Speeches by Grady.

“No, that’s fine; that has covered my point.”

“But one is weighing up different expenditure lines and different expenditure proposals, so surely they need to be assessed to some common parameters, to have some sort of output that gives comparability.”

“What process are they going to follow? Is there a standard process for assessing value for money, or are they all going to have their own process?”

“How have these people been selected? At first sight, one might ask how someone from Lloyds Banking Group, for instance, could help with various aspects of public expenditure.”

“That is very helpful. It might be helpful if you provided the Committee afterwards with a list of who the challenge experts are.”

“One aspect of the spending review is the challenge panels of external experts. On them are former senior management from Lloyds, Barclays and the Co-operative Group. Who else is on those panels?”

“How will this relate to the work of the Office for Value for Money? Will that team talk to these individual other teams? How is that going to work?”

“Is part of the process that, as a matter of course, these external experts must report in writing to the Treasury so that ultimately Darren Jones and Rachel Reeves can see what they have said?”

“Let’s say I am sitting in a Department and I have been asked for my opinion, and I am feeling a bit grumpy because it has been ignored—a bit like at home. Will my concern about a spending proposal find its way from the Department to the OVFM or the Treasury as a matter of course?”

“Have I understood that correctly, and could you explain to us how that would work to get growth? If I were a bank, I would think, “Let’s keep it in the current account and not move it into an interest-bearing account.””

“The last question from me: have I understood right that the OVFM has so far given one recommendation, or is there more?”

“So just one so far, but there will be more to come.”

“Perhaps we can be efficient and do a yes/no, Mr Bowler. If I understood your example correctly, one of the rules you would like to change to get some more growth is to enable banks to target people with large current account balances and encourage them to move them into interest-bearing savings accounts. Did I pick tha…”

“I guess—and it is one for the letter, because I do not want to try Dame Meg’s patience—I do not see the incentive for a bank, if someone habitually keeps £30,000 in their current account doing nothing, to encourage that customer to move it to a savings account, unless maybe it is some sort of longer-term savings accoun…”

“Right, okay.”

“Then we can move on.”

“To be clear, by disclosure to the public what I mean is you say, “This is what AI is actually doing in a physical, step-by-step process.””

“Just to quickly pick up on the Consumer Credit Act—something that has been troubling me for some time, so I am in agreement—it does not really cover all the modern methods of payment that are coming up. I suspect that what you are saying, ultimately, is that it forms part of that picture that Mr Glen and I have been di…”

“Mr Dipple-Johnstone, with all your other regulatory experience, it is a yes or no question: is it working for consumers and businesses?”

“Of course. I understand the overall regulatory architecture. I am just asking a very simple question: is the system too complex, and is it working for consumers and businesses?”