Speeches by Glen.

“On that point, the world has changed quite considerably. Our Prime Minister is not sat having a pint with the President of China any more. The world, defence and the risks facing the country are different. Are you really saying that, if you were in office now, you would be able to maintain aid expenditure at that level…”

“Previously, at last year’s Budget, the Chancellor did not mention Brexit as a cause of productivity performance, yet in the last few weeks, and in her speech yesterday, she has done. Why do you think that is?”

“Thank you. Sir Vince, would you like to add anything?”

“Given what you have previously said about the shift in growth in the US compared with the EU, how do you reconcile the enhanced opportunities that you would say exist from rejoining the customs union and the single market with the fact that the shift in productivity in the top seven economies is coming from the US, not…”

“Should she look to rejoin those now?”

“Can I turn to Brexit, trade and tariffs?”

“The traffic jams continue.”

“Shocking!”

“When you were Chancellor, you looked into Michael Johnson’s proposal on the lifetime ISA, which was characterised as an attempt to create an alternative savings vehicle. Given that £10 billion to £15 billion of pension relief is on higher rate taxpayers and that, if you had had mass adoption of that vehicle, you would …”

“I recall looking into it in some detail as Chief Secretary—”

“Can I ask about the issues of the future liabilities in terms of pensions? We have obviously got some quite big differences in the public sector liabilities going forward. Some opposition parties have been looking at this. Mr Osborne, when you were in government, you introduced the career average imperative. Where do y…”

“Sir Vince, do you want to come in and say anything different on that?”

“But not adequate enough at 8%.”

“May we turn to welfare and pensions policy? Twenty-two per cent. of total Government spending is on welfare. Mr Osborne, you talked about the achievements of auto-enrolment and, Sir Vince, you talked about the issues of the triple lock and that achievement. A way of dealing with that pressure might be to put a ratchet …”

“Yes.”

“It is nearly 10 years since the coalition ended. If you look at the level of GDP growth, I think there has been only one year when it was above 2.5%, apart from the aberration of covid and immediately after. Is there not a risk that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faces a situation where society’s expectations are bound…”

“Later today, the Government will publish their financial inclusion strategy. I welcome the steps forward for financial literacy. Will the Secretary of State collaborate with the Economic Secretary and use the wealth of expertise and enthusiasm that exists among the banks and financial services industry to ensure that m…”

“There is another question that I wanted to ask. This Committee has looked hard at trying to find meaningful things that can be taken away, in terms of reporting obligations to regulators that are superfluous and do not lead to any actions. I remember being briefed on the potential modernisation of the Consumer Credit A…”

“Yes.”

“The Skeoch review, which was the last time we did a review into ringfencing, basically found that Sam Woods would say that he has all the tools to deal with bank resolution if one goes under, but somehow we hold on to the ringfencing for historic attachment to the comfort from the last crisis. I urge you as a Minister …”