Speeches by Murphy.

“I echo fellow members of the Treasury Committee in commending Richard Hughes for his work and for taking responsibility for what the OBR itself acknowledged is the worst failure in its 15-year history. The shadow Chancellor failed to mention that Professor Miles stated in his testimony to the Committee yesterday that t…”

“Ms Curtice, you have segued nicely into my questions on living standards. Could you set out what you make of the performance on living standards in this Parliament to date compared with the previous Parliament?”

“Was there a set of alternative measures that, given the package, so the key tax raises and measures on living standards, you would have liked to see and that you think would have delivered a better pathway on living standards within the envelope?”

“What do you make of the measures in the Budget on the cost of living and living standards overall? Is there anything you would particularly highlight? Could you break it down a bit in terms of the next year, the next couple of years and then maybe the rest of the Parliament?”

“Ms Miller, I do not know whether there is anything you want to add on the wider living standards point.”

“Maybe we could follow up on that point.”

“Including housing costs? Why would those be included? Is it not a measure that excludes housing costs?”

“Is RHDI the most accurate measure of living standards? I ask because it includes imputed rents and it is gross of housing costs. Would a measure net of housing costs not be more accurate?”

“My constituents will welcome the action on the cost of living in the Budget, from the rail freezes to the cuts to energy bills, but could you set out the trajectory for real household disposable incomes over the Parliament? How does it change compared with your forecast in March, and what is the main reason for that ch…”

“Do you have the necessary data to make that assessment?”

“May I quickly turn to migration data? The latest data is much lower than you forecast. What are the fiscal implications of that?”

“So that number on the EV forecast could change, in the negative, if Government were to freeze fuel duty?”

“Is that something that you publish?”

“I appreciate that you only assess the policies that the Government put in front of you, but to ask the question slightly differently: do you have a typology of policy measures that shows how you assess different types of policies in-house?”

“I have a question about the significance threshold on policies. Do you only ever assess what the Government put in front of you, or do you have a basket of measures, as it were, or a range of different types of policy, that you publish, and that you could show make the biggest difference in terms of enhancing growth? H…”

“Say that fuel duty was not uprated: does that potentially have an impact on demand for EVs, and do you model that?”

“On fuel duty, the Budget states that from April 2027 the Government will uprate fuel duty by RPI. But as we know, fuel duty rates have been frozen for 15 years. How much headroom would the Government lose if they did not go ahead with uprating fuel duty by RPI?”

“So there are significant risks around the figure?”

“You predict a reduction in EV car sales of nearly 450,000 as a result of the measure, which is offset by other Government policies to increase sales. Could that reduction in sales be bigger than envisaged? How confident are you around the modelling of the impact of the policy change?”

“There were new taxes to electric vehicles applied in the Budget. Could you set out what the scope of this tax is to plug the fiscal gap created by reduction in fuel duty revenue?”