16:36 Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)

The right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs made a thoughtful and, at times, quite sparky contribution to the debate. I was not expecting such a sparky debate, but I enjoyed his speech. He too alluded to the way in which Government Departments work in silos, as he did in his joint article with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne in The Times today. We really have to confront the problem of departmental silos, because many of the issues that we are going to have to deal with—long-term trends in health, climate change, the opportunity of opening up big data and raising the trend rate of growth over the medium to long term, for example—will require increased cross-departmental working. That is why I am particularly interested in the outcome of the research of the think-tank that my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman have established.

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