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…”
The complete record
Every one of 4,811 lines we hold for Dame Meg Hillier, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 97.
“T4. Electric bikes are very popular in my constituency. However, they travel at high speed—with a maximum speed limit of 15.5 mph—and are heavy, which is causing quite a lot of distress to many residents. They can be speed-limited, and often are in our parks. Has the Secretary of State considered a lower speed limit for e-bikes for safety reasons?”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for coming before the House and calmly laying out some of the facts on this matter, as I would expect from him, given his experience. However, there has been a lot of fear out there, and confusion among MPs, advisers and—most worryingly—people who are in receipt of PIP and other benefits and are affected by these changes. Does my right hon. Friend agree that clear communications at all times about this matter are very important, and that every Minister should be very careful about clumsy and inappropriate language, because of the impact it has on the people who are most affected?”
“The Secretary of State has today referred to space and AI as key drivers of growth. Closer to home, in my constituency and across the country, our creative industries are huge drivers of growth, but there is a battle with AI. If our creators’ content is taken and they are not recompensed, that will damage the economy, too. Is he talking to those industries and to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that our creative content creators are protected?”
“My right hon. Friend inherited a very difficult challenge when she became Chancellor of the Exchequer last July, and she is absolutely right that the books need to balance. This is not other people’s money we are spending, but taxpayers’ money—our constituents’ hard-earned money—and she is right to be tough as Chancellor. We look forward to quizzing her at the Treasury Committee next week, and I am sure she is looking forward to it just as much. The Chancellor announced an extra £2 billion a year in capital spending, and she talked about extra defence spending. Could she give some more detail about where she hopes that extra £2 billion a year will go?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to ensuring that no one is on the scrapheap when it comes to work and that everyone gets the support that they need. I note that she is consulting on delaying access to the health top-up in universal credit until the age of 22. Will she explain the rationale for that age, and what savings does she expect to make if that consultation goes forward?”
“One in two children in my constituency live in poverty. There is a lot of speculation swirling around the excellent child poverty taskforce, which I applaud the Government for establishing, including that the cap could be lifted for under-fives, which would affect fewer than 20,000 households compared with the 440,000 households which currently are affected by the two-child benefit cap. Can the Minister reassure the House and the country that the child poverty taskforce is looking to support all children in poverty, whatever decisions it comes up with, and not just a small segment of them?”
“I applaud my right hon. Friend for his leadership and for the reduction in waiting lists, which we so desperately need. We all know that there is still a struggle with budgets in the health service—my excellently run Honiton hospital is facing a deficit for the first time in its history—so can he give more detail about how he will reform NHS procurement, so that we can use the purchasing power of the NHS to get more bang for our buck?”
“We all know how important it is to encourage savings, because so many people are a paycheque away from poverty, but there has been a lot of discussion about lazy capital in cash-only ISAs, for example, and other savings accounts. I know there is a drive by Government to see greater investment. Would the Minister like to expand on the Government’s thoughts on that? In particular, can she make any comments about the security of the cash ISA?”
“It is right that the Government have put more money into defence. However, in answer to a previous question, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that there is an impact assessment of the overseas development budget. Does that mean that it is still in scope of the spending review and that there could be changes to that budget in June?”
“The best way that we can support staff in this building is to ensure that their health and safety is paramount. The three options that are being proposed have radically different health and safety implications. When those options come to the House, will my hon. Friend ensure that the health and safety information is categorically laid out, and can he confirm when the House will vote on those options?”
“I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s statement and this strong commitment to defence spending. I welcome as well the work being done with the Chancellor and the Defence Secretary on ensuring that we get as much value as we can for each pound spent on delivering capability. Will the Prime Minister reaffirm his commitment to the parliamentary scrutiny of that spending, including on the most sensitive areas?”
“The Leader of the House will be aware that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been in Committee this week, slightly delayed, and for good reason, because it is obviously a very important issue to debate. Can she confirm whether the Government will still wait until the end of the Committee stage before publishing the impact assessment on the Bill?”
“I applaud the Front-Bench team for its energy in driving the child poverty taskforce, but every decision has consequences and costs. Will the Minister outline the costs of some of the processes she is looking at changing, particularly the cost of lifting the two-child cap, and if she does not have the figure to hand will she write to me?”
“I have spent more than a decade studying fraud and error in the DWP. The Secretary of State is right that levels of fraud have been intransigently high, but my concern is about where there are errors. Quite often, they are made by the Department. My constituent received a £5,000 overpayment. Will the Secretary of State make it clear to the House that people in that situation will not have money taken out of their bank account, and that they will be treated properly if there is a small error on their side or a big error by the Department?”
“I welcome this Government’s commitment to infrastructure investment and to telling the world that Britain is open for business, but to achieve all of this, we will need a really skilled workforce to deliver on those major construction projects. May I ask my right hon. Friend to set out how the Government will ensure that we have the skills to deliver what he has promised?”
“My hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary rightly said that small and medium-sized enterprises are a vital part of our high streets and our economy, and one of the biggest changes is, of course, the change to business rates. He was not tempted at the Select Committee last week to give more detail on the timeframe for that, but many businesses want certainty about business rates as they go forward. May I tempt him to give an indication of the Government’s thinking about how quickly this change might be introduced and whether the small business rate relief is likely to survive or to be subsumed into a new regime?”
“In my constituency, one of the big challenges for the private rented sector is the need to house families who are in temporary accommodation. It is very often a five-year tenancy; sometimes it is longer. Such families really should not be in these sorts of homes, which are often overcrowded, leading to damp and mould, whatever the best intentions of the local authority that housed them. In order to improve standards across the board, will my right hon. Friend pledge to ensure that we are pushing for much-needed affordable social rented housing, so that those tenants can move into it, and other private tenants can move into these homes, which will then be improved?”
“I welcome the honesty with which my right hon. Friend is approaching this matter, because Governments should not make false promises. I had the chance to visit a couple of the RAAC hospitals, and the Public Accounts Committee, which I used to chair, examined Hospital 2.0, the standardised approach he talked about. It contained some quite startling assumptions, so will he assure me and the House that he has looked into those in detail and that we are absolutely sure about the dates of delivery?”
“They will have a key role in delivering on the spending review, but in my experience of over a decade of scrutinising public spending, Ministers can make promises but they are not always well delivered, which can drive up public spending if we are not careful. It is vitally important that this body delivers as set out, so we have asked the Treasury to explain in more precise detail what it expects the Office for Value for Money to deliver, how it will evaluate its success, and what it wants to see in the long term from this body chaired by David Goldstone. We wish this body well, but the Committee is clear that at the moment there are a number of areas of concern about whether it will actually deliver what it is set out to do.”
“Overarching this there is “Managing public money”, which covers the approach of all permanent secretaries, who are the accounting officers and are therefore responsible for answering for how taxpayers’ money is spent through the accounting processes of Government. Their accounting officer assessments have to fit in with that regime. We all want to see value for money, but this young body is one-year long and is not yet well established. The risk of duplication is high, and we need to ensure that it delivers something special and different, and crucially that nowhere in the Office for Value for Money will Ministers be playing a role.”
“Datasets are also provided, including the priority outcomes and metrics first set out in the spending review of 2020. One of the most crucial elements in delivering value for money is that every Department has outcome delivery plans addressing the meat and drink of what is going on in Government. As Secretaries of State sit and plan what they might have to deliver in the spending review coming up in June, they will be poring over those outcome delivery plans as they do their departmental review; each Department will have its own review to look at where money is being spent and what projects are being delivered.”
“The Cabinet Office also has a readiness programme, based on regulations arising from the Procurement Act 2023, called “Transforming public procurement”. There is also the rainbow of books. If we walk into the Treasury and ask questions about the green book, the teal book and the magenta book—and there are others—we will learn that is an important infrastructure for how it issues guidance. The green book appraises policies, programmes and projects. The teal book provides guidance on project delivery in Government, including managing projects, programmes and portfolios—that has been in an internal trial since July 2024. The magenta book provides Treasury guidance on what to consider when designing evaluation. There are also a number of frameworks, including the Government efficiency framework and the public value framework.”
“There are already a large number of bodies across Government that deliver on value for money, scrutinise Government, and shine a light on how money is spent: the National Audit Office, which has nearly 1,000 staff in Newcastle and London; the evaluation taskforce in the Cabinet Office, which evaluates projects across Government to make sure they are properly delivering; the new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, which will be operational in the spring and brings together the previous Infrastructure and Projects Authority in a slightly different format. There are also units in Departments that work to deliver on value for money in a range of areas, in particular the new arrangements for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with its centre for digital transformation of public services.”
“It had not ruled out in December using external consultants to bolster the skills it will need to deliver on its work. It had not yet decided at the end of December into which areas it would launch studies, and nor had it set the parameters for evaluating its effectiveness. The Committee was clear that having a body with a name we would all agree with the principle of is not enough; we want to see such a body deliver for our constituents. We highlighted in our report that there is a risk of duplication.”
“This is our first public report shining a light on the work of the Treasury. The Office for Value for Money is a short-lived, year-long body that is expected to have 20 staff, including secondees from the National Audit Office and the evaluation taskforce in the Cabinet Office. It is headed by a chair, who told us that it would conduct a small number of studies mainly on a cross-departmental basis to identify better value for money across Government. When we spoke to the chair in our hearing at the end of December, we found that although it was supposed to have 20 members of staff, it only had 12 and all were below director-general level, so not the most senior civil servants. That total of 12 and the ultimate total of 20 will include secondees.”
“It gives me great pleasure to make a statement on the first report of the Treasury Committee in this Parliament, and I again thank the House for giving me the honour of occupying this position. Our first report is on the new Office for Value for Money. There will not be a single Member who does not believe in value for money for our constituents, who pay for Government services through hard-earned taxes that they give grudgingly to be spent well. As the Chancellor herself has been very clear, the taxpayer is not an automatic cash machine and every penny of taxpayer money needs to be spent as well as possible. The notion of value for money is one we would all support. We also need transparency, and that is a large part of the role of Select Committees: to shine a light on Government actions.”
“The hon. Lady, the former Chair of the Treasury Committee—she still serves on the Committee—highlights a pertinent point. The chair of the Office for Value for Money said that it is not just about cash costs and that sometimes it might want to look at programmes that will save costs in the long run. However, that was still ill-defined, and we need to hear more detail, because that is the holy grail, really. If we can spend to save, that benefits our taxpayers in the long run in cash and, in the case of flooding in particular, it prevents something that is catastrophic for many communities.”
“We also need to evaluate the effectiveness in terms of whether, when the Office for Value for Money comes up with its studies and things, they will have to be taken on by the Treasury. We want to know the mechanisms for that and how the Treasury will prove to this House and taxpayers that the body has made a big difference.”
“The hon. Gentleman is saying what we said in the report. As a cross-party Select Committee of the House, we said that we need more detail about what will come. The chair of the Office for Value for Money was in front of us before Christmas, and we recognised that, given the body had only been established in October, he might not have all the answers, but we need those with dispatch, if this body is to be disbanded in October and is to contribute meaningfully to this spending review, although we recognise that would be challenging within the timeframe. If he is to lay down markers for genuine value for money and better spending by Government in the long term, we need precision. We have asked the Treasury for that, and hopefully it will respond to us in quick time—it has to respond to us, whether it wants to or not—with answers.”
“My hon. Friend highlights an important point that I have mentioned already. Our constituents give the Government their hard-earned money in the belief and hope that they will spend it wisely. It is important that the Treasury is clear about what it expects to get out of the Office for Value for Money and, as a result of that work, thereby proves to the House, voters and taxpayers that it is getting better value than it would have done had the Office for Value for Money not existed.”
“It is important that we know what the Treasury is expecting from this body. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who was at our session, will agree that the chair was straightforward with the Committee about the limitations of a body of this nature, which is time-limited and whose few staff are not very senior. I am not in any way denigrating the staff, who no doubt are working hard, but we need to be clear about what we are getting from the headline of the Office for Value for Money, an organisation that is small and lean, and about what it adds to the work of other bodies. I listed only a few such bodies, not all of those that are in place across Whitehall.”
“There is a danger that unless this new body narrows its focus soon, it will not be able to deliver in time to aid the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury in his work of ensuring that Departments deliver on the spending review and come up with the proposals that provide the best value for money for the taxpayer. We need that clarity. The Government should welcome this report, because it gives them an opportunity to seek greater clarity from this body to aid the challenging spending review process.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman, who is a fellow member of the Treasury Committee and a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, for his question. We could have a whole debate about Porton Down and the animal health centre in Weybridge, where there was under-investment by his Government and challenges on his side, but we are not here to make party political points. There are areas of under-investment, but the lack of specificity and the duplication issues are key concerns, as is reflected in our cross-party Treasury Committee report.”
“The chair said that he would be looking at some of that, but that is quite a lot to do in the timeframe available: the bids and cross-party working areas have to be identified, those Departments have to co-operate and the office needs the resource to look at where the issues are. With only 20 staff in total—there were only 12 when we had our hearing with the chair, but there are probably more now—that is a stiff ask. It would be helpful for Treasury Ministers to sit down with the Office for Value for Money and push it to come back with the exact areas that it proposes to look at and that will be most useful to the Government to deliver value for money.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much, although I should stress that it is not my evaluation but the Committee’s. We were unanimous in our concerns and unanimous in our desire to see taxpayers’ money spent well. We asked questions of the Office for Value for Money’s chair. Our report reflects the areas that he might consider looking at, especially areas in which there is great risk and areas of cross-departmental working. There has been a move over the years to get more cross-departmental or joint departmental bids into the spending review, but that has not really got traction, because we have a terribly siloed culture in Whitehall. That is a big challenge, and the current Government—of my own party, of course—have the missions, which aim to bring things together.”
“The hon. Gentleman tempts me to stray into the territory of the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)—this is exactly the territory that his Committee examines. We all know that agency staff cost more, whether that is for schools or for hospitals, and there is an issue with the pipeline of staff. I will stop there, because it is really not a matter for the Treasury Committee, or indeed for the Office for Value for Money: as the office is short-lived, it would not have the opportunity to look at something like that, as we heard from its chair. However, I am sure that the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee will be listening and will take the hon. Gentleman’s point on board.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to growth in this country and to encouraging investment in the UK. Listening to the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), we would think the country was going to hell in a handcart. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is no time for panic, that it is perfectly possible to manage any pressures on the Budget through astute management of public spending, and that we are a very long way from the approach taken during the years of austerity under the Conservative party?”
“We all know that fiscal rules and certainty are vital for the markets and the good stewardship of the public finances, so will the Chief Secretary to the Treasury explain what process he will be going through as he conducts the spending review, and what notice he will give to Departments about extra cuts that they may have to make in order to meet the fiscal rules? In addition, when the Chancellor comes in front of the House for the OBR forecast in March, will she be making a fiscal statement at that point?”
“Q11. Every week, I visit constituents living in the most appalling, overcrowded social housing, some with triple bunk beds in the bedroom and the parents on a sofa bed in the living room. The nearest available property to buy would be £500,000, and that is out of reach for these hard-working families. I really welcome our Government’s commitment to 1.5 million new homes. Will the Prime Minister agree that we need clear targets for the number of social housing units, so that families in Hackney can live in dignity?”
“I know that my right hon. Friend has a good head for numbers. Will she be doing some evaluation of the cost and benefits of investing in kinship care, so that we can reduce not just the cost to the child, but the cost to the taxpayer of expensive child social care?”
“I have lived the dream of the academy programme from the very beginning under London Challenge, and I have seen Hackney children go to university—they did not when I was first elected. But the last Government brought in a wrecking ball. They made a smorgasbord of free schools, and offered an open chequebook to pay over the odds for inadequate sites that children were condemned to for years, with no accountability in the system as each bit fractured away. The reason why standards have notionally gone up is that some schools went 11 years without an inspection after they were rated were outstanding, but they were far from outstanding when they were next inspected. The right hon. Lady needs to take responsibility and accountability for what her Government did, and applaud the Secretary of State for what she is trying to do to put it right.”
“I welcome this commitment to local government and recognise that the Minister has a big job to do in addressing the challenges that have arisen because of the last 14 years—not least in local government audit. I welcome what seems to be a commitment to embracing the Redmond review. Will he give more detail about what will replace the Office for Local Government?”
“As my right hon. Friend has just said, many of my constituents feel very trapped, so I welcome the acceleration of action. However, does she have any timeframe—or will her Department be working up a timeframe—for when that action will have an impact on constituents? Some of mine will be facing bankruptcy because of the challenges they have been facing. I should declare for the record that I am a leaseholder.”
“One issue that arose at an early stage, about a year after the tragedy at Grenfell, was the need for fire safety surveyors. These people are experts and take about three years to train. In retrospect, does the hon. Gentleman not think that a lesson for future Governments of any colour is to look at such issues at an early stage, because we still have a shortage of those people now in 2024?”
“The hon. Gentleman has spent a lot of time in this House thinking about how systems work. Does he not think that there is now an argument for the Government to have a proper review process of all coroners’ recommendations and all public and other inquiry recommendations, so they do not just get responded to in the moment and then not followed up in the months and years that follow?”
“Of those households, 10 are still in temporary accommodation—the Peabody housing trust did a good job in the early days of getting them housed—and many are still living in hotel rooms. Someone who is in her 90s is trying to be offered a place by an estate agent. Today, I launch a campaign, which other Members are welcome to join, to require landlords to have a wider set of plans to help tenants in the aftermath of a fire or other crisis. Yes, there is the immediate challenge—happily, there were no fatalities on Dalston Lane—but the ongoing impact on residents is immense, with mental health challenges, disruption to their lives and trauma. We need a holistic approach to supporting tenants and residents in those situations, and every landlord should be required to have that model.”
“With the construction industry in its present state, and all the other pressures that the Government will face when trying to invest in infrastructure, I would love to hear from the Minister how we will ensure that we have the right construction skills in this country and, if it is what is required, that the Government will allow migration in order to ensure that we have the right skilled people in place. Finally, I will highlight a wider issue about how we support families affected by fire. On 5 June this year, during the election campaign, a fire gutted a building on Dalston Lane in the Pembury Estate, with 36 households escaping with just the clothes on their back.”
“Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) about housing associations, but in the interests of time I will not repeat them. Some of these properties are owned offshore or have opaque ownership. That is one of the reasons that James Brokenshire issued a ministerial direction. He realised that one of the buildings with the worst cladding had had 89 owners since it was built. If there is one thing that the Government can do, they can stop our homes becoming vehicles for offshore finance. That is why 2029 is a challenge. The National Audit Office report that has been cited says that we will not see changes until 2035.”
“We have 72 buildings that are over 18 metres tall. Together, Hackney and Tower Hamlets in the heart of east London account for almost a quarter of the buildings in London with fire safety failures. I invite the Minister to meet us in any of our constituencies, or indeed in this place, to talk about what can be done across east London, because the impact is terrible. Insurance premiums have gone up massively. Many of my constituents who are leaseholders face bankruptcy. The mission to achieve change by 2029 will be too late for some. There is also disruption to their lives. They are unable to move on, and are putting off having a family. Their lives are on hold while they wait for the matter to be resolved. I concur with the points made by my hon.”
“So I say to the Deputy Prime Minister that if there is a bigger lesson in this, it is about how the Government manage risk and watch for the unintended consequences of actions. Even with all the problems nobody intended that such things would happen, but that is what can happen if we do not keep our eye on the ball, and I hope my right hon. Friend will take that back to the heart of Government. The impact in my constituency has been immense. Hackney as a borough has the second largest number of unsafe buildings in London, with the London Fire Brigade showing that 93% buildings in Hackney are at high risk—a larger figure than all other London boroughs except Tower Hamlets, as we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran).”