Speeches by Dean.

“The hon. Gentleman is talking well about the general state of plastic in the world, but we are debating the global plastics treaty. Can he confirm whether his party supports the UK being a signatory?”

“The Chancellor announced quite a list of reforms yesterday. I note that many were on the shopping list of industry, so the Committee will examine them closely to make sure they also work for the consumer and for the long-term stability of the economy. One change in particular, on ringfencing, will worry those with stro…”

“In some senses this is going back to the first question, but I want to talk about why the price of UK Government debt is so high. It feels like at least one of the reasons is that the markets are starting to worry about the fact that every Government says, “This is what we’re going to do over five years, and all the go…”

“Are our inflation expectations a contributing factor? When we had the spending review hearing, we learned that the forecast of real-terms increases in spending are based on inflation remaining at 2%. It frequently seems to be going higher than that, even though we do not expect it to, and Governments do not really want…”

“You mentioned the significant impact it would have on PSNFL, but it would have a lesser impact if you moved to a different set of fiscal rules than public sector net worth. If you were to bring the water companies on to the balance sheet, you would say that the obvious thing to do is to switch to that role. But what wo…”

“Some might argue that that is the way to solve the problem.”

“It seems as though there is a wide range of fiscal rule possibilities that the market will swallow, but the argument put forward by this Government is that we need to have very strict adherence to relatively tight rules, at least when you are looking at the rolling side. Trying to make that work with this volatile envi…”

“The perception emerged, though, because the changes came quite late in the day, and presumably they were already in discussions with you at this point and so maybe had an idea of what the direction of travel was. It seems to me that they made an active decision to, again, try to meet the £9.9 billion headroom and keep …”

“Is this the yellow and green lines?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing the debate. Given all the Liberal Democrat interventions, it seems that we are firmly the party of beer and pubs.”

“My hon. Friends all made their contributions and they are all on the record; there is no disputing that we have won today—one-nil to us. Pubs are central to communities, as we have heard from others, and Carshalton and Wallington is no different. One of my favourite things about living in the Carshalton area is that we…”

“I rise to speak in favour of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), specifically new clauses 3 and 4. I will start by outlining why these fan-centric measures are important to this particular fan and why football is important to me. Football has been the most constant thing i…”

“Would the shadow Minister mind telling the House what these fashionable causes that football clubs should not speak about are?”

“The Government committed to one fiscal event a year in the name of economic stability, but by having an OBR forecast and these constraints, they had only one lever to pull: spending cuts. This time, disabled people paid the price, and the Government have since had to row back. Does the Government regret placing those r…”

“As the Minister for Growth, I want to understand what you think about when you think about growth. Is it just the rate? Is it 0.7% or 0.8%? Is it about achieving the highest possible number? Are there other things you are considering when going for growth?”

“The Government probably need to be prepared to make the argument, because it is something that the public will not be used to. Finally, my colleague Rachel Blake spoke about the year-on-year losses that we have had so far. You have said that is okay because these are early days. How long could we tolerate year-on-year …”

“My point is that this is well understood in the world of finance, but it is not very well understood in the world of politics. There is probably going to be pressure, maybe even from this Committee, from Opposition politicians or the Government’s own side about high-profile project failures. Are you and the rest of the…”

“Just going back to the idea that the National Wealth Fund needs to take more risk, with that comes political risk as well. Will you be in front of the TV cameras to defend it if the National Wealth Fund’s projects have failed? Is the Chancellor prepared to do that? Who is going to be the spokesperson that explains to t…”

“The New Economics Foundation’s point is that the market has broadly dictated that. Of course, they will want to have fewer strings attached, if they can get it, but that is not always in the public interest. Are the Government going to take a stronger approach to taking equity stakes in companies? The market may not be…”

“I know it is a core part of the offer, but is it something that you are going to look to step up? Are you going to do more of that and less of the other types of support that you provide? Is it still an option among a suite?”