Speeches by Dean.

“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…”

“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?”

“Are there general concerns about working with these providers and how much information they are willing to share about their systems in order to be able to understand them?”

“I think we can all accept that the reality has moved on much more quickly, but we had an inquiry into AI in financial services, and we heard evidence about the potential advances in AI, and how it was felt that the financial services sector was perhaps under-prepared for the potential movements. The fact that it has ha…”

“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…”

“There are third parties involved in this as well—the AI companies and some of the major tech companies. Perhaps we can move on to a slightly separate point about the critical third party regime. Four will be brought into the regime. A concern has been raised about how much oversight you are able to have over these firm…”

“In addition to the similarities to the black hole commentary in 2024, another thing that was made a big point of in the 2024 Budget was the previous Government’s tendency to take from the capital account to plug gaps in revenue expenditure. We have just heard that up to 75% of the increase, I think you said, is to do w…”

“The stated intention as you set it out was clear, and the criticism was that we are not going to borrow from capital to plug gaps in revenue expenditure. We have made it clear today that a lot of the increase in the defence budget will go into revenue, and it is being taken from the capital allocation of other Departme…”

“Can I ask about defence bonds? I do not specifically mean separating out from the fiscal rules, as I know some people have proposed; I mean offering fixed-term issuance of a legally hypothecated bond, which other nations have considered doing. What analysis has the Treasury made of that type of proposal? Is it still un…”

“Could I refocus the fiscal rules question? With the accounting definition as it is between revenue and capital, can you see how it could create artificial constraints sometimes, because you kind of assume the revenues, consumption and capital investment? It seems that there are some really worthy human capital investme…”

“It is not about the overall borrowing constraints. It is about what drives the spending within that envelope.”

“It is that sort of scale, isn’t it?”

“Do you recognise those types of figures?”

“But the Government have stated their ambition to get there. That is why we are asking questions about it. I have put it in tax terms, but you could put it in spending terms. If we are going to draw that amount of money out of other spending Departments, that looks pretty like austerity. Which of those courses are you p…”

“Yes—equivalent to 3p to 4p on all rates of income tax. Is that a discussion that the Government are prepared to have with the public—that they may have to pay significantly more in tax to pay for defence?”

“Or is that just tomorrow’s problem, and we will deal with it later?”

“Ms Rigby, you talked about trade-offs just then. Earlier in the discussion, there did not seem to be an acknowledgment that this plan has any gaps, reductions or shortfalls from what the Ministry of Defence might have wanted previously. That does not seem to make sense to us, not just because of the resignation of John…”

“You have focused on spending there. That is what this review has done. We have talked about moving around spending across different Departments. Is it going to be a bigger question than that? We have heard evidence that, to get from 2.6% to 3.5% of GDP, you are talking around £30 billion to £40 billion extra.”

“Mr Pollard, let us move on to a different trade-off about the split between capital and revenue expenditure—you have touched on that already. There is obviously a leaning into capital expenditure; is that because the fiscal rules drive spending in that way, and there is more headroom on the capital side, generally spea…”