated. We need better HR, and supported and trained senior office managers; and we need to tackle this now. It has to stop; it is going to be the next expenses scandal, colleagues, if we do not tackle this. We have to lead by example.”
“We need to tackle that, and I am already working up plans on how we monitor the cost—of course that is important—but this is also an opportunity to rekindle trust in our politics and our democracy, to rekindle how we do things and how we change the culture of this place. As Speaker, I would have your back—on unfair publicity, on expenses. More than that, I would work to educate the public about what great work MPs do in this place, and I would step up the approach to personal security and online bullying, which is leading to too many colleagues leaving this place because it is intolerable. However, the main thrust of why I am standing is about the bullying and harassment that is still too rife in this building.”
“Some time ago, I was mayor of a hung council in London, where I had the casting vote, while also being the first citizen, so I had to handle some pretty difficult situations in a fraught council chamber. But I am not a grandstanding politician. I would speak little, and, as many of you know, I am incredibly discreet when you come to see me about matters in your constituency. I would not seek self-publicity, but would speak up only for MPs, and for Parliament and our democracy. We need better support for MPs. There is too little personal development and careers advice, and that shows up starkly when so many Members are leaving with short notice and we have Members losing seats. Of course, on restoration and renewal, it was my amendment that moved us forward, so we will be leaving the building.”
“I would be an impartial Speaker, a director rather than an actor. We also want better time keeping. Urgent questions and statements are going on too long, and that greater discipline would give greater certainty on timings so we can plan the rest of our lives. We need an end to short time limits. I have a track record of fairness and of delivering what I promise. I have chaired the Public Accounts Committee for the last four and a half years, and I have introduced a new way of working on the Select Committee corridor. As a Minister, I dealt fairly with all MPs, whatever their party, because, let us not forget, we are all here only because our constituents elect us. We respect each other, we respect our constituents—it is as simple as that.”
“I think we all know there is a lack of trust in Parliament and politics right now, with everything from the behaviour in the Chamber to the allegations of bullying and sexual assault—we have had three such allegations since this race for the speakership began just six weeks ago—and the general state of politics out there in the nation. So the next Speaker has a key role in setting the tone, yes, in the Chamber but also with colleagues in this place who support us in our work and in the country. I would be a Speaker who speaks less, but when I speak it will be with the clear intent of standing up for MPs. The House has heard from other candidates today and at the hustings that we are in broad agreement on how to manage the Chamber. We want to be champions—I certainly would be—of better conduct.”
“The Attorney General has said that he is going to review whether advice should be published, but in answer to the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), he upheld and defended the privacy of that legal advice. Can he tell the House the scope of the review he is undertaking? Is it just related to the Government’s defeat in the Supreme Court or will it be drawn more widely?”
“It would be helpful if the Secretary of State set out the cost to the taxpayer of Operation Matterhorn so far and what likelihood there is, realistically, of getting money back from individual people’s travel insurance.”
“The Prime Minister believes himself, by all reports, to be a great statesman, but this House, in passing the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, simply changed the parameters of the discussions he needed to have with Europe. It did not prevent him having those discussions. If he is this great statesman, why can he not be sure that he can come back with a deal? All this House has ruled out is no deal. He has not answered the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman): what negotiations is he having? What has he put on the table for Europe? We have a month or so to go before he needs to come back to the House with that agreement.”
“After all the announcements over the summer, I had hoped for more detail today. The Chancellor and his Department might have a laser-like focus, but he can rest assured that the Public Accounts Committee will be delving through these figures and holding him to account. As others have said, the Chancellor has indicated that he is going to change the fiscal rules. We already have an 85% ratio of debt to GDP. Can he advise us of the tolerance level that he would go up to in that debt level, and is he considering increases in taxation?”
“Once again we have heard bluff and bluster from the Prime Minister, after a summer during which he found a veritable forest of magic money trees. Can he tell me where he will find the money—or has he found a pot of gold?”
“We need to beware the smoke and mirrors. There has been an 8% cut in per pupil funding, and it will take a while for an inflation-linked increase year on year to catch up with that. The Secretary of State said that Ofsted might have a role in looking into how schools spent the money. Is he giving Ofsted new powers and new funding to enable it to investigate the way in which schools spend their funds, which is currently not its responsibility?”
“For once, the right hon. Gentleman has made an error and over-promoted me, but I thank him for his distinctive comments. There is a serious point here: we are a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. I take that judgment seriously, as I know do colleagues across the House. The Government do not have not have a majority and we are in uncharted constitutional territory, so it is absolutely right and proper that we exercise our judgment in the interests of the country to avoid, at the very least, a no-deal Brexit. For all the right hon. Gentleman’s talk, we must exercise that judgment, and that is what we are doing. It is entirely responsible.”
“The Prime Minister has again given a long list of public spending commitments. I, for one, can see the difference between optimism and fantasy, so is the Prime Minister a fantasist or will he tell us now how he is going to fund these commitments?”
“If I had not been sitting down, I would have fallen over when the Secretary of State talked about the injection of extra cash for local authorities. This is, of course, on top of about 40% cuts in just under a decade. Local authorities are very squeezed in delivering their statutory care responsibilities and others. Will the Minister look seriously at all the work that is being done on homelessness and community building and assess the impact of these cuts in delivering wider Government policies on prevention and ensuring that people have decent homes to live in?”
“I think the Minister deserves a medal for coming here with such a positive outlook on what has been a major catastrophe. In the case of all these strategic suppliers, one of the really key issues is the Government’s oversight and management of contracts where things go wrong but the companies are too big to fail. What is his Department learning, and going to do differently, in making sure that the skills are there in the civil service to oversee these contracts and pick up the problems much sooner?”
“I am proud to represent a borough that has some of the best schools in the country, so I am very disturbed that, in the past few days, Hackney New School has lost its fourth head in two years. The reason I raise this matter here is that it is a free school, which means that it is directly accountable to the Government. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate in Government time about how we ensure accountability of free schools in England and will he ensure that the Education Minister writes to me about that school?”
“If this building is going to work for successions of future MPs, peers, staff and members of the public who visit, and if it is to remain the icon of democracy that it was set up to be, we need to maintain it in the future. We must make sure that that is part of the plan now—I lay a warning for our successors. That cyclical maintenance, boring though it may be, is vital so that we are not in this position again in our dotage. I can imagine the former Leader of the House sitting up in the Public Gallery and getting very frustrated if we come here as we get older. Let us hope that we do not have to do that, and that future Members will be good custodians of this building, as we and some of our predecessors have sadly not been in the past. Question put and agreed to . Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.”
“It seems to me that amendment 6 follows neatly on from amendment 4, which has been adopted, because for amendment 4 to work we will need some sort of audit of how the work is going. Amendment 6 is a very simple measure, so I welcome the fact that the Minister has agreed to look at it and I know that colleagues in the other place will do so. It feels like a long journey since January last year, but this has actually been going on since 2016 in this Parliament, and of course it has been decades coming. The key lesson is that we must ensure not only that we move out, get the work done and move back, but that no future Parliament allows the future, modernised, refurbished, restored Parliament building to fall into such disrepair.”
“It is really important that we get on with this now, and there is a real will to do so. As Members, we need to keep a very close eye on the process. The Public Accounts Committee will certainly do that, although probably not under me. I think my term of office will have almost come to an end—if I am still here—by the time we move out, so I will leave a note to my successor. The National Audit Office is already looking at how it can engage with the process, although there are still some discussions to be had about how that will work. I urge Ministers to look again at amendment 6. I apologise for not being here when the Minister discussed it—I was chairing the Public Accounts Committee—but I thank him for the assurances that it will be looked at in the other place.”
“I will not repeat the many thanks outlined by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) and others, because they have listed everybody that I would list. However, I pay tribute to them and particularly to the members of the original Joint Committee, who really set the tone. It seems a long time since 31 January last year, when we were on a knife edge here—not knowing. I hot-footed it here from my daughter’s hospital bed to ensure that we could get the amendment through, but we were really not sure what was going to happen. I give real credit to the former Leader of the House for taking up the ball and running with it, and ensuring that the Bill reached this position today. I also thank the Ministers since then who have picked up the pace.”
“If there were companies that produced something in not quite the way required for the Olympics, they were given the advice and opportunity to learn to produce something different to meet the needs of the Olympics. Those contracts were laid out clearly. Added to that, the Government of New South Wales made a concerted effort to work with their local businesses to make sure they were contract-ready, so they could bid for the scale of contracts that the Olympics might require.”
“A lot of promises were made, and sometimes they were genuinely made but people found ways of getting around them. For example, a local resident could be somebody renting a room for a few weeks, who therefore became a local resident and qualified in the resident targets for those jobs, but they were not local. Local businesses did not get enough of a look in because the contracts were very large. In preparation for the 2012 Olympics I visited New South Wales—not on the taxpayer’s pound as I was on holiday—and I met the Culture Minister for New South Wales. In preparation for the Sydney Olympics, they went through every contract that was going to be let in the Olympics and broke it down to every single item that they might need to procure—every chair was broken down into its nuts and bolts.”
“This is an opportunity for a project of this size—many billions of pounds—to set the parameters and establish and push a better method of practice in a sector that has had problems in the past. Certainly, any business that wants to take part should behave in the way that my hon. Friend suggested. My amendment stems partly from my experience as a Member representing part of the Olympic site. When the 2012 Olympics were proposed, one of the things that excited my local residents was the opportunity for them and their friends and family to get jobs on the site. Despite much pressure for that to happen, we discovered during and after the Olympics that there were a number of issues with local businesses and individuals getting work on the site.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary and finally to be here debating this Bill. I pay tribute to the Joint Committee that produced its excellent report in 2016; it is just a shame that it has taken so long to get this far, but we are here now with a common purpose. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester for the blacklisting amendment that he has tabled; it is an excellent opportunity to enshrine in law something that will change habits. In the Committee that I have the privilege of chairing, a challenge when looking at Government contracting is often that Government are a big purchaser of services, but they have power that they do not choose to use to set parameters.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come on to that. The point of that experience is that it is not for us to prescribe how the Sponsor Body might do this, but a body managing a project of this size, with this range of work, can seek out and assist and support others to do it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside talked about having roadshows; there are Members in this House who will be the best advocates for their local businesses. I am sure that people who know that we are on this Committee and have an interest have come and told many of us about how their constituency provided elements of the existing building and could provide them again.”
“Often with big projects—most recently with Crossrail—the challenge is to integrate the smaller contracts at the time just before delivery. Some of the bits of work will have to finish at around the same time, or in sequential order, to work properly, so the Sponsor Body would be required to think that through carefully in the early days. That is why I would like to get this in the Bill, so that the body has no excuse—in law, it would know what it has to do.”
“Of course it is a risk—we cannot just give those companies a contract; they will still have to bid for it—but if they are willing to do that, we should give them every opportunity. That yearly audit is vital, and the benefits will not happen otherwise. If the Sponsor Body goes down the route of having subcontractors, we have to have a way to ensure that the big companies really subcontract to specialists, not just to subcontractors they already know and work with, but opening things up more widely. The risk is that that will not happen, but I do not want to prescribe it in law because it is challenging. If the amendment is adopted it would require the Sponsor Body to think about big project integration.”
“It is early days for him, but I am hopeful that the NAO team is still willing to take that on, as I had that reassurance from them. Unless we measure and monitor what is happening, games can be played—people and businesses can lose out. This measure does not need to cost more if the preparatory work is done, so that such businesses can apply. Think of the skills that this place could use—stonemasons, wood carvers and a huge range of other skills and niche businesses—some of which we might not have in the UK, but if we start planning now and thinking about what we might be doing, some businesses could adapt their production processes to provide some of the things that this House needs. The prospect of a big contract might make it worth their while to take that risk.”