"Q Good morning, everybody. I want to go back to something that was touched on by the previous panel. We are going through simultaneous restructuring of local government and setting up the strategic authorities, and in her questions the Minister has outlined that the 500,000-people target for LGR was …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech
"Q I have a quick follow-up question, particularly to Councillor Hicks: would it be fair to say that the policy on the local government reorganisation is a soft target, certainly, but it was portrayed as a hard target to local authority leaders at the time?
"Q I am pleased that you have mentioned the GLA, Ms Riddell, because it relates to a question that I want to ask you both.
Mr Fletcher, you are absolutely right to say that this, as well as local government reorganisation, was not in the governing party’s manifesto. I …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech
"Q You are about to see that even though there was a south coast derby between Southampton and Portsmouth, we still can talk very politely, Ms Vaz—it was very boring, ending 0-0.
Welcome back, Mayor Brabin; I wanted to ask about some of the evidence we heard earlier from …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech
Donna Jones: I have represented my two counties, with 2.2 million people, for four and a bit years now. It is tough, because I have two large geographical counties; it would take me three and a half hours to travel from north to …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech
Professor Denham: So I am familiar with town and parish councils, and there are some very good ones, including in Mr Holmes’s constituency. But they are not uniform everywhere within the area, so a single prescriptive approach is unlikely to work.
"Q Minister, welcome to your role. I know that you have not been in it for very long, so well done for getting through today; it has been a joint effort, I think. Do you think that you have inherited a disjointed mess from your predecessors? On the Planning …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech
"I have one more question, if I may. We will move on, because it is clear that there was no assessment of the spending.
On 16 December 2024, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) sent a letter to local authority leaders setting out a target …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech
"Q Thank you, Minister. On the point about 14 years of the last Government, the situation that was left by them was that planning committees, elected by local people, were still making decisions on behalf of the people who elected them. That is questionable under both aspects of the …..." Paul Holmes - View Speech