Speeches by Grady.

“I just have a brief follow-up to this. When economic regulators such as yourself make decisions like this, there is an inevitability that the industry gets tooled up with Magic Circle firms and eminent silks and juniors. You are facing a whole battalion of lawyers and expert economists and you are a small organisation.…”

“I am not entirely clear on when we are likely to see any kind of tangible outcome on this. Something that concerns this Committee is that it is ultimately consumers at the end of the chain who are experiencing regular payment outages and unreliable payments infrastructure. They do not distinguish between different bits…”

“Shall we move on to the national payments vision? The Treasury defined the payments vision in 2024 as “a trusted, world-leading payments ecosystem delivered on next generation technology, where consumers and businesses have a choice of payment methods to meet their needs.” That is very general. Are we any further forwa…”

“As the Payment Systems Regulator, you mentioned earlier, Mr Geale, the 50-50 split between the paying and receiving bank. Has the Payment Systems Regulator considered or would you consider something along the lines of a split of one third, one third and one third? Might that lead to such an incentive? At the moment, th…”

“As a principle—I think everyone is clear on this—the social media companies are not doing enough to deal with this.”

“Would it be possible to get data on that?”

“Presumably the FCA, the PSR and other people write to social media companies and say, “Could you take this account down? This account is fraudulent.” How long does it take them to respond?”

“Your position is that they could do more to prevent this. What would you like to see them do?”

“On social media companies and social media, what proportion of these scams are conducted using social media?”

“We in the Treasury Committee looked at this issue extensively, and I am unaware of any particular evidence that supports the behavioural arguments the hon. Lady is setting out. In any event, why should 95,000 bright and talented children in Scotland be punished by an utterly cruel policy? Is it not fatuous to suggest t…”

“Will the Secretary of State give way?”

“I have a question I would like you to answer yes or no to, and just stick with a yes or no, if you would. I have listened very carefully to what Mr McAteer and Ms Williams have said. One of the things I have been grappling with is that you have wider issues, such as poverty, and poverty causes financial exclusion, beca…”

“I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, which faces into the world as it is. Des Browne, Baron Browne of Ladyton, is retiring from the other place after decades of distinguished public service as the Labour MP for Kilmarnock and the Defence Secretary and in his work on the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons.…”

“Mr Bland, we have dipped in and out of the common bond throughout the discussion this afternoon. Could you summarise in very short form the top three changes you would like to see to the common bond and what you think the two key benefits are? I am mindful we will have the Division bell soon.”

“As am I.”

“There are lots of questions to ask of the Scottish Government, but I will give that campaign a miss.”

“I have a family member who works for a large building society.”

“That is a geographic thing; I understand that. Is that the main issue?”

“Ms Harrison, I want to follow up on your point about company sales. Is one of your key points that: whereas the law relating to companies was thoroughly modernised in the mid-2000s and then modernised after that, the law for building societies, credit unions, and industrial and provident societies has been left behind,…”

“Can I ask this question as a recovering lawyer? The Companies Act runs to many thousands of pages. As you say, a lot of this legislation is 40 years old or more. Quite simply, there is the hard work in going through each provision and saying, “Do we need to update it?” It is just hard work. In your opinion, does the ci…”