Speeches by Lowe.

“Eighty thousand pages. Doesn’t that need slimming down?”

“I am talking about large businesses. If you look at this chart, either they are making errors because it is so complicated or their legal interpretation does not agree with what HMRC’s rulebook is saying. There is your issue. That is a burden on our businesses. It is a massive burden, Clive—massive. They have to engage…”

“Five hundred pages. We have 22,000 pages. If you take anything away, I think you could make life a lot easier for you and for our businesses if you made your tax manuals much simpler.”

“I am not straying far from these charts on page 19. I think they are highly illuminating.”

“Let’s not get into a political debate about how much of it is wasted.”

“If you could put it in writing, that would be fantastic—I really would appreciate that.”

“Thank you, Chair. It is rare for me to start, so thank you for picking me first. Good morning, everyone. I will start by reading a few lines from the Report—just a few little lines I picked out from the summary alone: “significant gaps remain”; “buy-in uncertain”; “no clear owner”; “Engagement…has been inconsistent”; “…”

“Nathan, I am hearing you. Thank you for that but, to Jerome’s point, the clusters don’t always agree with what you are telling us here. If you read the Report, the clusters contradicted what was said. The NAO uncovered that, as they usually do in their excellent Reports, so that is not entirely consistent. If you can’t…”

“Thank you for that. You were quite right when you said earlier that this is a time for major reflection; I think it is. You should look, as I did, at the case of the Office for National Statistics—I don’t know whether you know what happened with the Office for National Statistics—because I think they are a microcosm of…”

“So you are happy with progress. I think being efficient means doing things well, regardless of importance. And being effective means doing important things well. I read this Report, and all of the witnesses that were going to be here today—they have been changed for various reasons; Cat Little is not here, although I d…”

“I don’t think the NAO would agree with you, from the Report.”

“Chair, I think that note needs to look at both cost and operational benefits, because the two are entirely separate.”

“The DFE, too.”

“I have used my allotted time. I can hear the Chair getting nervous that I am burning too much of it, but I would like to see you seriously reappraise whether you are going to fail here—now is the time to do it. If you are, you have to be honest with the taxpayer, because otherwise they are going to end up footing this …”

“And responsibilities.”

“But who is in overall charge? Who is going to get fired?”

“But Jerome, you have been there a month—you just said so. You are in charge now, but this has been going on a long time, has it not?”

“But moving to cloud-based systems is not going to solve this problem, Jerome.”

“You did not, because you were not there.”

“T3. Women all over Britain, including in my constituency of Great Yarmouth, primarily on King Street, feel intimidated, harassed and abused in their town centres. Disproportionately, this unacceptable behaviour is committed by young foreign men imported from cultures and religions that treat women like dirt on the bott…”