Speeches by Dean.

“I join the Leader of the House in his comments about Ann Widdecombe. She was a conviction politician and she was respected for that. I join Mr Speaker, and I am sure Madam Deputy Speaker as well, in thanking the staff for all their service over the course of the term. I had hoped to start by triumphantly demanding the …”

“Professor Haskel, you said at the beginning that there is increased scrutiny of the OBR due to the fiscal constraints. I think part of the concern is that the tail might again start wagging the dog, with the OBR’s analysis driving Government policy. We have just had a whole discussion about the 0.1% threshold and the f…”

“You do not want to ask for more money yet. Maybe next time.”

“Given that pace, I would assume that we will start to see that in the forecasting coming in the next few years. What are the implications for the public finances and for inflation over this Parliament even—up to 2030?”

“In your leadership of the OBR, will you encourage healthy disagreement between the two? At the moment, I would say that the OBR has the final say, and I think that is probably the way it is perceived in British politics. Are you going to encourage healthy disagreement between forecasts?”

“You described the OBR as a lean organisation and said you are going to engage with the Treasury about whether or not you are adequately resourced. If this kind of external pressure is starting to come on to the OBR, to make longer forecasts and be more precise with its policy scoring, do you think that it needs more re…”

“Do you, from afar, think that the OBR has been working the impact of AI into productivity forecasts well, or will you need to change that when you get in?”

“Just a minute ago, you mentioned there being a very high bar for changing productivity forecasts, but from what I have read, you are quite an AI optimist.”

“In some of your work, you claim that US productivity has increased by one percentage point each year between 2017 and 2024. Have you done any work on the UK? Do you have any commentary on how it might be similar or different?”

“Finally, moving slightly off topic, what about the OBR’s own adoption of AI? Do you think that there is huge potential for the OBR’s work to change with greater adoption of AI?”

“I guess the worry is that, as you know, when you are at the margins, every decision matters. Forecasting is an uncertain game, of course, and there are tougher things to forecast, including some of the policy measures that we are talking about. The worry might be that the Government will avoid taking potentially very g…”

“You can do that. Just explain.”

“The concern is about them making different decisions because of the forecasting limitations. However uncertain a five to 10-year forecast might be, different decisions might be made about Government policy because of the OBR’s power while the fiscal situation is what it is on the margins. What would you make of the Tre…”

“I was intrigued by what you said about how you could segment public investment and break it down into further categories. As a general observation, we have the split between revenue and capital. The fiscal rules favour borrowing towards capital, but there will be things that are perceived as good investments on the rev…”

“I understand that usually, if the Government want to make a statement relating to foreign affairs, we get a statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, so I hope it will not be a habit of the House to change the whole business to Back-Bench debates, rather than giving us a formal statement from Gov…”

“T6. [901025]I listened to the Minister’s answers earlier on the dentistry contract, and he said that the Government need time to get it right and that a consultation will be launched soon. My local dentists are desperate to take on NHS patients. This has been a known issue for a number of years. Is it not wholly unacce…”

“Governor, I would like to return to something you made a point of highlighting in your opening remarks, which is about the heightened risks around frontier AI. I think critics will say, “I told you so.” When the discussion started about AI a few years ago, it was kind of levelled down as another risk to manage, and now…”

“Governor, can I ask you about the UK’s specific position in relation to this? Obviously, we do not have so many developed AI firms, but we will still be exposed to any impact. There are two sides to the coin. One is the risks of that bubble bursting and what that means for the UK. However, in the meantime, what is it d…”

“Mr Benjamin, we might want to continue the Governor’s world cup analogy about attack versus defence. What access do firms currently have to frontier models? They are presumably on the defensive side of the equation; how is their defence?”

“It seems that the change towards increasingly leveraged positions has happened very quickly over the last year or so. For example, we got information about Alphabet’s position. Does that make you feel that a potential bursting of a bubble is much closer than it was this time last year?”