Speeches by Glen.

“Governments have to make choices—we all understand that—but the choice that this Government made was not to cut spending on welfare, which has limited their choices elsewhere. There is a real choice. If the Conservatives had been in power, we would not have made those choices over the summer, and the hospitality sector…”

“Could I turn first to threshold freezes, Chancellor? At the ’24 Budget, you said, “I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto. There will be no extension of the freeze in income tax and national insurance thresholds.” You told us earlier that it is not a breach of the manifesto. How can we sq…”

“Why did you decide to change the decision on raising the rate of income tax in those 10 days?”

“Did you make that decision or did the Prime Minister?”

“It does raise taxes for working people.”

“Thank you, Chancellor.”

“Chancellor, I totally recognise the integrity of the spending review process. I am just saying that if you align the reasonable expectations of health spending, education spending and your aspirations on defence, all the other Departments have a pressure that pretty much resonates with what happened between 2010 and 20…”

“Let’s look at defence spending, with the Government’s stated goal to get to 3.5% of GDP; health spending maintaining its long-run average growth rate, and education spending being held flat in per-pupil terms. The Resolution Foundation has said that the announcements in the Budget mean there will be £6.4 billion of rea…”

“So you do not recognise the pressure on other Departments in the period 2028-29 to 2029-30.”

“I was never Chancellor.”

“Your consultation on gambling taxes began with a desire to simplify, and indeed this Committee looked at the matter as well. After your measures in the Budget, we are now in a position where online betting duty is higher than on the high street; where duty on betting on UK racing is lower than for betting on Irish raci…”

“I just want to try and clarify that there were more meaningful data points between 4 November and 13 and 14 November.”

“What led to those being meaningfully different?”

“Do you recognise that, if you look at the distributional analysis, increasing the headline rate of income tax is more progressive than threshold freezes?”

“Okay, very well.”

“The clear impression left by the scene-setter press conference on the 4th was that income tax was going up. That was what every newspaper was saying—income tax was going up—and then 10 days later it was not. What can you tell us about your decision-making process during those 10 days?”

“I recognise the change that you have quoted, but in all future years, the OBR says that growth is downgraded consequential of this Budget.”

“But it is lower in every subsequent year.”

“I understand your logic, but some of the companies are configured with cross-subsidies in different parts of their business. In essence, do you expect to see a consequential restructuring in the industry? It seems likely that some will not find it viable, because of the nature of the subsidy from different parts of the…”

“Thank you. May I bring in Dr Mann?”