Speeches by Glen.

“I thank the Secretary of State for her statement—I agree with practically everything she has said. When I heard these reports, I thought of the Mayor of Wilton, Councillor Alexandra Boyd, who is Jewish, and about what it would have felt like for her to have watched that with her family. We in this place all understand …”

“Yes, we were in power for 14 years, and during covid, when I was a Minister, we made decisions such as stopping face-to-face assessments because we could not do them. We all recognise that the recovery from that covid time has not gone as well as it should, but if the Secretary of State cannot deliver a shift in the nu…”

“I think that the vast majority of people in this country believe in a welfare system that is compassionate to the vulnerable, and particularly to the disabled, but they can no longer understand why so many people here—in contrast to other similar countries—are in this situation where they are not working.”

“Infantry regiments cite difficulty in recruiting in their traditional communities and recruitment grounds. Further to the exchange between the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire), may I ask what more can be done to encourage, specifically, young British men to join the Army?”

“I do not think I have been very clear, but what I am trying to get at is the arbitration between the relative value of delegated expenditure and centrally driven infrastructure or other stimulants from capital expenditure from the centre.”

“Well, I think that is what we are saying—we will have to wait and see. But there is no measure to arbitrate on that; it is a judgment.”

“No, what I am saying is that spending money locally has a different economic outcome from national infrastructure projects that do not involve one particular region or a combined series of regions. Rishi Sunak came as a Back Bencher to see Philip Hammond when I was Philip’s PPS, and he said he wanted to do freeports. T…”

“I certainly get the point about there being a consensus between the previous Government and this one on devolving decision making. How do you avoid a situation where you create lots of happy people outside London, with local mayors who are given more discretion to make growth-enhancing investments within their terms of…”

“With the greatest respect, that is not the point I am making. I totally agree with you that it must be their decision. I am saying that the combined aggregate economic value of those intra-city transport schemes is less significant in terms of the national growth mission overall, and that there are better decisions tha…”

“I remember it well. We are addicted to it.”

“Gemma Tetlow from the IFG talked about the uniform 10% administrative budget cuts. If you are doing a zero-based review, as Mr Dean said, it is a holistic opportunity to consider first principles: what are we doing and what are we not doing? How do you justify what appears to be, and what Ms Tetlow appeared to say was,…”

“Why the universal 10%?”

“We will look at the forecasts in the autumn and see what it looks like then.”

“The spending power number, which I acknowledge is—or certainly was—the LGA’s preferred measure to evaluate honestly their total spending power, includes the assumption of the maximisation of the 5% everywhere. Surely, you cannot simultaneously assert that the spending power number is true and assert that there is a dis…”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“What happens if they don’t?”

“They would have to find cuts in other line items within their own budget, because no other money is available.”

“How do we, as a Committee, and the public verify the added value of the Office for Value for Money, given that its advice to you is private?”

“But forgive me, Chief Secretary, if you are going to make good on that collaborative approach to the settlement being arrived at, presumably you need distinctly different processes for measuring the progress in collaborative expenditure to outcomes. How much did the core functions that exist across Whitehall and in the…”

“We want all of Government to spend money efficiently and demonstrate that the spending review is leading to better outcomes in terms of what the spending does. The question I really want to get at is: do you plan to do anything differently in the Treasury in terms of monitoring the effectiveness of the decisions about …”