Speeches by Baldwin.

“Mr Lewis, I wanted to ask a few more of these political and personal questions, because we are politicians, I am afraid. You have citizenship here in the UK and citizenship in the States, I understand.”

“It was a wonderful answer and very well informed, but I do not think I heard whether, yes, the UK should go it alone, or, no, we should wait until the rest of the major competitors in this space go too. I just want a yes or no.”

“I wanted to go back to the line of questioning from my colleague Rachel Blake MP about growth. We have heard from the Governor on several occasions that the UK’s growth rate started to achieve a much lower rate after the financial crisis, suggesting that there was something that happened at the financial crisis that ha…”

“Are we in an okay position now? You mentioned the resilience and the fact that we have gone through all these different shocks and actually the banking system has come through them. There have been live stress tests. We have had the Silicon Valley Bank failing. We have heard regularly from Sam Woods that he is not runn…”

“One of the first acts of this Government was to take away the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners on incomes as low as £13,000 a year, including 44,000 who are—or were—terminally ill. Will the Secretary of State reassure all our constituents that in making these changes, she will not be going after those …”

“The Business Secretary, the Minister and the Chancellor have all said that they want growth, including in rural areas. I have searched high and low for business growth statistics since the Budget of broken promises, and I find that, in the last quarter, there has been a growth of 50% in the number of businesses that ar…”

“The Business Secretary met recently in Japan with Fujitsu, which developed the Horizon system and has offered to contribute to the compensation for victims. Can the Minister tell the House how much the Secretary of State has asked it to contribute, so that taxpayers are not on the hook for £1 billion?”

“It is not one we have seen. Then your chief executive leaves. Could you tell me what date your chief executive leaves?”

“Was it after January?”

“I have so many questions. I will start with Aidene and try to get a sense of the timeline on all this, because I am a little bit confused. The Joe Garner review into the payment systems started under the previous Government, then underwent a process and was published by the current Government back in November, and it m…”

“Last year was 2024.”

“We can park those as things that are in the past.”

“When did you get the call?”

“When was that announced that you heard it, Mr Geale?”

“To confirm, in the national payments vision published last November, 2024, you were named as being part of that vision; then, within a few months, you are gone?”

“To clarify, you said, “We were aware”. Could you say the moment when you first became aware?”

“That there was a potential for this happening and that No. 10 and the Chancellor were looking at the number of financial services regulators. When did you become aware of that? It does not have to be the hour of the day.”

“How recent was it?”

“If you believe all those things today, Mr Geale, why were they not in your letter to the Prime Minister after the summit on how regulators could help growth?”

“The headline today from the Government—and I am reading it verbatim—is, “Regulator axed as red tape is slashed to boost growth”. You could have put this in your letter, couldn’t you, if you think it is such a good thing now?”