Speeches by Glen.

“I suspect that we will go around on this wheel again. The self-employed, of which there are roughly 5 million, do not have the same options for saving using bank accounts. How should that be fixed?”

“So it is about consumer protection?”

“When I was a Minister, I tried to get a no-interest loan scheme going, based on a model that was used in Australia. I am not quite sure where it has got to. You are never going to make much money out of the poorest people in our society, nor should you, probably. Do you have a view on how we can make the banking sector…”

“In principle, going back to the auto-enrolment of contents insurance, it is the obvious solution. It does not cost very much, because the housing association covers the building. If the insurers are prepared to offer the product, there must be a disconnect. I recognise that you do not want to reveal what is going on in…”

“The point is that it is quite obvious that you can find out more about your market and that your understanding of profitability will be enhanced. No one is saying that they expect insurance companies then to pick up an unaffordable number of people—you cannot afford to—but society needs to know who those people are and…”

“Thank you for chairing this debate, Sir Roger. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who for 34 years has made such an enormous contribution in this place. When he set up the Centre for Social Justice, he was determined to look at the deeper causes of social p…”

“Undoubtedly, every Government deals with different challenges, and I note that the Chancellor did not mention the challenge of covid in the last period of government. When I was in the Treasury, I did everything I could to support businesses with bounce back loans, and to support our public services, but clearly, covid…”

“I think we have done it to death.”

“Well!”

“Thank you. I think I have taken enough of your time.”

“And not acted upon? Richard Hughes And not acted upon—and then observing the consequences for the fiscal situation in which we find ourselves. The more we can do not just to focus on the central forecast over the medium term, but on the pressures on the public finances of the long term and the risks around those scenar…”

“Could I go back to the question that I asked Sir Robert about the design of the OBR? At the point we are now at with the public finances and the situation in which we find ourselves, as if the OBR had not existed hitherto, is there anything you would suggest, Mr Hughes, that would be helpful?”

“It is not the one we have, though, is it?”

“The average headroom from 2010 to 2024 was, I think, £25 billion. I totally acknowledge what you said about the last Conservative Budget, and that was not replenished. But we are also seeing a situation in which the level of debt, post covid and the energy crisis, and the cost of that debt mean that the public finances…”

“My purpose in asking that question is not to dismiss the OBR. I have deep respect for you, for your successor and for the theory of this. I am just saying that it is quite obvious that the way politics works, the way the OBR’s documents are pored over to look for any discrepancy and the way those numbers have to sync u…”

“I don’t mind the slip.”

“I am not saying that we should get rid of it. I am just asking whether you can refine it so that the interaction is better—because it is not now, is it?”

“You have both given a very reasonable assessment of the theory of the OBR and how it should work. You have pointed to the medium-term and long-term assessments that you make and the fact that you are just trying to do what you would do in most jurisdictions, which is give a dispassionate assessment of whether the Gover…”

“After five and a half years as a Treasury Minister, I have deep respect and gratitude for your work and the work of your colleagues, but I am a little anxious when I look at some of the reports around staffing in the Treasury. There has always been a higher turnover of staff—I think about three times the civil service …”

“Which Departments are finding it most difficult, do you think?”