Speeches by Reeves.

“There is a lot of scepticism about the current product. A lot of lenders will not offer it, because of design flaws in the way it was set up and a lack of clarity about who the product is suitable for. Many banks and building societies do not want to offer it, because they do not want to be later accused of mis-selling…”

“I increased taxes by £40 billion in the Budget last year, and I do not remember any party clamouring for more tax increases. In fact, I think the Liberal Democrats opposed most of the ones that we are trying to take forward. I think we got the balance about right last year, but I was really clear that one of the object…”

“We want to crack on with it. We did not feel ready, at this Budget, to announce a new product that we would have confidence in, so we want to take a little longer to get that right. There are well-documented concerns about the lifetime ISA. We want to help people get on the housing ladder, and we are not convinced that…”

“There are not many young people who can put aside £20,000 a year in savings—I think we all know that. The biggest challenge for young people today is getting a job that pays a decent wage, not whether they can access the full £20,000 of ISA savings. The reason we put in that age limit is that as you get older, the time…”

“Obviously, these taxes apply whether the company is offshore or not, because it is a tax on the bet. Again, that was an important design of this policy—that you cannot just relocate overseas to get out of paying that tax. We are also making it relatively more attractive to do betting in real life, rather than online. T…”

“We have kept the main rate of corporation tax at 25%, and we have stuck to all the commitments that we made in the business tax road map, which I published at the last Budget. We also have one of the most generous and competitive capital allowances regimes. What I did at the Budget was to decrease the main rate of writ…”

“You can see the direction of travel, though. We have made permanent the full expensing and, this year, for things that are not covered by full expensing, we are introducing a more generous first-year allowance. If you are asking us, “Is there more to do on this?”, yes, I think there is in a range of areas, like the one…”

“That was part of the agreement in the spending review, that for this spending review period, that would be absorbed. The costs are actually quite low in the first couple of years, and that was part of the spending review settlement. But obviously, at future spending reviews—”

“Obviously, everything in the next spending review will be set out in the next spending review.”

“Nothing if not predictable.”

“We are already embarking on the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war, taking it to 2.6% by April 2027. Although every Department apart from the NHS and Defence has had to make some further efficiency savings towards the end of the Parliament, that is not the case—well, they have to make effi…”

“Headroom went as low as £6.5 billion in the last Parliament. I built it up to £9.9 billion in my Budget last year and in the spring statement. I felt that that was the right approach, but obviously since then we have had a number of global shocks, whether shocks to trade, ongoing conflicts or disruptions to supply chai…”

“We have protected the capital budget, which is really important for improving the productivity of public services. We have also agreed with Departments £14 billion-worth of efficiency savings. We are tracking those closely, and we are delivering against those targets. We have set out further efficiency targets in the B…”

“That is not the case.”

“When people come back and say, “Well, that was the case in the spring”—”

“Yes.”

“Thank you very much for bringing up that example. Please give best wishes from me, and I think all the Committee, to Jen’s family for what they went through. Too many parents and children are let down by the SEND system—any parent knows that, as does any constituency MP. You have been a constituency MP for only a year …”

“If it is okay, I am going to pass this question to the permanent secretary.”

“No, they have reduced.”

“Yes, there was, and the reason for that is that the OBR do costings of all the changes that we are making, as well as there being interactions between the tax measures and other economic variables, whether those be GDP, consumption or inflation, so all of this was changing. It was a big Budget—I think we can all agree …”