Speeches by Lowe.

“I think the headmaster would say, “Could do better.””

“I will not challenge you to a corridor race today, Mr Speaker, but good luck with your leg. I wrote to the Chancellor on 8 January, with the support of 7,000 small businesses from across the spectrum—not just pubs. They are concerned about not only rate re-evaluations, and the vicious tax rises that they have had to su…”

“Can we drill down a bit more on shared services? It strikes me that we are almost going full circle. We have gone independent and now we are looking at how we share services, which begs the question of why we hived ourselves out in the first place. I guess the definition of “needing to be transparent” is subjective rat…”

“In your example, Indrani, which package did you select? Was it Sage or Xero?”

“I have never heard of them.”

“Will they still be in business next year?”

“Good.”

“I have to say, I am struggling to get my mind around this. I now have a list of 48 of these various bodies, of which I think you represent three. I look at history and think of Robert Walpole: the Cabinet met twice for two weeks at his estate in Norfolk, and there was very little involvement of government in people’s l…”

“Your own little empires, and your own—”

“Do you think you need to be separate bodies?”

“Farhad, it appears that a lot of the legal bodies we have here stem from Tony Blair’s reforms in 2005, when he basically set up the Supreme Court. Again, do you need so many different legal bodies operating as separate entities? I would be grateful if you could help us in questioning the main people responsible for the…”

“I would not for one minute suggest that we get rid of GAD; it is a question of where they sit.”

“So you think that is a question for the Ministers?”

“But what do you think? Do you think it is better as it is, or do you think it could be improved?”

“How would you improve it?”

“Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chairman. I have no other questions.”

“Not for the main session—there’s one a bit later, isn’t there?”

“Yes. On your shared services, you said that you have an audit and presumably you use different auditors. When you talk about turnover, I am assuming that a lot of what is going through your various bodies is spend rather than turnover?”

“So it is funded by the taxpayer who is giving you money that you are then spending. Let us get the term right: it is not turnover; it is spend. On payroll, auditing, office and communications—loads of things that, if you run a business, you try and ensure that you spend as little as possible on—what are you all doing t…”

“You just mentioned accounts packages. I find that if my companies are all on the same accounts package it is much easier for everybody to understand what is happening everywhere. Are you all on the same accounts package? It sounds as if you are not.”