Speeches by Grady.

“I am going to make some progress if I may. Given the public finance situation that we face, I am afraid it is incumbent on Opposition Members to come up with some credible alternatives. But of course we know what their credible alternatives are; they are the sort of decisions made by the gravediggers Liz Truss and Kwas…”

“I have worked in hospitality. I am not sure I was particularly successful at it, but there is a macro point here—an important point not to lose sight of. We hear from Opposition Members objection after objection to the Chancellor’s decisions, but no credible alternatives.”

“Does the Minister agree that it is due to the careful management of the public finances that we have record investment in defence and other areas of the Scottish economy, creating lots of well-paid jobs in Glasgow?”

“My understanding of a consumer duty, Ms Pritchard, is that firms have to tailor their communications to the consumer characteristics. Is that something you are looking at here, and the FCA is paying wider attention to at the moment?”

“The Scottish public finances have been aided by a record budget settlement from the UK Government, but there is a £5 billion black hole in them. Might it be the case that after 18 years of the SNP, some responsibility for such matters lies closer to home, perhaps in Edinburgh?”

“Mr Rathi, the Government’s financial inclusion strategy emphasises the importance of trust in financial services for vulnerable consumers, and it will go nowhere unless that trust is enhanced. There are many people in Britain who have paid thousands of pounds for funeral protection plans that have been withdrawn by Mai…”

“To sum up on this, if I was a company secretary of a listed company in some merger and acquisition situation, I would have to communicate anything about that at specific times, with specific levels of clarity, in a predictable way: the announcements have to be made before the market opens and so on. These are well unde…”

“Perhaps Reform UK is polling high in Perthshire as well. Leaving that to one side, let me tell the hon. Member what my constituents in Glasgow East are not relieved about: record NHS waiting lists, an SNP Government who block nuclear developments that would bring in hundreds of thousands of pounds a year through the cr…”

“There are very many people who bought this product with the understanding that it would pay out no matter when they died. I wonder whether that engages a breach of a consumer duty from a point of view of the nature of the communications to those consumers. Those are vulnerable consumers and they have not understood, on…”

“It is about choices—choices to invest in the health service so that people can return to work and contribute to the economy. There is nothing more heartbreaking than being a constituency MP and listening to people who have been waiting for over two years for a hip operation and cannot work. It is about choices to inves…”

“I fully support the Chancellor’s decision to rebuild the headroom, tackle Government borrowing and stick to her fiscal rules. It is consistent with Labour values. There is nothing progressive about 10% of Government spending being on interest. There is nothing progressive about leaving unsustainable debt to future gene…”

“There has been much mention of Shakespeare. I wonder whether the gravediggers in “Hamlet” might give us some clues as to what the last Conservative Government did to the British economy.”

“Last week, Dr Beck-Friis from PIMCO told us that UK fiscal finances are in a fairly fragile state. Bond investors are focused on actual deficit reduction over the next two years, as opposed to what is forecast or promised for 2029-30. Chancellor, is that where you think the bond markets are too?”

“On the tightening, Chancellor, a lot of commentators point out that much of the savings are back-ended to ’29-30, that much of the tax rises are also back-ended, and that we have real pressures at the back end of the forecasts, with £6 billion of SEND provision moved across, defence spending going up—but with a real ri…”

“Would it have created more confidence if we had brought some of the tightening forward, given that lenders take the view that the UK has for many, many years lacked fiscal credibility?”

“I wanted to follow up briefly on a small point, Dr Mann. You explained that the committee does not get to vote on the tenors, but you expressed your views very clearly. Is it your position that the committee should get to vote on the tenors?”

“We have an excellent team who draw these things to my attention, so you should thank them too.”

“I thought I would finish on a gentle topic. This Committee was interrupted for a vote on the single market, so I thought we could have a wee chat about Brexit to finish us off. Professor Dhingra, in recent speeches you have cited a published paper on Brexit that says that it has reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, which is a l…”

“I have a question for Ms Lombardelli. The costs of the Bank of England to society relative to the costs of inflation to society are tiny. I think that what Dr Dhingra’s evidence and what other commentators would say is that, frankly, we do not understand enough about inflation. We need to understand quite a bit more ab…”

“It must follow from what you say that we need to either make other tools, such as anti-trust and competition law or supply side reforms, more effective, or develop new tools to address issues such as the pervasive feature of your evidence today—the issue with administered pricing, where vast amounts of things in the ec…”