Speeches by Glen.

“A few weeks ago, Lord Jim O’Neill suggested that the changes in national insurance and the national living wage were perhaps causing employers to think about the value of additional labour capacity, and there were potentially some signs that it was addressing the productivity challenge we faced. Have any of you reflect…”

“If they were excluded from the process, as some of our colleagues in the House would want, what would that mean for the FCA?”

“They were best in class.”

“Palantir provokes strong reactions for a variety of reasons. We do not need to get into that, but what we do need to understand, probably, is why they win these contracts. They have won, so they were the best that was out there in the market. Some say that we should prioritise other providers on principle because Palan…”

“We have discussed this numerous times. You have said this morning that you keep these matters under review, that it is complicated, that there are cross-jurisdictional issues. You are becoming specific on some of the issues with some of the platforms. Some people watching this would say that there are no teeth—nothing …”

“About 20% of Palantir’s employees are in the UK anyway, are they not? They have a significant presence. It is not like we are outsourcing it to California.”

“Do you have any assurances around where members of staff and data centres would be based vis-à-vis this proof of concept?”

“A couple of weeks ago we had the permanent secretary to the Treasury come in and reflect on the leak inquiry. It would be fair to characterise his response as saying, “Well, we tried hard, we did not quite get to it, but we are going to have closed loops going forward in the preparation of Budgets, and we need to be cl…”

“I want to turn to the issue of cost-benefit analysis. Most people understand that you have to make difficult trade-offs between consumer groups and the financial services industry. The Chair indeed wrote to the FT recently, talking about the balance needed in that. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 set up the…”

“In the panel’s report last year, it had two specific proposals to align to international best practice: first, that you should publish the cost-benefit analysis of alternative policy options to show why the proposed option was chosen; and secondly, that you publish all proposed policy interventions, whether rules or gu…”

“Quickly on that, we both know that it is us and the US. They are our major competitor—maybe Singapore also, but that is on a different scale. Of course we are going to be ahead of all the other jurisdictions, but what we are really talking about here is how we keep London competitive against the US and New York. Would …”

“As the Minister years ago, I remember meeting up with OPBAS. I think there were 20 regulators underneath them. You are going to move from having 16,000 to 76,000, so we are told. There is quite a big family of interests here. You could have a public school that has to take payment for school fees from a Russian oligarc…”

“I welcome the targeted nature of these measures, but three weeks ago it looked like inflation was going to return to the level that the right hon. Lady inherited when she took office in July 2024. That is no longer going to happen, but we are now seeing it the cost of borrowing. Given that we are spending well over £10…”

“In summary, you can do so much, but the industry has to be alongside you and committed at the same pace as you.”

“I am trying to understand the range of perspectives, not to draw out differences for the sake of it. How do we weigh up the differences, and what is going right or wrong in terms of the data points that you are dealing with? You make a judgment and publicise your decisions, but most people watching this will find it—as…”

“Does anyone else want to say anything on this subject?”

“Huw, did you want to add something?”

“You would recognise that there are risks and there are areas of very low risk as well. There is a real wisdom in zoning in on areas of vulnerability to minimise the overall burden.”

“I personally agree with you.”

“Just on that quickly, you have been Private Secretary to Prime Ministers. You have been the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange. You are now five or six years into being the chief executive of our financial regulator. How do we fix that? You have diagnosed the problem: it is the speed of getting legislation th…”