Speeches by Lowe.

“They are expensive for people to gather. In my experience of HMRC—again, I asked some parliamentary questions on this—it takes you 26 and a half minutes to answer your telephones, or it did in 2024-25, whereas it took the DWP eight minutes to answer theirs. That says a lot about the people paying the tax compared to th…”

“I have done it myself. Sometimes I give up, as do a lot of people. They waste a lot of time, and that costs money.”

“But you don’t slim it down, do you, Jonathan? I do not think it gets slimmed down.”

“Thank you, Chairman. In preparing for today’s meeting, I came across a very good quote that I would like to remind you all of from the very eminent US Chief Justice in the 19th century, John Marshall, who said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. I think that is a very powerful quote that you can perhaps take…”

“Do you know how long the Hong Kong tax code is?”

“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”; “…”

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

“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…”

“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…”

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

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

“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 …”

“The DFE, too.”

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

“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?”

“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…”

“I think we would agree about that. Having run a Premier League football club, I know about the east-west rivalries—particularly the Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds rivalries, which are always very powerful. I do not think that we disagree on what you are saying, but we might disagree in that I think the job of the Gove…”