Speeches by Glen.

“You have all painted quite a challenging picture on productivity, despite some excellent questions from my colleagues. We have explored the quantum problem—how much—and then the measurement problem. I wanted to pick up on what you said about the issue of America and where it is different. Could you set out what the tra…”

“But that was not the case?”

“The Employment Rights Bill was in ping-pong immediately before the Budget, but I suppose the U-turn on Wednesday, on first day rights, would vindicate your position on that. Is that right?”

“May I ask you about efficiencies in government? It seems to me that the Budget highlighted an additional £4.9 billion of efficiencies, building on what we had in the spending review, which I think was £14 billion. Can you tell us about your confidence level in achieving that? It is easy to project an extra 2% of NHS pr…”

“If you are talking about a 16% reduction in back office costs in the civil service in four years’ time, that is quite an ambitious number to aim for.”

“Not destructive tension.”

“Due to the very unfortunate pre-Budget leak, which had huge implications, Richard Hughes is not here today, but the truth is that that letter was about something completely separate from that event. It was about, essentially, the level of trust between Treasury officials and the OBR in the preparation of a Budget for o…”

“It feels rather different this time though, Mr Josephs.”

“What event precipitated that decision? You had seen weeks and months of characterisation of the OBR’s position in the media, presumably from leaks, which I think you have alluded to. What had not happened before that finally made that happen?”

“To go back to the letter, when did the OBR decide that it was going to signify in the EFO that it was going to write a letter?”

“I understand your characterisation of the bits that were missed out of the £4.2 billion, but surely there is a big difference between saying, “We need some extra headroom because £10 billion was too thin” and increasing taxes by £26 billion for many welfare measures?”

“She did not talk about headroom, did she?”

“But that was not the justification given on that occasion, was it?”

“Do you think it was sufficiently bad news to justify the way it was presented on 4 November?”

“Professor Miles, was the scene-setter that the Chancellor held in No. 11, and the wide understanding that that meant income tax was going up, a reasonable response to the final measures of £4.2 billion that you had handed over four or five days before?”

“I did not support Brexit. Brexit happened. We made a decision as a country, and I do not want to relitigate that. I commend the hon. Member for what he does to promote the discussion about measures to drive forward productivity. I think the Government could learn from some of his observations this afternoon, because un…”

“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), who I know holds his views with great sincerity, although I do not agree with many of them. Before I get into the substance of the Budget measures, I want to address the process leading up to the Budget. People might say that this is a subject …”

“On the process failure of the premature publication of the document, I think there is consensus across the House that it is damaging to the reputations of the UK, the OBR and the Treasury. I welcome the fact that the report says there are issues for the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the OBR in respect of how documen…”

“Maybe five seconds?”

“I warmly welcome the innovation around the UK town of culture. My 10 seconds of fame as the Under Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was in December 2017, when I went to Hull, the train broke down and I announced on “The One Show” that Coventry would be the UK city of culture. On behalf …”