Speeches by Baldwin.

“Thank you very much. Perhaps, Mr Canty, you would acknowledge that we are very dependent on the “kindness of strangers”, to use the famous words of Mark Carney about issuing gilts. What do you see internationally? Have there been any shifts in the buyers of gilts?”

“I think, Minister, you would have to accept that it is a political problem when you then have to come back and make the changes that you did in that statement a month after the Budget. I will move on to the point I think you made in that statement in the Commons: that you thought the transitional relief announced in th…”

“Do you accept the rebuke from the UK Statistics Authority that you could have been clearer in the messaging, and that you could have said that it wasn’t just going to be permanently lower and that there were these other things happening?”

“What I am hearing is that you thought that the £4.3 billion was going to be satisfactory to address this political issue, which was obviously looming in your inbox in the run-up to the Budget. Do you accept that, in terms of the rhetoric—Mr Dean has referred to this—what people in the sector heard was that we were movi…”

“Ms Whelan, with your experience with the Bank of England, can you tell us a little about the impact of quantitative tightening on the gilt market?”

“This is obviously a very technical area. I want to focus my questions on the political decision making. You were appointed on 1 September last year. How quickly was it flagged to you that there was this issue coming down the line—that, according to the Valuation Office Agency, there was a 32% revaluation in the pub sec…”

“The reason I ask is that I wonder whether you could clarify something. The story went out on the 13th that there was not going to be an increase in income tax. The markets moved on the morning of 14 November, and then a—presumably—Government spokesperson clarified that it was because the fiscal picture was better. Whic…”

“Who officially put that out? Who instigated the official statement?”

“So the challenging backdrop is higher volatility in the gilt market?”

“Do you talk to them about the maturity of what they are selling and things like that?”

“If I may, Chair, I have a couple more questions on this subject, even though we seem to have asked a lot already. There were 60 people interviewed in the inquiry that you did—”

“Ms Pulay, you mentioned the challenging backdrop. Could you elaborate on what makes the backdrop challenging?”

“That the Cabinet Office did. Were they all in the Treasury, or were any of them in No. 10?”

“Are you seeing hedge funds or investment banks being bigger players in the gilt market?”

“Were any of them in No. 10?”

“It would have been the Treasury that immediately said, “We have to clarify this”?”

“No, but it has an impact on the gilt market, doesn’t it? Presumably, you work closely with the Bank of England in feeding into it about what size of quantitative tightening you think the market can absorb on top of your own issuance.”

“If I understand correctly, the Treasury has allocated a specific sum, which was set due to affordability rather than to aim for a particular number of homes. Were there any particular areas of contention between the two Departments at the time of the spending review?”

“I am sure that you would not have allocated £39 billion without an expectation of a certain number of houses to be delivered.”

“There will be questions on that later but, in terms of more housing, have you set specific targets for each year? What kind of metrics does the Treasury have to evaluate how well the housing Department is delivering for the money that you have allocated?”