Speeches by Glen.

“So a slightly lower interest rate will mean that people will save less and spend more, and that will be good for the economy. That is the essence of what you expect.”

“Can I turn to household spending and saving and the impact that has in the near term? Obviously, with what happened after covid, savings patterns changed. Could you say something about what you think is likely to happen with savings levels? There is an indication that they might still go up, as people feel insecure. Wh…”

“Can I probe a little bit further on that? Your assessment over the forecast period is that growth will be 0.7% lower than you did at the March event. One of the criticisms, to be fair to the Government, is that they would say that some of the supply side reforms that they envisage happening would have a positive effect…”

“Thank you, Chair. It is a great privilege to have you here. Obviously, the OBR is a significant arbiter of truth, or is deemed to be, when we get to fiscal events. I want to ask about GDP and how you calculate what the expectation is going forward. There is a lot of controversy around that. If we look at the last four …”

“I have two quick questions, one macro and one micro. If you look at the retention of the corporation tax level, the combination with the employee NICs, the overall effect of the £5 billion of the Employment Rights Bill and the effect on the national living wage, the assertion is made by some that this makes the UK look…”

“Yael, could I turn to you and Mr Brewer on the OBR’s assessment of the lags in terms of the effect of this public investment? One of the frustrations from the Government’s point of view is that they are making all this investment, but there is a lag before it can be accounted for. How do you think about the OBR’s asses…”

“Is that fair, though, given the emphasis that the new Government have put on fixing planning? You talk about the constraints in terms of the labour force or whatever, but they have put an emphasis on overruling constraints in terms of public opinion on where to build and removing those barriers. Is the OBR not being a …”

“Mr Brewer, would you like to say something?”

“Mr King, we need to come back to you about the black hole and lean on your experience in the OBR. Was it right to characterise it as a £22 billion black hole?”

“On the micro side, one controversial change has been the agricultural property relief. It has been said that 73% of estates will be exempt from it. Has there been any assessment made of the behavioural impact and the effect that would have in terms of the obligation to sell, notwithstanding the fact that clearly you ca…”

“They might have made different choices on productivity or whatever. Can I finally finish the question, then? What could be done to improve this and avoid this happening again? It is not in the interest of the integrity of the process for it to carry on like this.”

“In the light of the fact that they have, rightly or wrongly, post Brexit had significant changes to their economic model, have been encouraged to diversify as well and there is still uncertainty over the applicability of capital grants, et cetera, it is not quite the same, is it? They are on margins of 0.5% to 1%, whic…”

“This is linked to food supply and food security, which is national security, a stated objective of the Government’s policy. That is where the concern is.”

“Can I get into the dynamics between the Treasury and the OBR? It is really unfortunate that we got into a situation where that dynamic is in question. For many fiscal events, OBR officials and Treasury officials interacted and produced documents in parallel. There was no reason to dispute the degree of transparency on …”

“I understand.”

“What a great privilege it is to be sitting on the Back Benches and able to make a contribution freely after 12 years on the Front Bench, as a Parliamentary Private Secretary or Minister. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) for his maiden speech and acknowledge what a wonderful experience it was…”

“I spent most of the past six years looking at Treasury figures and I have a great deal of sympathy for the hon. Gentleman. I fear he is a victim of a hit-and-run exercise by the Treasury on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs budget. He would do well to think about the lessons learned from the pasty …”

“The Opposition support the new Government’s aspirations for the highest ministerial standards, and we acknowledge the significant experience that the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff can bring to her role as envoy to the nations and regions. Why then, in breach of Cabinet Office guidance, have Ministers not publi…”

“I turn to another area of national resilience. National security experts have been warning about the Chinese Communist party’s use of genomics companies to harvest DNA data globally and dominate the genomics industry supply chain. Given the increasing importance of genomics for public healthcare, and the potential dual…”

“I warmly welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s announcement on the £100,000 interim payments to the estates of the deceased infected, thereby maintaining the momentum that was established earlier this year, and I thank him for his thorough statement to the House yesterday introducing the statutory instrument. Will he conf…”