Speeches by Coghlan.

“Presumably, when the Crown Estate develops its asset base, by definition it is going to be competing with the private sector. Is that a problem?”

“How would you think about managing that? Would you have maximum leverage ratios, I guess, approved by the board? How would that work?”

“Are there any level playing field issues, given that the Crown Estate can borrow probably at a lower interest rate than the private sector?”

“Why would you not allow the private sector to develop the Crown Estate’s assets on the Crown Estate’s behalf, instead of borrowing internally?”

“Will you be making use of your extensive contacts in industry in your position and role as chair?”

“Apologies, this is a bit of a basic question, but I need to ask it. Can you confirm that you will not seek to generate business or advantage for your existing commercial interests through your role as chair?”

“Apologies again. It is formulaic but we need to ask it. You have already answered this to an extent. Is it possible that companies you control may be operating in direct competition with the Crown Estate?”

“Apologies for the same thing. Can you confirm that no favourable treatment will be given to existing contacts of yours should they seek to work with the Crown Estate?”

“You mentioned the new banking unit. How far do you think it should go in terms of allowing new entrants to grow to encourage competition against the risk of having, I guess, easier rules for new entrants?”

“One of your PRC colleagues, David Soanes, said in his questionnaire that the PRA has made progress in the secondary competition objective, but the limited changes to the competition landscape suggest there remains scope for more progress. Would you agree with that?”

“Is it not the point that, if the Chancellor requests you scale back some of the regulation, issues like the LDI in other contexts reappear?”

“Thank you, Professor Moloney. You say that regulation is working super well, and you used covid as an example of that. How does that fit with former Prime Minister Truss’s mini-Budget in terms of the issues with pension funds? Was there a regulatory failure there, do you think?”

“You talked about the 39 to 40 new lenders. Is the number of new lenders your main metric when you think about competition? Why do we need a large tail of small banks to be competitive?”

“Does this complexity extend, in your view, to whether some of this financial services growth is actually real or just credit expansion? I am thinking about the whole debate prior to 2008 about to what extent the financial services growth was a social good. How does that inform your view?”

“I thought that your point that the US has had higher economic growth than the UK and Europe with higher capital requirements was very interesting. To your point around simplifying regulation, how realistic is it to simplify regulation, given that some financial products are so incredibly complex? One issue during the f…”

“Just coming back to your opening comments on national insurance, retail and hospitality businesses in particular in my constituency are telling me that there is an apocalypse out there on that. That was the exact word that they used. In the Budget, the Chancellor was forecasting 50,000 job losses from this. That seems …”

“Dr Pill, at the beginning, you were talking about inflationary echoes still being there and avoiding the mistakes of the 1970s, but wages are rising and productivity is falling. Is that not quite a strong inflationary indicator? How worried are you that we could repeat the mistakes of the 1970s by easing monetary polic…”

“Mr Bailey, how worried are you about the fall in UK productivity in the last year, in terms of this read-through to the recovery of UK productivity growth and the impact on the UK’s fiscal position?”

“Do you agree with Ben Navarro at Citigroup, who is saying that just a 0.1 percentage point fall in the productivity growth forecast could create a hole of £7 billion to £8 billion in the public finances?”

“Westvale Park in my constituency is a new housing development of 1,500 homes. Its residents have been waiting seven years for a GP surgery, and the existing GPs cannot expand their capacity. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss how we can ensure that Westvale Park gets the GP surgery it has been promised, as …”